Dealing with Anxiety in Children: How to Help Your Child Cope

“Here Be Dragons.”

Old sailing maps would often include such references on places of danger or dread. A children’s book about anxiety by Kathryn Cave and Nick Maland, You’ve Got Dragons, begins with the ominous words: “Dragons show up when you least expect them.” Together, Cave and Maland explore the anxiety of a child who deals with it in the form of a dragon.

Throughout history, the fight against dragons has symbolized the struggles of man. Fighting the dragon of your child’s anxiety could bring you two closer together while you overcome adversity as a team. Similarly, Tamar Chansky suggests having your child give their worry a name like “worry brain” or “brain bug,” giving you a common language to discuss their fears or worries.

How Can You Distinguish Between Worry and Anxiety in Children?

We all worry sometimes, so learning to identify if your child is struggling with anxiety is important. Knowing what to look for will allow you to make the distinction, enabling you to better care for their needs.

If your child experiences the following with any regularity, they may be suffering from anxiety: sleep disturbances, repetitive needs for reassurance through questions, physical symptoms such as stomachaches or headaches.

Any of these issues can cause your child to regularly miss activities due to illness. Furthermore, if your child’s worry or anxiety disrupts family life or causes them to avoid certain places or activities, their worry may be signs of advanced anxiety. Similarly, if your child is preoccupied and worrying for hours, days, or weeks prior to an activity or event, that could be signs of advanced anxiety.

To effectively help your child with their anxiety, you must teach yourself not to be overwhelmed by it. It is normal to feel helpless or frustrated when comforting them with their struggle. Once you have decided not to allow your child’s anxiety to cause more anxiety in yourself, you will be prepared to help them fight their dragon.

Understanding the physical and psychological aspects of anxiety will prepare you to help your child break the cycle. Tamar Chansky defines an anxiety response as an “overestimation of threat plus an underestimation of ability to cope.”

In this cycle, your child can get stuck in a series of thinking whereby they begin reminding themselves of the need to worry. Chansky calls this the “worry track.” Your child needs help to get off the “worry track” and onto the “smart track of the brain train.”

How to Keep Your Child off the Worry Track

Since this worry track can be debilitating, your child will need your help to get off the worry track. First you must listen to their worries without belittling them or invalidating their worries. Let them fully express themselves before you begin to address their concern. Support them by listening first and remember that their thoughts are their reality.

Next, you must teach them about the “worry track” and the “smart track” that they can choose to follow. If they have become subject to advanced anxiety, then they may be automatically going down the worry track without realizing there is another way to think, but with your help, your child can discover another way to respond.

You will have to help your child find ways to confront their dragon – their anxiety – for them to move forward. One possible weapon for your child to use against the dragon of anxiety is talking back to it. During this exercise, have your child imagine a voice they would use when confronting a bully and have them use that voice against their anxiety dragon. Have your child tell their anxiety dragon why it is not welcome in their home or in their life. The two of you can use this technique together to chase their dragon away.

To further help your child understand the differences between the worry track and smart track, you might want to give them an example that does not involve them. Present a situation for them to solve, such as a family gathering around a holiday. Have them picture the gathering in their head and then walk them through the thoughts, feelings, and actions that would happen in each of those tracks.

In the worry track example, the thoughts might be, “What if I don’t have fun?”, “What if people are mean to me?”, or “What if the food is yucky?” Feelings like this could lead to a desire to skip the party. To walk your child down the smart track, you could suggest thoughts like: “Parties are fun!”, “I enjoy seeing family,” or “I can always ask grandma for help.”

Slaying Dragons Requires Teamwork

The most important part of this journey is to fight your child’s anxiety as a team. Help your child to externalize their anxious thoughts instead of becoming crippled by them. Work together to help them vocalize and overcome that anxiety.

If you suspect your child is suffering from anxiety, we encourage you to contact us. One of our counselors can help you and your child with techniques to overcome their anxiety, worry, and fear.