Are you ready to take meaningful steps in supporting your anxious child or teen? In a world inundated with information delivered in rapid 90-second increments, it can be challenging to assemble a comprehensive step-by-step plan. We understand that your time is precious, and while you’re committed to learning, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming.
Perhaps you’ve engaged with a therapist but still find yourself uncertain about how to respond when your child approaches you in a state of panic. For all these reasons, we’ve invested our passion and years of experience into developing the “Confident Parenting for Anxious Kids and Teens” online course. Our goal is to provide you with the clarity you need to navigate the challenges of raising an anxious child or teen successfully.
In this course, we’ll guide you through five modules designed to empower you to create a plan for the most difficult aspects of dealing with an anxious child or teen – those in -the-moment challenges when anxiety levels are high.
The Anatomy of Anxiety
Delve into the fundamentals of anxiety with a focus on understanding its paradoxical nature and predictable patterns. Gain insights into the five common obstacles that often keep anxiety entrenched and learn how to reshape your anxiety goals. Learn why our mantra is “be a bison!”
The Kid and Teen Plan
Next, we guide you through how to effectively teach your child or teen about anxiety and collaboratively make a plan that they can get on board with. If your child or teen refuses to use skills regularly, this module is for you!
The Parent Plan
After you have learned how to increase the chances your child or teen will get on board, we will walk you through the parent plan. In this plan, you will learn exactly what to say and do when your child or teen is anxious. This plan doesn’t require any cooperation from your kid and is a parent-favorite for that very reason. Let’s get real with each other, nobody is going to be willing to use skills and a plan all the time. Some of you likely have kids that won’t use a plan at all. This module is for you. Get rid of the power struggle, get rid of the helplessness you feel when your child refuses to do things that could help them. You are an important part of the solution for your child or teens anxiety, even if they won’t participate.
The Next Steps
Distinguish between the in-the-moment plan and the big-picture plan for anxiety. Armed with two crucial in-the-moment anxiety response plans, delve into the big-picture plan. While our focus remains on immediate strategies, we ensure you grasp the broader plan for sustained support.
Coping Skills Library
Immerse yourself in a rich library of coping skills tutorials, including engaging activities like “Talk to your brain/Character creation,” “Thought Detective – Detective Snoop,” and “Catch, check, change.” These resources provide practical tools for both you and your child or teen to navigate anxiety effectively.
Are you ready for it?
As you embark on this transformative journey, remember that you are not alone. Our digital course is a beacon of support, offering you a roadmap to navigate the challenges of raising anxious kids and teens. Embrace the knowledge, learn skills, and empower yourself to create a positive impact in your child’s life.
Are you ready to take the first step towards confident parenting? Enroll in our course today and embark on a journey of understanding, empowerment, and effective strategies for raising resilient and confident kids.
OUR COURSE IS ON SALE FROM JANUARY 22 through FEBRUARY 3, 2024. Click below for more information.
Despite your best efforts, your child or teen might not be on board with the plan to ease their anxiety. It’s a common challenge. While it would be convenient to dictate our children’s actions, the decision ultimately lies with them. Tackling anxiety is tough, and it’s completely understandable if they’re not ready to address it head-on at the moment.
The encouraging news is that research from the Yale Child Study Center reveals that parents can make changes without requiring their kids to actively participate, leading to a reduction in anxiety symptoms. This is valuable information to have: your child doesn’t necessarily have to be a willing participant in treatment; it’s up to you.
Certainly, if your child or teen is willing to contribute to the process, it’s beneficial to involve them in the plan. Sometimes, parents may need to initiate the first steps, and with time, the child may decide to take charge of the plan.
The evidence-based treatment guiding parents through steps to reduce their child’s anxiety symptoms is called Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions, or SPACE for short. This treatment emphasizes increasing parental support while simultaneously reducing accommodation of anxiety. Accommodation involves anything done or not done to alleviate someone else’s anxiety. When accommodation becomes routine in response to anxious emotions, it’s linked to higher levels of anxiety in kids and teens.
Examples of accommodation include allowing a child to sleep in the parent’s bed to ease nighttime worries, walking a child into school to alleviate separation fears, responding immediately to texts to avoid triggering fears, or repeatedly reassuring a child about the same concerns. While accommodation is a natural expression of love, it becomes problematic when it reinforces anxiety and hinders the child or teen from facing their anxious emotions.
If you’re unsure about how this works, you can read the first article in our 5-article series: www.calmmindcbt.com/mustread
Fortunately, Calm Mind CBT offers an on-demand course that guides parents through the step-by-step process of implementing the SPACE protocol. If your attempts to involve your child in treatment have hit a roadblock, exploring this option might be a worthwhile step. Learn more about it here: SPACE Course
One of the most frustrating aspects of raising a child with anxiety is that, often, even when they have been taught skills, they won’t always use them. In fact, I may be so bold as to say that they will rarely use them. This creates a challenging situation for both parents and their child/teen, leading to power struggles, frustration, and a sense of helplessness.
