Anxiety

When it comes to helping your kids cope with anxiety, the first recommendation I have (especially now that so many of us are home with our kids all day), is to model for them how you are coping with stress, anxiety, or other difficult feelings. Kids learn how to handle things from watching their parents. Pay attention to your own emotional responses, and when appropriate, share some of these with your children. Obviously, you only want to do this with minor worries/stresses that your child will relate to and not feel more frightened by, such as "I'm feeling stressed because I miss my friends" or "I worry because it is hard to be home all day." Avoid sharing with young children your bigger worries, like worries about going to the hospital, job loss, etc., that would just add to their anxiety (but please do find another adult in your life to talk to). Then explain to your child what you are going to do to help yourself relax and feel better, and let them copy you if they want to. For example, "I feel stressed because I've been inside for too long. I'm going to take a walk outside the house and take some big breaths." Or "I am getting grumpy right now because I miss my friends. I'm going to help myself feel better by calling my friend to talk." Or "I feel frustrated because it is hard to work at home. I'm going to relax by doing some yoga before I get back to work."

Then help your kids apply this to themselves. Some kids may be great at noticing and labeling their own feelings, but many will not know how to do this yet. If your child is not yet able to express their feelings and thinking independently, you can describe what you notice for them. For example, "I notice that you want to be really close to Mommy and Daddy, and you seem worried. Am I right?" (children might need some examples of what "worried" or other feeling words mean to help them answer this question.) Then, help them identify a strategy that would help with that feeling. This is where modeling your strategies for will hopefully help. Ask your child, "what do you think would help with your worried feeling?" Again, some kids will have great answers for this, while others will probably say that they don't know, or ask you to fix it for them, or suggest something not too helpful/appropriate. That's okay, but keep asking them the question before you make a suggestion, because eventually they will start learning good strategies, and hopefully they will eventually start asking themselves this question ("what do I need to do to help myself feel better?"). After you ask the question, then you can make a suggestion ("When I'm worried, it helps me to do some stretches/read a book/take some deep breaths/etc. Let's try that."