If you were an anxious child, how would you have liked your parents to react?

[TinyTeachr]

My eldest is 8. She's always been quite anxious and emotional. Even when she was 11 months old I remember being astonished that when other babies toppled over they seemed to get over it quickly whereas she would cry for ages and be very hard to settle. A small bump at a 2nd birthday party had her screaming so loud other parents looked quite concerned.

Transitions are very tough. She was fine starting preschool, but had some difficulties in Y1 with managing her feelings and she got upset at school e.g. someone not wanting to play with her, or not getting to finish her work. She did seem to settle down though. Then this year she moved to a new school for Y3 and it's been really tough on her. She cries at school at least half of the days e.g. she didn't finish her art before the end of the lesson, a PE teacher told her off for doing cartwheels when she was supposed to be doing something else.... things that seem to be small for other children are huge for her and she can get alarmingly hysterical. She cries a lot at home too - she worries we will be late for something, or that her homework isn't good enough or that someone might be mean to her. It's not all about school - DH took her out of her tap class early this week as she was crying because she couldn't remember the steps from before half term. Then she burst into tears when she got home in case I was angry about her missing the class.....

School thinks there is probably some ND going on. We will look into this, but by all accounts diagnosis takes a long time and won't actually change the situation.

So what is the best way to help an anxious child cope with their feelings? I'm sure it's much worse this year but she's always been fragile. She seems prone to catastrophising.

We talk about feelings. When she was little we did breathing techniques and school supported this and it helped calm her quickly. She is no longer willing to try this as she thinks people will look at her (I'm sure it would attract less attention than wailing hysterically!)

Any suggestions? I feel like if we don't have some good techniques under her belt before hormones really hit she's going to be in for a really rough ride.

Ignore my anxiety and not help feed it. I wish they hadn't been so "nice" about it I think I would have got on so much better if they had made me face it (as I has to later)

Not catastrophise about it, and (which I think is the most impirtsntbthing) themselves model good ways dealing with relationships, setbacks, change, problems etc. I had two parents who were not really grownups and who were terrified of change, and taught me that it was always awful, and to be feared.

How would you make someone face it? I've never been an anxious person so I'm not sure what to do. Breathing techniques did work well when she was little (she used to blow out each finger like a candle) but she says this would be too embarrassing. She is definitely aware that her behaviour is not typical for her age. I don't think we're "nice" about it, but I guess I try to focus on getting her calm as fast as possible e.g. when I see she's losing it I stop her, ask her firmly to calm down and then try to talk to her calmly about the issue while reminding her that it's not helpful to be hysterical. Sometimes I do tell her she's not acting appropriately - DH thought it was too strict this weekend when I told her to go up to her room and read quietly and come down when she was calm (I didn't shout, but she just seemed to be moving from panicking about one thing to another). He thought one of us should have gone up with her so she didn't feel like it was a punishment.

Fair enough. Will try to avoid catastrophising myself! Not something I'm usually prone to.

I think we normally model handling change quite well, although there have been some things that have been stressful for us in the past and the children have observed us struggling sometimes. I was sort of hoping that not totally sheltering them would help building resilience as they could see how we coped with challenges, but maybe that hasn't worked out. Most things I think we weather without too much stress as far as the children can tell.

DH and I do argue sometimes and I worry that eldest may pick up on that. He has always been appallingly prone to double booking himself and I'm pretty intolerant to this since we've had children, and we also used to argue about his mother, who was an exceedingly difficult woman.

I don’t mean,’Pretend everything’s fine’, I mean things like ‘Yes, I’m a bit stressed by x, but here’s what I’m doing about it’, or letting them see you try something out of your comfort zone, or how you deal with failure. Or ‘Yes, I’m cross with Daddy because of x, but I also love him and we’re going to talk it out.’

You need to remain calm and reassuring when they are stressed. With my DD we started to ask if she needed a hug when she was worrying and stressed. The script goes something like “Do you need a hug” followed by big long hug then “do you need to talk about it or shall we X” where x is something like read a book, have some quiet time, watch favourite movie ….

Physical contact is very calming. You could also look at the butterfly hug technique that she can do herself as a calming technique.

I wish they had the emotional literacy to help me understand what anxiety was for a start, by naming it and talking about it and helping me identify it.