“If my child won’t even use their skills, what’s the point? How do I get them to actually use what they have learned?” one parent asked me in a recent session.
It’s a great question and one that deserves a deeper look.
If your child or teen is refusing to use strategies, it may be because:
They are in the downstairs brain, and this isn’t even possible for them.
They haven’t been taught the skills in a way where they actually know how to practice them.
They don’t think the skills are going to work.
They feel minimized.
They are extrinsically motivated toward change and not intrinsically motivated.
Let’s break down each of these reasons to help you make decisions about how you may be able to make some shifts to increase your child or teen’s willingness to try a coping skill.
1. They are in the downstairs brain, and this isn’t even possible for them.
It’s important to know that when anyone is triggered at a high level, their brain functioning literally shifts away from what Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Bryson call the “upstairs” brain and into the “downstairs” brain. This part of your brain is all about survival and relief. If you are in the “downstairs” brain, you cannot even access the files that are in the “upstairs” brain. The “upstairs” brain is responsible for more complex thinking, problem-solving, insight, creativity, and logic (i.e., using coping skills).
Knowing this can help you adjust your expectation that your child or teen should even be able to use skills. Next time your child is triggered, ask yourself, “Are they upstairs or downstairs?” and act accordingly.
So, what if they ARE downstairs? What do you do? To ease your child back into the “upstairs” part of their brains, try using your connection to them and your relationship with them to offer support:
Listen and validate their feelings with words and body language.
Offer to sit with them while you wait out the feelings together.
Offer some physical touch; a hug or rubbing their back are good options if they are receptive.
Offer once to help them with a body-focused skill that they already know (movement, breathing, muscle relaxation) and accept their answer if it’s ‘no’.
What NOT to do:
Offer solutions.
Ask more than once to talk about their feelings.
Remind them more than once about skills they can use.
2. They haven’t been taught the skills in a way where they actually know how to practice them (or what they even are).
In order for someone to truly be able to use a coping skill, they need to have been practicing it. It’s unlikely that a child or teen being told about a skill or practicing it once a few months ago is going to lead to action in-the-moment of anxiety. Kids and teens need help to know skills and practice these skills. Ask your child or teen what their top three coping skills are for anxious moments; if they stumble or have no idea, it’s likely that their knowledge of what to do and how to do it is significantly lacking.
Use our upcoming skill library within our anxiety course that will be launched on February 5th to identify what their go-to skills will be and create a plan to practice them. For more information on the launch of this course, sign up for our email list: www.calmmindcbt.com/weeklyemail
3. They don’t think the skills are going to work.
Recently, I was using a skill with my own child when he was frustrated and anxious about something. After we practiced the skill, he looked up at me and said, “I still feel frustrated and anxious.” His expectation was that we were going to use this skill and he would not feel these emotions anymore. What a disappointment to him that it didn’t ‘work’.
We can all relate to this, and it’s a common sentiment. “Isn’t this supposed to make me feel better?” The answer is yes AND no. Using skills can sometimes turn down the volume of anxiety, but not always. In fact, the goal of using skills isn’t even to get rid of anxiety; it is to be able to adjust our nervous system slightly so we can accept difficult emotions, problem-solve if needed, and continue to live the life that we want…even WITH anxious emotions. When a child or teen truly expects that a skill is supposed to make them ‘feel better,’ they are often disappointed and less likely to want to use the skill in the future.
In order to tackle this, after using a skill do NOT ask, “Do you feel better?”. Instead, say, “I am so impressed you were able to use a skill; that’s not always easy to do. What do you want to do next?”
In moments of calm, teach your child or teen that skills sometimes help with turning down the volume of anxiety. Also teach them that we use skills as a way to take care of our bodies when they are really stressed and be able to choose what WE want to do next, not what ANXIETY wants us to do next. Skills don’t always turn down the volume of anxiety and they are STILL working.
In addition, it’s so important to experiment with different skills and find the ones that your child or teen actually likes and work for them. Again, our course launching February 5th will have a video library of skills that can be experimented with to find the ones that your child says they will actually be willing to try. If it doesn’t work or feel good to them when they try it, scrap it and try another one!
4. They feel minimized.
Imagine that you are really anxious about a presentation you are giving in an hour. You aren’t sure if you prepared well enough and keep picturing yourself being laughed off the stage. Next, imagine someone close to you telling you to ‘just use some of your skills’. It might not feel very supportive, and you may think that this person just doesn’t ‘get it’.
