Parenting Tips for Children With Anxiety

Parenting Tips: How To Help Children With Anxiety

#1. Redefine your goal:

The most common mistake that we make is to set, eliminate anxiety as our goal. Now that’s very difficult for us to achieve. We should focus on reducing anxiety rather than getting rid of it. We should set smaller goals for us as well as for our children.

Take baby steps! We obviously don’t want our children to suffer, so focus on reducing the struggle.

#2. Avoid leading questions:

I know you’re worried about your child and want to help them. Don’t ask them questions like, “Are you anxious for a test in school?” or “is the depth of the pool scaring you?’ etc. This way you are putting words into their mouth and that will only worsen the situation

Let your child express their feelings on their own. Or you can ask them questions like, “How are you feeling?”, “What’s making you feel uncomfortable?”, “what are you thinking about”

Such questions will help us understand what’s going on in their minds without worsening the situation. If you really want to help reduce your child’s struggle, try making such changes.

#3. Don’t reinforce their fears:

Unintentionally, many times in order to protect our children we end up reinforcing their fears. Are you wondering how’s that even possible? Let me explain…

Let’s say your child gets highly anxious around the zebra crossing. In order to spare them the horror you start accompanying them while crossing the road, hold their hand tightly, in your absence pester others to take care of them.

Such behavior and body language will reinforce your child’s fear. They will start to believe that they are supposed to feel scared.

#4. Walk through your child’s anxiety:

Try to step into their shoes. Try to understand what’s actually inflicting stress. Walk through situations with them. Talk to them about what’s scaring them and how would they react if the fear came true?

In some cases children feel less anxious if they have a plan to deal with the situation. Let’s take an example, ask your child what scares them the most about zebra cross? And help them come up with a plan to successfully cross the road.

#5. Be a good role model:

Our children pick up our actions and reactions to things. We are their role models and it’s our duty to display healthy behavior. If you handle anxiety in a healthy manner your child will learn to do the same.

Hence, always handle your anxiety in the same way you want your child to handle theirs. Try these tips and include them in your parenting style to help reduce your child’s struggle.

Dealing with anxiety is not easy, be the support not another stressor.

Thanks For Reading.

Take care! Stay Safe!