3 simple ways to help your anxious child

Learning how to help your anxious child is tricky.  Helping your child, when you ALSO experience anxiety can be super triggering. 

You might doubt what to say. Or not say anything (because you’re afraid to say the wrong thing). Or you might over-compensate and try to fix it all for them. (Spoiler-alert – this often makes it worse)

I haven’t always known about my own anxiety. For YEARS I would have sworn to you that I’d never experienced it.  But losing 3 babies in less than 12 months completed shattered that delusion.  Suddenly, I was painfully aware of all the ways anxiety was showing up in my life.  

I sometimes wonder whether that experience was preparing me to mother a child with anxiety.  Or perhaps for the work that I do now with children in a primary school as a guidance counsellor.

If your little one is currently struggling with anxiety (or maybe you are), I hope these 5 simple changes are helpful.

I should probably also preface this by saying these tips will not include “just do more yoga with them”.  These are practical, real world suggestions for dealing with anxiety. Yoga has its place for sure, but you also need strategies for getting through day to day. 

Watch the video below and if you have other ways you help your kids with anxiety, please leave your suggestions in the comments. Help me create a really practical resource for other Mums who find this video.

3 simple changes to help your anxious child

1. Reduce uncertainty

To understand why reducing uncertainty helps with anxiety, I want you to reflect on a time in your life where you’ve felt nervous or anxious.

• How much of that situation felt uncertain?

• What did you have control over in that situation?

• What helped to ease your feelings of anxiety at that time?

Losing 3 babies in less than 12 months and going through a disaster new-house build are two times that my anxiety became extreme. Both situations were entirely out of my control. I was unsure whether I’d ever have another healthy baby and I had no real control over how to get there because the reason for my losses was unknown.

And as for the house build saga. I honestly thought it was going to financially ruin us and we’d have no house at the end of it. All of our money was wrapped up in something that the law told us we didn’t have control over.

It was the lack of control and uncertainty that made both of these experiences so anxiety-inducing. Now think about the life of your child. How much control do they have over daily decisions? How much uncertainty do they experience each day?

For most children, there’s a lot of both. One way to start reducing this to help your anxious child, is to create routines that are visible to them so they know what’s coming. Put a visual timetable on the fridge or on their bedroom door. Explain to them what the next day looks like as you put them to bed. Take the time to answer all their questions as they try to understand their world.

And where you can… give them control. Nope, we’re not letting them rule the house. We’re just giving them choices where it works for your family and is age-appropriate. For example, let them choose what they wear. Or give them two options to choose between for breakfast. Give them choice around how they travel to school (eg. do you want to walk or scoot?).

Remember though, a few things they can feel control over = anxiety calming. Too many choices = anxiety inducing. Keep it simple.

2. Address your own anxiety

The first step is always to address your own anxiety first. It’s like that whole “put on your oxygen mask first” cliche.

It’s difficult to help your anxious child if your own anxiety is raging. Their anxiety will trigger yours and it’s really hard to be calm and reassuring when inside you’re freaking out. And yes, your child will read your body language, even if you’re managing to fake the words you say.

Learning how to manage your own anxiety will likely be an ongoing journey, but you’ve got to start somewhere. For me, therapy helped me to unravel all the ways that anxiety had been showing up in my life. Yoga and meditation gave me tools that I can use to manage the ebbs and flows of it in life. I share all of these in my Online Yoga Circle Community.

If you’re going to help your anxious child you need to learn how your anxiety shows up for you. Notice where your anxiety rushes you through the day (and inadvertently puts this stress on your kids). Notice where your own anxiety comes out as anger towards your partner or your kids. Notice first, and then you can start to shift how it makes you behave.

3. Use music to release anxiety

Don’t underestimate the power of a good sing-a-long or dance party to help your anxious child shift uncomfortable feelings.

I often see parents trying to talk their child out of their anxious feelings. This can help, but how often has your partner been able to talk you out of your feelings when you vent to them at the end of a long day?

What does help? Having someone to listen and meet your experiences with empathy. Feeling understood by others is important but so too is having things you can DO to shake off the negative feelings.

We love to use impromptu dance parties to shake off cranky moods in our house (for both adults and children). And our car is basically a giant karaoke centre now. The boys have their own specific song requests the minute we get into the car, and they know allll the words. I’ve noticed this little to and from school ritual has really helped to reduce anxiety about going to school / the drop off AND helps to shake off those moody blues they get when you first pick them up. Win – Win!

4. Practice doing hard things

As parents we naturally want to protect our kids from difficult experiences. It’s instinctual to want to save them from feeling bad about themselves when they’re struggling with something. But when we stop them from experiencing these feelings, we rob them of learning that they can feel uncomfortable and nervous about something, and do it anyway.

Risky play is so important for helping children learn how to navigate difficult feelings in their body. Again, it needs to be age-appropriate but it’s good to encourage your kids to climb trees, ride bikes, scoot and learn jumps. Even when your Mum-heart wants to wrap them in cotton wool to protect them, they learn a lot about their own resilience through these experiences. Give them a helmet, take a breath and let them play.

5. Give them lots of opportunities to BE in their body

Where we used to spend lots of time outside using our bodies, we now spend most of our days in our head. If we’re not connected to what’s going on in our body, it can be difficult to manage anxiety because it feels all-consuming.

You can help your anxious child by encouraging them to move their body. All of the obvious activities apply – sport, swimming, running, jumping, cartwheeling.

But what if you have a child that is reluctant to move? Encourage them towards activities that involve body sensations, without needing to be active. Think warm baths or playing under a cold sprinkler on a hot day. Show them how to do a self-massage and teach them pressure points. Practise breathing together. Even something as simple as catching bugs can help them to learn about and become more aware of their own body. You can’t catch a bug without being conscious of your body, quiet and gentle.

How do you help your children manage anxiety? Please share your ideas with us in the comments.