If a person doesn’t feel understood, they are more likely to reject a reminder of a skill. They may even up the ante to prove to you that their suffering is beyond the use of a ‘skill’. The way to overcome this is to NEVER jump to reminding your child to use a skill right away. Always start with validating them and ASK them if they would like to be reminded of some of their skills that might ‘turn the volume down’ just a bit.
You might say:
“I can see how anxious you are feeling. That’s really hard. I hate it when those emotions come up for me, so I really feel for you. I’d be happy to sit with you for a while if you’d like. If you want, I could also remind you of some of the skills you have to try. I know they might not make this go away, but maybe could turn down the volume just a smidge to help you through this?”
Accept their answer if it’s ‘no’. Ultimately, forcing or creating any kind of pressure to use skills WILL backfire. Kids and teens MUST be able to make their own decisions about using skills. It may take some time, but this patience with allowing them to choose can absolutely lead to them being willing to try something out one day.
5. They are extrinsically motivated toward change and not intrinsically motivated.
When someone who is struggling with anxiety is getting pressure to feel better, use skills, or just do ‘the thing,’ it can be a huge deflator of motivation. Being motivated intrinsically, or for reasons that are within yourself, is exponentially more powerful than being motivated by what others may want or external factors like grades or fears of social repercussions. While it may seem that external motivators should be helpful, and they certainly can be at times, when someone is motivated toward change because it’s what THEY truly want within themselves, effort will come much more readily.
To help increase intrinsic motivation in your child or teen:
Ask them what is important to them in terms of their anxiety problem being resolved—and honor that.
Ask them IF and HOW they want to be reminded of strategies when they are anxious—and honor that.
Gently and with deep warmth point out things they may be missing out on because of anxiety (social events, peace of mind, free time, sleep).
Remember that change doesn’t happen from one or two conversations. Gentle conversations that honor their wishes can slowly lead to more and more willingness to try new things toward change.
There are many reasons that your child or teen isn’t using their skills. Identify the primary reasons that may be coming up for them and experiment with different ways to make changes to address the stuck points.
Parenting through moments of anxiety requires a nuanced understanding of how to assist your child in the midst of overwhelming emotions. This article will provide a detailed exploration of the six crucial steps outlined in our free guide, “The Six Steps to Take with Your Child or Teen in the Moment of Anxiety,” offering insights into each step to empower you as a parent. If you don’t have the guide yet, you can find the link at the bottom of this article.
Step 1: Reflecting:
The initial step in supporting your child during anxious moments is to reflect back what you hear. This simple act establishes a foundation for effective communication, demonstrating that you genuinely understand and acknowledge their concerns. This step can be as simple as saying, “You’re really worried about your test today.”
If you’re skeptical about how important this is, pay attention to the next time you are struggling and take note of how the person you are talking to responds. Are they letting you know that they hear you in some way? If not, how does it feel to not be sure that they are reallyhearing you.
Tip for this week: This week, when someone you know is struggling try reflecting back to them what they are telling you. Notice what happens. Do they share more? Do they seem grateful and heard? Do they get annoyed?
Pro tip: Tone and genuineness is everything! If this sounds forced, it will be obvious and there will be a very different response to reflecting.
Step 2: Empathizing with Words and Body:
Following reflection, extend empathy through both words and body language. Whether it’s a comforting touch, a hug, or a supportive posture without any physical touch, empathizing reinforces the connection and understanding between you and your child. Extending empathy does not mean that you have to agree with your child or teen’s perspective or even “get it”. It simply means that you believe that they really are struggling, and you feel for them in that struggle.
A common struggle we hear from parents is that it’s really hard to empathize with their children when it seems like their reaction is very out of alignment with the reality of the situation. You are not alone if you have a hard time empathizing with your child. It can be really challenging at times to dig deep and find this.
Tip for this week: Think of a time that YOU were struggling with something that someone else didn’t really seem to understand. How did they respond to you? How would you have liked them to respond? Hold this memory in mind when you are trying to find this empathy for your child or teen. No matter what the struggle is, human emotion can be a real struggle and having a person just BELIEVE that you feel this way WITHOUT trying to talk you out of it is ginormous step toward breaking free of the chains of emotion.
Parent offering empathy with body language.
Step 3: Being Clear:
Establishing clear boundaries is crucial when helping your child navigate anxiety. Clearly communicate what you can and cannot do, maintaining consistency in your decisions. This clarity provides a sense of structure and reliability for your child. If your child is asking to skip school, be clear on whether or not that is an option. Wavering in decision making and boundaries can actually feed anxiety and make it even harder for your child to move on themselves.
You won’t always know what your decision ‘should’ be. This is because helping anxious kids and teens is nuanced AND it can bring up personal triggers in the adults trying to help. Be kind to yourself in this venture. In general, we don’t want to allow avoidance when that is possible (but it’s way more complicated than this). Make a decision, stick to it, and show support for your child if they don’t like it. We make decisions for our children all the time that they don’t like (flu shot, anyone?!). This is part of parenting and you CAN do this.
