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This information is to help you manage when your child is dealing with symptoms of anxiety. This information gives you some ideas to help you and your child and learn about anxiety.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a normal response to certain situations. For example, it would be normal to feel anxious going into hospital for an operation or doing a test.
Anxiety can be helpful sometimes. It can provide more energy when needing to act under pressure such as coping with an emergency. But anxiety can become a problem for your child when the feelings are:
- Uncomfortable or scary.
- Go on for a long period of time.
- Happen very often.
- Cause your child to worry there is something really wrong with them (which creates more anxiety).
- Gets in the way of your child’s daily living and stops them doing what they want to do.
What anxiety may look like in your child?
Symptoms of anxiety can vary between people. Below are some examples of common symptoms:
- Having a lot of thoughts or worries that bad things are going to happen.
- Becoming more tearful, clingy or an increase in angry outbursts.
- Changes to sleep pattern e.g., waking in the night, having bad dreams, or wetting the bed.
- Lacking confidence in their skills to try new things.
- Finding it hard to focus.
- Avoiding daily tasks, such as seeing friends, going out in public or going to school.
What causes anxiety?
What leads to anxiety becoming a problem varies between people. Sometimes there is a clear trigger such as:
- Diagnosis of a health condition
- Bullying
- Stressful life events. For example, being in an accident, a loved one dying or parents getting a divorce.
- Uncertainty about what is going to happen. For example, coming to hospital for an operation.
Other times it can be lots of smaller events that lead to anxiety.
Your child’s personality can affect whether they struggle with anxiety.
Anxiety is very common. It can be hard for you and your child to manage. But it is likely there are others who are dealing with something similar.
What keeps anxiety going?
- If the stressor is still present it can be hard to reduce feelings of anxiety.
- Anxiety can become a cycle. The feelings anxiety creates are often difficult for your child. This leads to thoughts that something is wrong with them or something bad will happen. Which leads to more anxiety.
- Your child may try to avoid or escape things that cause anxiety. Avoiding them may create further difficulty and hassle for your child as well as reducing their confidence in being able to manage. It may teach them that avoiding things will reduce their anxiety, but it will only reduce anxiety in the short-term and the cycle of anxiety will continue in the long-term.
How to help your child manage anxiety
Below are some ideas to support your child.
There may be some trial and error to see which strategies work for you and your child. Sometimes strategies that do not work one day may work another day, so keep trying them out.
Curiosity and acceptance
Ask open questions and actively listen to your child when they are talking about their worries. This may help to better your understanding of your child’s thoughts and feelings.
Tell your child that it is okay to feel this way, other people feel the same way and there is nothing wrong with how they are feeling.
Planning and small steps
Provide routine for your child to reduce uncertainty. Avoid rushing your child, instead make small steps towards things that increase their anxiety and show them they can manage their anxiety.
For example, if your child is anxious about a school trip make sure they know what the plan is, who to talk to if they are worried and try a sleep over with a friend or family member before they go to prepare for being away from home.
Problem solve together
Work with your child on how they can manage their worries. Help them to manage things by themselves.
One idea is using the Worry Tree. This shows your child the worries they can do something about and the worries they cannot. For the worries they can control, plan with them about what they are going to do to deal with this worry. For the worries they cannot do something about, tell them to let them go as there is nothing they can do.
To help your child let go of the worries that do not have a solution, you can use some of the strategies below:
- Writing the worries down then tearing up the paper or putting then in the bin
- Writing the worries down and putting them in a Worry Monster
- Pretending to say the worry in a funny voice.
- Using an app like Reach Out Worry Time.
Start by working through the together. Get your child to write down their worries and then use the worry tree to split up the worries. Over time your child may be able to do this alone use the worry tree to split up the worries. Over time your child may be able to do this alone.
Relaxation
Help reduce the physical feelings of anxiety by finding activities that help your child to relax and distract them from worrying. This could be things like a sport, listening to music or gaming.
We have two activities below that focus on slowing the body down and helping your child to focus on the present moment. Relaxation is a skill that does requires practice. It may be useful to do these activities with your child initially to teach them.
For both exercises:
- Do them where there are not many distractions.
- Get comfortable – sit or lie down, make sure clothing is comfortable and take shoes off.
- Try to initially practice them when your child is already calm. Our brains can learn new skills more easily when we are regulated and relaxed.
Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR)
PMR involves squeezing different muscles in your body and then letting them go and relaxing them. Help your child to slow down their breathing.
- Tighten the muscles that you want to relax. Do not to squeeze too much so it hurts.
- Keep the muscle squeezed for around 5 seconds.
- Then relax the muscles and keep them relaxed for around 10 seconds.
- When you have finished, stay sitting or lying down for a little while. Until you feel ready to get up and get on with your day.
Here are some muscles you might like to try this exercise on, and how to do it.
| Right hand | Make a fist with your right hand. |
| Right upper arm | Bring your right forearm up to your shoulder to “make a muscle”. |
| Left hand and forearm | Make a fist with your left hand. |
| Left upper arm | Bring your left forearm up to your shoulder to “make a muscle”. |
| Forehead | Raise your eyebrows as high as they will go, as though you were surprised by something. |
| Eyes | Squeeze your eyes tightly shut. |
| Mouth | Open your mouth as wide as you can, as if you are yawning. |
| Shoulders | Bring your shoulders up towards your ears. |
| Chest and tummy | Breathe in deeply, filling up your lungs and chest with air. |
| Hips and bum | Squeeze your bum muscles together. |
| Right leg | Slowly pull your toes upwards towards you on your right foot |
| Right foot | Curl your toes downwards on your right foot. |
| Left leg | Slowly pull your toes upwards towards you on your left foot. |
| Left foot | Curl your toes downwards on your left foot. |
Square breathing
Helps to slow down breathing. helps to distract the mind and focus on breathing while counting to four.
Square breathing
- Breathe in slowly through your nose whilst counting to four. Feel the air filling up your lungs.
- Hold your breath for four seconds.
- Breath out slowly through your mouth for four seconds.
- Repeat these steps until you feel relaxed.
Summary
We hope you find this leaflet helpful, and it has given you some guidance on how to support your child when they are struggling with anxiety.
This has been produced by the Department of Psychology in Healthcare. Clinical psychologists are based at the RVI and Freeman Hospitals.
If you have any further concerns about the issues discussed, please discuss these with your GP or medical team. You can contact the department of psychology in healthcare on 0191 282 4081.