What Helps and What Doesn't When Your Child Is Anxious
As a parent, watching your child struggle with anxiety can feel overwhelming. You want to help, but knowing exactly what to do—and what not to do—can be confusing. At the Center for Healing & Personal Growth, we're here to guide you with evidence-based strategies that truly make a difference.
Understanding Childhood Anxiety
Before we explore what helps and what doesn't, it's important to understand that anxiety in children often looks different than it does in adults. While adults might express worry through words, children frequently communicate their anxiety through behavior, physical complaints, or emotional outbursts.
Common signs of childhood anxiety include persistent worry about everyday activities, physical symptoms like stomachaches or headaches without medical cause, sleep difficulties, school avoidance, clinginess, and intense fear of specific situations or objects. Children might also experience meltdowns over seemingly small issues, ask excessive questions seeking reassurance, or show regression in behaviors they had previously mastered.
What Helps: Effective Strategies for Supporting Your Anxious Child
1. Validate Their Feelings Without Dismissing Them
One of the most powerful ways to help an anxious child is to acknowledge and validate their feelings. When your child expresses worry or fear, avoid immediately jumping to reassurance or dismissal. Instead, try saying something like, "I can see that you're really worried about this. That must feel scary." This validation helps children feel heard and understood, which is the first step in helping them process their emotions.
Validation doesn't mean agreeing that their fears are realistic or insurmountable. Rather, it means accepting that their feelings are real and important, even if the situation doesn't seem threatening to you as an adult.
2. Teach Breathing and Relaxation Techniques
Simple breathing exercises can be incredibly effective for anxious children. Teach your child techniques like "belly breathing" where they place one hand on their chest and one on their belly, breathing slowly so that only the bottom hand moves. You might also try "balloon breathing" where they imagine inflating a balloon in their belly with each inhale.
Other relaxation techniques include progressive muscle relaxation, where children tense and then relax different muscle groups, or guided imagery exercises where they imagine themselves in a calm, safe place. Making these techniques fun and age-appropriate increases the likelihood that your child will use them when anxiety strikes.
3. Create Predictable Routines and Structure
Anxious children often feel more secure when they know what to expect. Creating consistent daily routines for morning activities, after-school time, and bedtime can provide a sense of safety and control. When possible, prepare your child for changes in routine ahead of time, explaining what will happen and when.
Visual schedules can be particularly helpful for younger children, while older children might benefit from having their own planners or calendars where they can see upcoming events and activities.
4. Practice Gradual Exposure
Rather than avoiding anxiety-provoking situations entirely, gradual exposure can help children build confidence and reduce fear over time. This means starting with situations that cause mild anxiety and gradually working up to more challenging scenarios as your child builds coping skills and confidence.
For example, if your child is anxious about speaking in front of others, you might start by having them read aloud to family members, then progress to sharing something with a small group of friends, and eventually work up to speaking in classroom situations.
5. Model Calm Behavior and Coping Strategies
Children learn as much from what they observe as from what they're taught directly. When you encounter stressful situations, model calm problem-solving and healthy coping strategies. Talk through your thought process aloud: "I'm feeling stressed about this deadline, so I'm going to take a few deep breaths and make a plan for how to handle it."
Avoid expressing excessive worry or anxiety in front of your child about their anxiety or other issues. While it's important to be authentic, demonstrating calm confidence helps your child feel more secure.
6. Encourage Expression Through Creative Outlets
Many children find it easier to express their feelings through creative activities rather than words alone. Art, music, writing, or dramatic play can provide valuable outlets for processing anxiety and emotions. These activities also offer natural opportunities for you to connect with your child and understand their inner world better.
Don't worry about creating masterpieces—the goal is expression and emotional release, not artistic perfection.
What Doesn't Help: Common Mistakes to Avoid
Dismissing or Minimizing Their Fears
Phrases like "Don't worry about it," "You're being silly," or "There's nothing to be afraid of" might seem helpful, but they often make children feel misunderstood and alone with their anxiety. Even if their fears seem irrational to you, they feel very real and significant to your child.
Instead of dismissing fears, acknowledge them while gently offering perspective: "I understand you're worried about the test tomorrow. Let's talk about what you can do to feel more prepared."
