Outsmarting Worry:

A Child’s Guide To Managing Anxiety

By Selina Ellacott

As a mother of four children that have all experienced anxiety in one form or another, I have found this book to be an invaluable resource in our home. The author, Dawn Huebner Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist specialising in the treatment of anxious children and their parents. Dawn has also appeared on Top-Ten TEDx talks about facing and overcoming fear. The link to her Ted talk is here and is definitely worth a watch.

In this book, which is aimed towards 9-14 year-olds struggling with unrealistic fears, she explains how a ‘child’ can quickly shift into a ‘Worry child’. She also provides guidance on a set of skills including strategies based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and techniques arising from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that have ‘proven remarkably effective in the treatment of anxiety.’

The style of the book includes the use of cartoons and Dawn speaks directly to the child. She recognises that the ‘worries’ can exert a very powerful influence, and she guides the reader through a number of exercises including breathing techniques, developing safety behaviours, and mindfulness strategies.

This has been a very user-friendly book that has helped my children break the anxiety cycle and take charge of their mental well-being. I would highly recommend it to anyone who also has an anxious child.

Article of Interest

Building Your Child’s Vocabulary

All parents want their children to do well in school. One way to help your child is to help them build their vocabulary. Beginning readers use knowledge about words to help them make sense of what they’re reading. The more words a reader knows, the more they are able to comprehend what they’re reading or listening to.

Talking to and reading with your child are two terrific ways to help them hear and read new words. Conversations and questions about interesting words (The book says, ‘The boy tumbled down the hill,’ and look at the picture! How do you think he went down the hill?) are easy, non-threatening ways to get new words into everyday talk.

Sharing a new word with your child doesn’t have to take a long time: just a few minutes to talk about the word and then focus back on the book or conversation. Choose which words to talk about carefully – choosing every new word might make reading seem like a chore. The best words to explore with your child are ones that are common among adult speakers but are less common to see in the books your child might read.

When introducing new words to your young learner, keep the following four helpful hints in mind:

1. First, provide a simple, child-friendly definition for the new word: Enormous means that something is really, really big.

2. Second, provide a simple, child-friendly example that makes sense within their daily life: Remember that really big watermelon we got at the grocery store? That was an enormous watermelon!

3. Third, encourage your child to develop their own example:

What enormous thing can you think of? Can you think of something really big that you saw today? That’s right! The bulldozer near the park was enormous! Those tires were huge.

4. Last, keep your new words active within your house. Over the next few days and weeks, take advantage of opportunities to use each new vocabulary word in conversation.

Take the time to share new words and build your child’s vocabulary. You’ll be enormously glad you did!

For more resources, visit the vocabulary section on Reading Rockets:

Reading Rockets