Supporting children with worries and anxieties

Just like adults, children can experience feelings of worry, nervousness, fear and anxiety as they navigate their daily lives. These feelings are a very natural human response to stress and uncertainty, whether it's about a big test at school, learning something new, making new friends, or even changes at home, it’s normal for children to experience these on some level. However, if anxiety levels are heightening and starting to interfere with your child’s ability to engage in everyday life, it’s important to address it as soon as possible.

There are differences between worry and anxiety- worry tends to be a temporary state, whilst anxiety tends to linger. We all know that anxiety is a very powerful and often overwhelming feeling and can have very real physical symptoms.

Karen Young (Psychologist & Author) explains anxiety as something ‘we feel when we’re about to do something new, hard or important’. This kind of language is really powerful for children and young people to hear regularly and from a young age. I prefer to use words like worry and nervous with young children. Older children often use anxiety as part of their vocabulary.

Our instinct is often to try and fix or remove children’s worries and anxieties, however, we won’t always be able to see or predict what will cause levels of worry or anxiety to escalate for our child so we need to teach them that these feelings are natural and give them the tools and techniques to empower them to manage these times.

What might this look like for my child?

This will look different for every child and young person and it can be hard to identify at times. Try to keep a note of behaviours you observe and times when these seem to heighten.

Physical symptoms:

Rapid heartbeat or breathing, excessive sweating, trembling, restless, fidgety, headaches, muscle tension/tightness, butterflies in tummy, stomach aches, nausea, diarrhoea, constipation.

Emotional& Behavioural signs:

Excessive worry or fear, often accompanied by a sense of dread, catastrophising, overly emotional, clinginess and difficulty separating from caregivers, withdrawn, subdued, irritability or heightened sensitivity, difficulty concentrating or paying attention, sleep disturbances, changes in appetite or eating habits.

Avoidance is also a very common response to feelings of anxiety, including reluctance/refusal to attend school/social situations, running away behaviours and physical and verbal aggression.

The difficulty with avoidance is that it may help in the short-term but it continues to feed and fuel anxiety.

If you are concerned about your child’s emotional wellbeing and levels of worry and anxiety they experience, do seek support from a trusted professional. Help and support is available.

How can I support an overly worried/ anxious child?

Talk about it. Doing this with your child won't increase levels of worry and anxiety. Instead, it teaches them that it’s good to share and talk about their feelings, giving them the opportunity to offload and to gain some more understanding of themselves. Give them time to talk and process what they are saying to you.

Some children will not have the vocabulary or the ability to express these feelings verbally so encourage them to use other ways of communicating e.g. draw how they are feeling in their bodies or the event which they are finding stressful. Older children might find it easier to write about it.

If your child has difficulty communicating in these ways, it can be useful to use the ‘wonder aloud’ technique i.e. you’re having a tentative guess at what might be causing them to feel and behave this way e.g. ‘I’m wondering if this test feels a bit scary for you today ?’. It takes a little bit of time to get used to using language in this way but it can be really useful and helps open up the conversation. They may say a blunt ‘no’ to your attempts but I urge you to stick with it as best as you can. In that moment they might refuse what you are saying but at a later stage they might start thinking and talking about it.

Listen rather than trying to convince them to feel different. Changing their thought processes only comes with time, experience and maturity.

Reassure them that everybody feels worried, nervous and anxious at times and that it is very natural to feel that way, especially when ‘we’re about to do something new, hard or important’. Tell them how it feels in your body and that we might experience it in different ways and at different times.

Accept and validate their feelings even if you don't understand why they feel that way e.g. ‘I can see this is hard for you and I'm here with you’. We are all very different and what makes me feel worried and anxious may not make sense to you. Their feelings are very real and true for them.

Build up their toolkit - It can take time to figure out what works best for your child and there will be a little bit of trial and error here. Not everything will work all of the time so ideally build up to having a number of strategies they can use.

It can feel really overwhelming so try not to put pressure on yourself or your child to do everything all at once. I usually recommend introducing one or two strategies and ideally ones you feel comfortable and confident with. I’ve included some ideas to get you started here.

The key is to do these things regularly, ideally daily. Practise them when they are in a calm and regulated state so they know what to do when they start to feel levels of worry and anxiety build.

Movement: ‘Anxiety results in high levels of energy within the body with nowhere to go’ (Karen Young)

When we feel worried or anxious, the amygdala in our brains really fires up, sending cortisol (stress hormone) and adrenaline through our bodies via our nervous system- this is why we experience so many physical symptoms with anxiety.

Movement helps to calm the nervous system by shifting the stress hormones and releasing the feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters e.g. endorphins and serotonin.

Do whatever works best for your child, it could be running on the spot, jumping jacks, burpees, swinging arms around, dancing to a favourite song, bouncing on a gym ball/trampoline, lifting and moving heavy items around the house/garden.

If your child presents as withdrawn or subdued, try more gentle movements such as swaying or rocking. They may need your arms around them to support them through this. If your child doesn’t respond positively to this kind of touch, offer them a teddy to cuddle, a blanket to wrap around themselves or a quiet space to retreat to.

Positive touch such as a big hug or a simple hand/foot massage releases oxytocin, often called the ‘cuddle chemical’ or ‘love hormone’. This has been shown to help decrease stress and anxiety and promote relaxation.

Breathing: I like to use visual, auditory and tactile supports when teaching children to breathe e.g. Finger breathing, Feather breathing, Box/Square breathing (instructional videos available online). I also like to put a small toy, beanbag or cushion on their stomachs so they can focus on this while their tummies rise up and down. Encourage them to breath slowly in through the nose and out through the mouth, trying to make the out breath slightly longer.

Positive self-talk: This might feel a little cheesy or awkward initially but I’m a big advocate of saying positive things to ourselves in times of stress, uncertainty and anxiety. As adults, we might say things like, ‘I can do this’, ‘I will get through this’, ‘This too shall pass’, ‘This won’t last forever’

For children, I use simple phrases like ‘I will be okay’, ‘I can do this’, ‘I have lots of courage in me’, ‘I can do hard things’

Practise saying these phrases aloud. Write them on little cards/post its and place around the house (bedroom, fridge door) and in their school bag/books.

Overtime these will become your child’s inner voice and will be available to them when you’re not around.

Plan lots of relaxing/ enjoyable activities: Whatever helps your child to relax and switch off - reading, art, crafts, baking, listening to music, singing, dancing.

Try to get involved yourself with these activities and if something isn’t working for your child or they are reluctant to engage in them, just seeing you do these things can encourage them to participate. This will also be of benefit to you as supporting a child with worries and anxieties often increases our own levels of anxiety.

Nervous systems in close proximity feed off each other so when you’re regulated, this not only benefits you, but those around you too.

Be kind to yourself.