Avoiding All Anxiety-Provoking Situations
While it's natural to want to protect your child from distress, completely avoiding situations that cause anxiety can actually reinforce fears and prevent your child from developing coping skills. Avoidance might provide short-term relief, but it often increases anxiety in the long run.
The goal isn't to eliminate all anxiety-provoking situations, but rather to help your child gradually build tolerance and coping skills for managing uncomfortable feelings.
Excessive Reassurance Seeking and Giving
When children are anxious, they often seek constant reassurance from parents. While some reassurance is normal and helpful, excessive reassurance can become a trap that actually maintains anxiety. When children rely too heavily on external reassurance, they don't develop internal confidence in their ability to cope with uncertainty.
If your child repeatedly asks the same worry-based questions, try limiting your reassurance responses and instead guide them toward their own problem-solving abilities: "What do you think might happen?" or "How have you handled similar situations before?"
Taking Over or Solving Everything for Them
It's tempting to step in and handle challenging situations for your anxious child, but this approach can prevent them from developing their own coping skills and self-confidence. While support is important, children need opportunities to experience success in managing difficult situations themselves.
Instead of taking over, offer guidance and support while encouraging your child to take age-appropriate steps toward solving their own problems.
Expressing Your Own Anxiety About Their Anxiety
When parents become visibly anxious about their child's anxiety, it can create a cycle that intensifies everyone's stress. Children are highly attuned to their parents' emotional states, and seeing you anxious about their anxiety can confirm their perception that there really is something to worry about.
This doesn't mean you should hide all emotions, but rather that you should manage your own anxiety about your child's struggles through your own support systems rather than expressing it directly to your child.
Building Long-Term Resilience
Helping an anxious child isn't just about managing immediate symptoms—it's about building long-term emotional resilience and coping skills. This involves teaching children that anxiety is a normal human emotion that everyone experiences, and that they have the internal resources to manage difficult feelings.
Focus on building your child's self-efficacy by celebrating their efforts and progress, not just outcomes. When children see that they can handle challenging situations, even if imperfectly, they develop confidence in their ability to cope with future difficulties.
When to Seek Professional Help
While many children experience occasional anxiety, some children may benefit from professional support. Consider reaching out to children and adolescents therapy services if your child's anxiety:
Interferes significantly with daily activities, school performance, or social relationships
Causes frequent physical symptoms like headaches or stomachaches
Leads to persistent sleep difficulties or changes in appetite
Results in school avoidance or refusal
Includes panic attacks or intense, overwhelming fear responses
Persists despite your consistent use of helpful strategies
Impacts the entire family's functioning and well-being
Professional therapists who specialize in working with children can provide additional tools and strategies tailored to your child's specific needs. Individual therapy for children often incorporates play therapy, art therapy, and other age-appropriate approaches that help young people process emotions and develop coping skills.
The Importance of Family Support
Remember that supporting an anxious child is often most effective when the whole family is involved. Family therapy can help all family members understand anxiety better and develop strategies for supporting each other.
Parents also benefit from their own support and guidance. Managing a child's anxiety can be stressful and emotionally demanding, and taking care of your own mental health is crucial for your ability to support your child effectively.
Creating a Supportive Home Environment
The overall emotional climate of your home plays a significant role in how children experience and manage anxiety. Creating an environment where emotions are acknowledged, mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities, and family members support each other through difficulties helps anxious children feel more secure and resilient.
This might involve establishing family meetings where everyone can share concerns and problem-solve together, creating calming spaces in your home where children can retreat when feeling overwhelmed, or developing family traditions that promote connection and joy.
Moving Forward with Hope
Supporting an anxious child requires patience, consistency, and compassion. Remember that progress isn't always linear, but with the right strategies, anxious children can learn to thrive.
At the Center for Healing & Personal Growth, our team of specialists understands the unique challenges facing children and families dealing with anxiety. If you're concerned about your child's anxiety, we encourage you to reach out. Together, we can help your child develop the resilience and coping skills that will serve them throughout their life.
Remember, you don't have to navigate life's challenges alone—healing and growth are possible with the right support. Reach out to the Center for Healing & Personal Growth today to discover how our trauma-informed, heart-centered approach can help you thrive.