I was labelled “sensitive” and “shy” as a child and any non-positive emotions I had were quickly minimised. This made things worse and I felt so alone. No doubt the anxiety was exacerbated by their unpredictability and emotional unavailability.

If I express any feelings that aren’t simply “happy” to my family they seem to perceive it as a threat and they either ignore me, avoid me, reframe it as positive, or (at best) tell me how not to think about it.

I would have loved to feel that I had a voice that mattered and to be able to explain how it felt. That would have been a great start.

Well there is pretty good evidence on this.

You need to accept and normalise the feeling but don't solve her problems for her and don't enable avoidance.

Example: "Mum I can't go on the school trip I don't want to it's too scary sleeping away from home"

Wrong : "There's nothing to worry about. You'll be fine, I went away at your age and had a great time" ( gives them the message that worrying is abnormal and they are stupid to worry, invalidates their view, not responsive. Like you going to the doctor with a dreadful persistent headache and he says 'there's nothing wrong with your head it's fine'. It actually doesn't help you feel heard).

Wrong: "Don't worry darling, I can see it's too scary for you, you don't have to go, mummy will tell school you aren't going" (gives them the message they were correct to worry, that they are helpless and can't do things, and that they need someone else to sort things out - and also next time they will have the same worry again as nothing is challenging their view that they can't manage the scary thing).

Right: "Well I am not surprised you feel a bit scared. You haven't stayed away on a school trip before. Lots of people feel like that when they have their first night away from home." (Accept and validate their feelings, then normalise them, then problem solve "what do the teachers do to help everyone settle down and feel safe? Is there anything you think we should ask about? Do you think you could share a room with your friend ? Is there anything special we could take to remind you that I am thinking about you having a great time?"

We also need to model that we also get anxious sometimes and we survive. Model age appropriate scenarios where you were worried but faced it and found it was not as bad as you thought. "I was a bit worried before I went to the dentist this morning, I don't like it when I have a filling. But the dentist was so kind and helped me feel safe and I didn't even need a filling! So it all worked out ok and I feel much better knowing my teeth are healthy and strong".

Put alot of focus on her strengths. Is she kind, thoughtful, funny, full of energy? Let her know you have her back - you understand life is pverwhelming/scary.

One of my DC's struggled with anxiety when at primary school. It was really deliberating.

He saw a therapist who helped him see that he was ok, in fact he is a brilliant person, that he wasnt weak/pathetic, that he had the inner strength to "challenge" himself and he wasn't a failure if things went pants up. DS was scared of not being good enough at things - so praising the trying was important. Also letting him see our failures (and that we survive them and can learn from.them).
It helped DS talk about how he felt and realise he wasn't alone in this.

He's in his late teens now. From a boy petrified to be away from home (even though he wanted to do adventures), he's never home... camping, off around the country with his hobby.

He does always have a bottle of Rescue Remedy about though... just in case....

If she’s nd, you really need proper advice ideally from a professional/ expert or at least that is specific to her.
Just making her do stuff won’t work if she’s nd.
I think it’s just common sense to remain calm yourself and not freak her out even more.
It really depends on the child and the circumstances.
Personally (as a child with extreme anxiety growing up in the nineties when this was barely on the radar yet so I got no help at all til I had a breakdown at fifteen), what would have helped me most was not growing up in an abusive household with mentally ill parents 🤷‍♀️
After that, for someone to realise that I am actually nd and will never have normal reactions to every day circumstances.
My stress/ anxiety goes through the roof in situations where I’m fully aware there is no danger and nothing bad is likely to happen so there’s no need to try rationalise or anything.
What stresses me out is the situation.
It may be nothing to most people but the noise, the brightness, crowds, having to make conversation or eye contact, people standing or sitting close or touching me…all of that is where the stress comes from. When I was younger I had all sorts of worries, fears and anxieties.
Now that I’m older (and am medicated) I have adjusted my lifestyle as best I can to avoid stress and make sure I take as much time as possible to decompress (alone, in the dark usually), I only have a tiny fraction of this.
It’s important to identify triggers/ particular situations that are the most stressful and do whatever can be done to minimise the stress.
It is very helpful to learn how your brain works when you are nd, for example when I learned about ocd thought patterns/ processes, I realised that how my brain works is “a thing”, it’s not typical or healthy but basically I am not the only person who has these thoughts/ behaviours and now I can understand what happens in my head better and know how to manage it.
So it depends on what is causing the anxiety and it’s also crucial to find out whether there is nd going on there.
It can be good to try find an outlet too.
I write and listen to music for example. Or it could be drawing/ art/ crafts, playing an instrument etc.

