Ricky RapsChildhood anxiety can cause strains on your child, read these 7 tips to reduce childhood anxiety.
Anxiety, and experiencing anxiety as a child is a normal experience that every child goes through. However, at a certain point that childhood anxiety could be too much to bear and your child may need help coping with his or her anxiety. By recognizing the signs and symptoms of childhood anxiety, you can provide your child with coping mechanisms and steps to reduce anxiety you can have your children back to focusing on being kids. Read about all seven steps so you can learn more about reducing your child’s anxiety.
1) Talk openly about their anxiety
Childhood anxiety doesn’t need to be a secret and its not something your child should ever feel ashamed about. By being able to talk openly and freely about their struggles with anxiety, it normalizes their struggle and allows the family to understand what is going with them. By allowing your child to talk freely and openly about what they deal with, it allows them to deal with what is going on with their body, rather than hide it.
2) Help them understand anxiety
Anxiety is a condition that will always be there, you can’t eliminate the condition, but you can manage the symptoms and how to deal with the condition. It is impossible to remove your child from all anxiety-inducing situations but you can prepare your child for how they will react in advance. Dealing with childhood anxiety requires honesty and cooperation from both the parent and the child.
3) Talk about what makes them anxious
Even though you cannot remove your child from everything that makes them anxious you can help by learning the things that cause anxiety in your children. By being able to talk through anxiety-inducing situations with a trusted parent, it allows the child to feel more comfortable and less anxious. Understanding what makes your child anxious allows you to help them become more comfortable in their own skin.
4) Phrase questions carefully
As a parent, you never want to cause undue fear or excessive anxiety in your children. The way that you talk to your child and the way that you phrase questions can be very important to your child who suffers from anxiety. Instead of asking leading questions, ask open-ended questions that allow your child to respond as truthful as possible. Instead of asking if your child’s homework is done you can ask how their homework is coming along.
5) Understand anxiety is scary for them
Anxiety and being overcome with anxious emotions can be very overwhelming for a child. It can be easy to disregard their anxiety as a normal product of childhood, but understand that not being able to control their emotions and having the feelings of anxiety within them is hard on a child. You can help them by talking thoroughly about what they experience and let them know you support them.
6) Listen to them
As a parent, one of the best things you can do for a child with anxiety is simply to listen to your child. Someone with anxiety may feel better by talking their emotions out, some may feel better by shutting the world out. Everyone is different, but some of the best support you can provide as a parent is just to be an ear for them to listen to all of their struggles.
7) Be a role-model
You yourself may struggle with anxiety or other anxious-related conditions, one of the best things you can do is show your child how to healthily cope with anxiety. From taking a minute to relax and catch your breath, or to taking a walk after dinner, show your child what you do, and what they can do to cope with anxiety.