Step 4: Encouraging:
Expressing belief in your child’s abilities is a pivotal step. Use affirmations such as “I know you can handle this” or “I believe in your capabilities” to instill confidence and motivate them to face their anxious thoughts.
Research has shown us that when parents express to their children that they believe in their ability to cope instead of express concern about their ability to cope that kids tend to have LESS anxiety over time. How cool is that?
Tip for this week: Come up with a go-to encouraging statement you can tell your child or teen that seems natural for you to say. Write this down in your notes in your phone so you can easily access it when emotions are high.
Step 5: Modeling:
After offering support and encouragement, it’s imperative to embody those sentiments. Actively demonstrate your confidence by avoiding prolonged rumination and continuing with your daily routine. Modeling reinforces the positive mindset you’re encouraging in your child and shows them that you believe what you are saying.
This might look like getting in the car and waiting for them, or getting up to continue getting ready for the day. You may have thoughts that make you doubt if what you are doing is the right thing. This is natural and understandable. Remind yourself that you are doing the work to learn what the science tells us about anxiety. You can do hard things!
Step 6: Waiting It Out:
The final step involves allowing your child to experience and process their emotions without rushing to find quick relief. By patiently waiting out the difficult emotions, you create space for your child to learn how to manage their anxiety in a healthy manner. This can feel counterintuitive in parenting, but allowing a child their own time and space to see that anxious emotions resolve without quick fixes is powerful and builds independence in coping.
This may look like silently sitting with them in a supportive way. This may also look like going and finishing the task you were doing before that and checking in with them in 10 minutes to see how they are. This does NOT mean that you are ignoring them. You are sending a CLEAR message that feelings come and go, this is hard, and you are here for them while their body resets.
Guiding your child through moments of anxiety requires a thoughtful and systematic approach. By integrating these six steps into your parenting toolkit, you not only provide immediate support but also contribute to the long-term emotional well-being of your child. Recognizing and addressing anxiety in a manner that emphasizes reflection, empathy, clarity, encouragement, modeling, and patience fosters growth, understanding, and trust in your parent-child relationship.
Are you feeling frustrated, questioning whether anything truly works in alleviating your child or teen’s anxiety? Perhaps you’ve explored numerous avenues, from therapy sessions to consuming literature, podcasts, and even fervently following child and teen experts on social media, yet the struggle persists.
I get it. Been there, done that. One of the most eye-opening revelations is that some of the well-intentioned actions we, as parents, believe will help may actually be exacerbating the issue. It’s a paradox that demands attention.
Anxiety, with its intricate nature, often turns our natural, loving responses on their head when it comes to helping our children navigate anxious situations. Here are five common practices that might unknowingly be fostering anxiety in your child or teen—and the good news is, armed with this awareness, you can begin crafting a targeted Anxiety Game Plan.
1. Safety Tricks- “I am ONLY going to school if you drive me” –
Safety tricks involve creating conditions to make a feared situation feel safer. While your child or teen may still engage in the feared activity, such as going to school, the reliance on safety measures reinforces the perception that the situation is genuinely threatening. This hinders the crucial learning experience of “I can do hard things,” and instead fostering a belief in “I can’t do hard things unless…”
2. Reassurance Seeking- “Is there going to be a tornado? Did you lock the doors? Are you mad at me?”
Reassurance seeking is a normal part of a child’s learning process, but when it becomes tied to anxiety and unnecessary information, it can be counterproductive. Responding with reassurance in these situations perpetuates the idea that the fear is justified, hindering the child’s ability to manage anxiety independently.
3. Avoidance- “I am NOT going to that birthday party” –
Classic avoidance is a common coping mechanism for anxiety, but its long-term consequences can be detrimental. Continual avoidance reinforces the belief that the feared situation is insurmountable, preventing the child from gaining alternative positive experiences related to their fears.
4. Rumination
Rumination involves repetitively going over unsolvable problems mentally or verbally. Contrary to problem-solving, rumination often leads to unproductive outcomes. Recognizing rumination as a behavior rather than an automatic process empowers parents to guide their children away from this counterproductive cycle.
5. Accommodation- “ I will sleep in bed with you. I will make you a special meal. I will drive you to school. I will email your teacher for you.”
Accommodation refers to actions taken by others to alleviate someone’s anxiety. While it’s a natural expression of care, when it comes to anxiety, accommodation has been correlated with heightened anxiety in children. This is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. Understanding this correlation offers parents the hope and insight that reducing accommodation can positively impact their child’s anxiety levels over time.
Now armed with the knowledge of these five anxiety-fueling factors, you can embark on a journey to implement various strategies to support your child or teen. For more helpful information, follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter! www.calmmindcbt.com/weeklyemail
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