Tips for Parents

Tips for Parents to Helping Children Deal with Anxiety:

• It is important for parents, family members and teachers to take a child’s fears and anxiety seriously without dismissing them. Take time to listen to children’s fears so that they can improve their ability to recognize and acknowledge their fears and anxiety. Do not treat emotions, questions, and statements about feeling anxious as silly or unimportant. They may not seem important to you but are real to your child. Take all discussion seriously, and avoid giving too much advice and instead be there to help and offer assistance as requested. You may find that reasoning about the problem does not work. At times, children may realize that their anxiety does not make sense, but are unable to do anything about it without help.
• Remember that anxiety is not willful misbehavior, but reflects an inability to control it. Therefore, be patient and be prepared to listen. Being overly critical, disparaging, impatient, or cynical likely will only make the problem worse.
• Maintain realistic, attainable goals and expectations for your child. Do not communicate that perfection is expected or acceptable. Often, anxious children try to please adults, and will try to be perfect if they believe it is expected of them.
• Accept mistakes as a normal part of growing up, and that no one is expected to do everything equally well. Praise and reinforce effort, even if success is less than expected. There is nothing wrong with reinforcing and recognizing success, as long as it does not create unrealistic expectations and result in unreasonable standards.
• Parents, family members and teachers should next determine the accuracy of fears or worries. Challenging irrational beliefs is important in overcoming fear and anxiety.
• If your child is worried about an upcoming event, such as giving a speech in class, practice it often so that confidence increases and discomfort decreases. It is not realistic to expect that all anxiety will be removed; rather, the goal should be to get the anxiety to a level that is manageable.
• Teach your child simple strategies to help with anxiety, such as organizing materials and time, developing small scripts of what to do and say, either externally or internally, when anxiety increases, and learning how to relax under stressful conditions. Practicing things such as making speeches until a comfort level is achieved can be a useful anxiety-reducing activity.
• Teach coping skills and strategies for calming down such as deep breathing, listening to calming music, yoga or progressive muscle relaxation.
• Parents, family members and teachers should avoid giving excessive reassurance. Instead, encourage children to use his or her coping strategies. Model use of coping strategies for the child when the child is anxious or afraid.
• Establish consistent daily routines and structure in home and school settings. Routines reduce anxiety and provide predictability.
• In addition to praise for appropriate behavior, it is important for children to have limits set and consequences for breaking the limits. Children feel secure when there are limits setting restrictions on inappropriate behaviors.