In my experience, the person who is to the point, calm, rational and tells you that you will be fine because you are resilient is the most effective at calming your worry/anxiety. If an anxious person smells any slight sniff of anxiety from someone else, it makes it worse.

Interesting.. l felt the opposite. I need talking down and calming.

Op if she is ND, and she sounds like she could be, make sure she is diagnosed before secondary.

Why is DH’s dm difficult. Nd is usually inherited.

DS has ASD and it's very common to struggle with transitions, things that helped with the anxiety were: breaking things down into smaller, less overwhelming chunks - one step at a time, talking about what to expect in advance and warnings before transitions are going to happen, when things go wrong talking about what could be done differently next time. Just a lot of talking, explaining, going through things - things obvious to you she might be completely oblivious too and not understand due to her potential ASD,

I think you may have to accept though that her being a very sensitive, anxious person is probably who she is and it will be a case of learning to live with that as much as possible. Anxiety and ASD are highly comorbid.

I would say that she probably needs a lot of time out to decompress, she is probably going to be easily over whelmed. School is often not a great environment for kids with ASD and trying to cope is likely to wipe her out. After school I would avoid too much else - tap after a day at school might just be too much and unless she really loves it I would cut it. I would also say avoiding her being hungry or thirsty might help - snack and drink after school and then time to just decompress alone in his room doing something he loved really helped ds.

I would say that stability and consistency will really help her - moving schools is a really, really hard thing for a child with ASD, I would avoid that happening again at all costs. Lots and lots of encouragement, believing in her and knowing her limits. I'd also start the diagnosis process if you haven't already because I would expect her to get a diagnosis.

Have you read ‘You are Awesome’ by Matthew Syed.

It addresses perfectionism and resilience in a really positive and funny way (for children).

We discussed the quotes and read it together. His issue was more perfectionism but it solved it.

With ND in girls the first presenting symptom is usually anxiety.

Them it’s misdiagnosed as anxiety. Mine had terrible anxiety. Then she was diagnosed at 16

I wish they had identified it for a start! And I would have appreciated empathy (there was none!) but also tools to help me cope. Being allowed to talk about my fears and address them rationally would have helped.

Could his mum have been autistic herself?

God, yes to all of this. Any emotion not 'happy and getting on with things' was immediately shut down, and I learned that so well (dutiful parentified eldest of a large family with two grown up child parents) that it's only now in middle age that I'm actually learning to identify and sit with uncomfortable feelings.

Good post!

DS gets anxious about new things and transitions. We had support and were told to acknowledge and normalise but not to reassure as by saying don't worry children can feel that there is something to worry about. So you say things like. It's normal to be worried. Would you like to talk about it. All children go to school to do their learning. When you get home we can....
Also things like sometimes Mummy doesn't want to go to work. We talked about being brave and when he had done something similar before and made a big fuss about wing proud of him if he did something new or tricky for him.
It seems to be working. He's still anxious but less fearful

With love, emotional and physical affection.

Very common in the 80s and particularly bad if parentified. It might not even be anxiety. It might be distress from sensory overstimulation, groups, inability to keep up eg tap class - it’s soul destroying always getting the routine wrong but just free dancing alone is brilliant …

I’d recommend an appointment with a clinical psychologist asap to talk about strategies for managing this before it gets totally entrenched.

And they can also help re diagnosis cos I’d bet anything on her being ND.

There are other breathing techniques she can try if the blowing out the candle one feels too obvious - try 5 finger breathing, square breathing, or rainbow breathing.
Also look into “zones of regulation” - helping her to identify when she is starting to struggle, and what she can do to self-regulate. This is a useful skill whether she gets an ND diagnosis or not.

It's ok
What can I do?

I was anxious but it was depression that I brought up with my mum and I was told "don't be silly, good girls don't get depressed". Words burned into my core and taken a lot of therapy to overcome

Being told it's ok and normal to have feelings of anxiety, to be offered compassion at those times of anxiety and after the situation has calmed down to discuss and go over it and go through what the worst case scenario could have been as it's probably not that bad.