Child Anxiety: 5 Practical Ways to Help an Anxious Child
As a kid, the world can seem like a big, scary place. But when those fears become persistent or irrational, childhood anxiety may be to blame. Here’s how to calm your anxious child and help them manage their fears with proven coping skills.
Fears are normal and even helpful at times. But when anxiety prevents a child from thriving, it’s natural for you as a parent or caregiver to want to help.
Parents typically respond to child anxiety by either shielding their child from whatever triggers the anxiety or telling their child to “just deal with it.”
Neither responses are helpful: the first can reinforce the anxiety, and the second can signal to your child that you don’t understand or respect their feelings.
Here are five ways to help calm an anxious child:
1. Show validation and confidence
Communicate to your child in a way that recognizes and validates their feelings but also expresses your belief that they can cope and overcome them.
Use statements like:
“I know this is hard for you, and I know you can do it.”
“I can see this is scary, let’s get through it together.”
“You can get through this, and I’m going to help you.”
Keeping your own tone of voice and body language calm can also help your child remain calm.
2. Tackle negative thinking
Kids can be hard on themselves. They can get stuck in negative thinking patterns that may make anxiety and upsetting feelings even worse.
Some of these negative thinking patterns include:
All-or-nothing thinking
Making everything about themselves
Seeing only the negative
“Knowing” something will go wrong
Overgeneralizing
Labeling themselves
When your child is focused on a specific fear or worry, ask “Is there anything you can do about that?” If the answer is yes, then you can help them brainstorm ways to solve the problem. Prompt them to come up with a solution themselves first before asking if you can offer some ideas.
If the answer is no, and your child is worried about things outside of their control, like the weather or someone else’s behavior, remind them that the only thing they can control is how they respond.
3. Practice skills that calm the body
Anxiety produces a physical response to fearful situations. Studies show that skills like slow, deep breathing can help calm anxiety by calming the body’s stress response.
If your anxious child experiences a racing heartbeat or tight muscles, for example, teach them how to calm their body with some simple breathing exercises.
Younger children can practice calm breathing by imagining a slice of pizza. Take a deep breath through your nose to "smell the pizza." Then pretend you're cooling the pizza by blowing out of your mouth slowly.
You also can pretend to blow bubbles with a wand. Remind your child to blow out steadily to get a nice big bubble.
Older children or teens can be prompted to focus on breathing slowly for a few minutes. Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine themselves in a calm place while they practice taking deep, even breaths.
4. Name it to tame it
Work with your child to give their anxiety a name or even create a character for the anxiety. This helps create distance between your child and their feelings. They’re not the problem, “Mr. Bossy” is the problem.
Once you’ve named the anxiety, you can help your child cope by using statements like “it looks like Mr. Bossy is being bossy again. Let’s boss him right back.”
For adolescents and teens, you can use metaphors to achieve the same effect. Volume buttons, knobs to turn, anything that can signal to your child that they can regain control of their feelings.
Once you’ve found the metaphor, you can use statements like “I can see the volume is all the way up to 10 now. How about we turn it down a little.”
5. Model how to manage fears
The way you, as a parent or caregiver, manage your own fears is an opportunity to model healthy coping behaviors your child can learn. Talk aloud about how you’re dealing with a fearful situation. And if that’s not possible, explain your behavior after the fact and what you were thinking.
Your child isn’t going to handle every anxious moment perfectly, and neither will you. Every misstep is a learning opportunity. Tell your child what happened. Talk about what you learned and how you plan to handle similar situations in the future. It’s ok to show them that learning to manage their feelings is a process that takes practice.
