Happy new year; everyone is a bit overdue, but I have been working on ensuring my online parenting talks were finally out. I will start a theme with anxiety at the start of 2017.
Are you a parent of an anxious child right now?
As a therapist, I work with parents who have questions and even misunderstandings about anxiety every week. Anxiety is a natural and normal feeling, and everyone experiences it from time to time. It goes back to prehistoric times, and it was our body’s way of preparing for a challenge. We release certain hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) to help with a Flight or Fight response. Anxiety can be confusing, controlling and exhausting if it affects all the family’s sleep, going out, meal times and going to school.
So here are 11 things you should know as a parent of an anxious child now:
- Babies can be anxious, some of it is normal, but babies often feel separation anxiety.
- You are not a bad parent if your child suffers from anxiety, but it can tend to run in families.
- Personality, trauma, and temperament can impact, but there are many complex reasons why your child may suffer from anxiety.
- If we are successful and confident adults, we often underestimate how our children may feel. Sometimes, we may think, what do they need to be stressed about the syndrome??
- Your child knows their fears are irrational, and they can’t control them.
- Anxiety grows the more your child avoids a situation, and it will not help them by colluding with this.
- You encourage them to face their fears less.
- Anxious children often present as angry, and this is due to them trying very hard to hold it together. This can sometimes be apparent after school.
More Tips
- We think that reassurance alone will cure anxiety. Unfortunately, it doesn’t, and children need to understand it and have the tools to manage it.
- Parents and children often want to ensure anxiety is eliminated, but anxiety needs to be managed and regulated; it won’t disappear.
- Anxious children find change and transition times difficult. This means leaving home to go to school during nighttime and holidays can be problematic.
- Sometimes children don’t have the language to say how they feel. Still, they show it to you by telling you they have a tummy ache and constant headaches: picky eating, toileting problems, either constipation, encopresis, and enuresis.
Anxiety does not have to be the boss of you or your child, and there are many skills and tools they can use to help themselves and you. Know when to get help if it interferes with your child’s everyday life.
Share the support and like follow me on Facebook. Be the parent you wanted to be in 2017; make a choice today to help your child feel safe, loved and secure.
Be the parent you wanted to be in 2017; make a choice today to help your child feel safe, loved and secure.
With love Catherine
