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.

You could try this book: Helping Ypur Child With Fears and Worries.

https://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/products/book/overcoming-series/overcoming-childs-fears-worries-cathy-creswell-lucy-willetts/

It’s CBT-based, which may well not work for your DD if she’s ND as many ND people don’t find CBT works for them. But it might be worth a try. I spent some time working through it with a mental health practitioner for my DC, who has ASD. He didn’t respond to it but I could see it working very well for a child with specific fears of specific things, if that makes sense. It might give you some new strategies to try out?

Is she getting any support from school?

Wow, I'm so glad I started this thread! There is so much amazing and useful advice here, and an awful lot of food for thought.

I will reply individually when I've got a bit more time to think carefully about each response as I think there's quite a lot I hadn't thought about and will need to get my head around, and I'm a bit too worn out to do that properly tonight.

I actually hadn't really considered the anxiety and possible ND as being linked, which now seems a bit daft given how many people have suggested it. There is a fair amount of ND on my side of the family, but not presenting with anxiety - my sister and mother both have ASD. A couple of posters have asked about why MIL was so difficult but it's very hard to say if she may have been ND in some way as she had a rather strange upbringing, strict to the point that I suspect it would be considered abusive these days and certainly with a lot of disdain and emotional cruelty. I always put her eccentricities down to that. DH was her whole world and she hated me bitterly, so I couldn't say I ever had a long chat with her!

I was super anxious from late primary school, reducing after secondary school but never really completely.
I think that kind of thing (and ND) was ignored (ignore what you don't like, praise what you do was the mantra back then) and I was/am high masking
I think validation and someone to discuss it with would help. A trusted adult rather than feeling alone and wrong. But I think a lot of it came from me rather than it being something easy to help.

Op, look at the Autistic Girls Network and see if you can see any behaviours. She maybe ADHD too

Daily timetables help reduce meltdowns and very few demands.

Do try and get her assessed before secondary as that’s when the wheels really come off.

Good luck

I think validation - "I can see that you feel really worried about this, it's okay that you feel that way" without dismissing (telling to calm down/ getting hysterical isn't helping won't really help her feel better, probably just make her feel even worse that her feelings are 'wrong') but also empowering her, believing in her, "this feels hard for you, but I know that you can do it" and not "rescuing" her - keeping her home rather than sending her to things she worried about etc because then she can't work through it and see that actually it's fine on the other side and she can do things that feel difficult. I really like the Hey Sigmund books written by Karen Young (a psychologist) for explaining and empowering anxious children.