What do you say to your child when he/she is feeling anxious? Do you say “Don’t worry, it will all be Ok?”
I think most people would say something along those lines. It’s understandable, you want to comfort your child and make the feeling of anxiety go away as quickly as possible. What that teaches the child though is to suppress uncomfortable feelings, rather than deal with them. Allowing the child to deal with them by examining the feeling, it will teach the child it’s ok to have uncomfortable feelings, they are not scary and they will go away.
So here are the top tips to help your child with anxiety:
1) Sit down with your child and tell them you are interested to hear more about what is worrying them.
2) Ask them how big is your worry.
3) Find out where in their body they feel their worry.
4) Ask “What would you like to tell your worry”
5) Get the child to draw the worry.
6) Let the child come up with a different ending to their worry.
7) Ask your child what he/she needs from you right now.
8) Assure the child that the feeling will pass.
This approach will teach your child how to manage any emotions and that emotions are not “bad” they just come and they go again and there is no need to be scared of them.
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