Talking Helps: Explaining Anxiety to Children

Many parents worry that talking about anxiety will make things worse. That naming the fear will amplify it, give it more power, make their child more anxious than before.

The research tells us the opposite is true.

Talking about anxiety, naming it, understanding it, giving it a shape, actually helps children feel less overwhelmed by it. And it opens the door to the kind of support that actually makes a difference.

Why talking helps: the research

When you are experiencing intense feelings, fear, aggression, or anxiety, the amygdala is in charge. It processes the perceived threat, triggers the stress response, and can override more rational thinking entirely.

Research from UCLA suggests that putting feelings into words, a process called affect labelling, can actually reduce the response of the amygdala when we encounter things that upset us. In other words, naming the feeling begins to calm the nervous system. The word reaches the thinking brain and takes some of the power out of the alarm.

Furthermore, research shows that areas of the brain associated with emotion and language are not fully developed until late adolescence. Therefore children may not understand why they feel the way they do or why they act the way they do. They rely more on emotion than rational thought because their prefrontal cortex is still developing. Very young children may not yet have the words for what they feel at all.

As a parent, it is important to recognise that your child may not understand the reasons behind their own reactions. Your role is to help them begin to make sense of it.

You can read more about what is happening in your child’s brain in my free guide Understanding Your Child’s Guard Dog Brain.

Understanding your child’s perspective

Children often lack the vocabulary or self-awareness to identify anxiety. They may express it through physical symptoms like tummy aches or headaches, or through behaviour like irritability, clinginess, or avoidance. For children who strive for perfection, anxious feelings can become so habitual they mistake them for a normal state of being.

Simply addressing what anxiety is can help your child understand their own experience, feel less ashamed, and be more open to support.

How to open the conversation

Choose a calm, comfortable moment when you are unlikely to be interrupted. Car journeys are a good place to talk.You might start by sharing something of your own, a time when you felt anxious or nervous. This normalises the experience without putting pressure on your child to explain themselves.

Then describe what you have noticed, gently and without pressure. Wondering out loud works better than asking direct questions.

When we went to Jenny’s house, I noticed you seemed very quiet and needed to stay close to me. I wondered if you were feeling a bit nervous.

I know some children worry about being away from their parents at school. I wondered if that was something you felt too.

I have noticed you often get a tummy ache before school. I wondered if something might be worrying you.

Being wrong does not matter. If your child corrects you, they have just told you something important they could not have found the words for on their own.

Validate before you move on

Before anything else, let your child know their feelings are real and make sense. Avoid saying do not worry or everything will be fine. However well-intentioned, these responses can leave a child feeling that their experience is not being taken seriously.

Instead, try: that sounds really scary. I can see why that feels so hard. I am glad you told me.

Once they feel heard, you can begin to gently explore what is underneath.

What do you think might happen?

What is the most frightening part?

What do you think is the worst thing that could happen?

Children often say I do not know. That is fine. Wonder with them. Often underneath the not knowing is a fear that something might happen to the people they love.

Teaching your child about the stress response

Children find it genuinely helpful to understand what anxiety actually is. Not something wrong with them, but a normal biological response that every human being has.

Explain that the stress response is the body’s way of preparing to deal with a perceived threat. It is sometimes called the fight, flight, or freeze response. When we encounter something frightening, our body releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which trigger physical changes. A faster heart rate, rapid breathing, sweaty palms, tense muscles, an upset stomach. These symptoms are the body doing its job, not a sign that something is broken.

You can draw a simple outline of a body and ask your child to point to where they feel their anxiety. This helps them locate the feeling physically and begins to build interoceptive awareness, the ability to notice what is happening inside before it tips into a full stress response.

Helping children understand their thoughts

Older children in particular benefit from understanding how thoughts and anxiety interact. Anxious thoughts tend to follow recognisable patterns, what-if thinking, catastrophising, assuming the worst, ruminating over something that happened at school.

Help your child become a detective of their own thoughts. What is the thought saying? Is it definitely true? What would you say to a friend who had that thought?

For older children you can use the analogy of a volume dial. Anxiety turns up the volume on frightening thoughts until they seem very loud and very real. The goal is not to silence the thought but to turn down the volume a little.

You can read more about these thinking patterns in my blog Negative Thinking in Children: Understanding Cognitive Distortions.

Normalising seeking help

Let your child know that sometimes anxiety can feel too big to manage alone and that is completely okay. There are people who specialise in helping children with anxiety and reaching out is a brave and sensible thing to do.

Interested in working with me?

If your child’s anxiety is significantly affecting their daily life, please do get in touch. I offer one to one therapy for children and young people and therapeutic parenting support for parents.

You can reach me via my contact page.

Free resources

Understanding Your Child’s Guard Dog Brain explains what is happening in your child’s nervous system when anxiety takes over.

Holding in the Storm is about staying steady as a parent in the hard moments.

Both are free to download.