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Dawn Friedman MSEd

How do I motivate my anxious child to deal with their anxiety?

Podcast

The question, “How do I motivate my anxious child?” is more complicated than it first seems because it’s showing that we may still need to make that paradigm shift where we need to put the focus on our own behavior first and on our child’s behavior second. If we are waiting for our child to be motivated before we start work on their anxiety then most of us are going to be waiting a very long time.

A lot of our anxious kids — and even anxious adults — aren’t yet in the place where they understand that their anxiety is the issue. A child who is afraid of dogs likely thinks dogs are the issue. A child who feels safest when their mom is around, likely thinks that the problem is that mom isn’t always able or willing to be around. 

I think about my own fears as a child around thunder storms. I was terrified of them. And the problem, to my mind, was that thunderstorms existed. The solution my family used was to put me in the living room with headphones on listening to The Wizard of Oz on an 8-track tape. That way I couldn’t really hear the thunder and then I was no longer afraid. That worked just fine until one storm night the electricity went out and I was alone in a pitch dark room. As you can imagine, this did nothing to help me deal with my thunderstorm anxiety.

And this is because my family and I assumed thunderstorms were the problem and so we should avoid thunderstorms when really the problem was my anxiety.

I was not interested in dealing with my anxiety because that was yucky and painful and again, I didn’t think it was a problem in the first place. No the problem seemed to be that the world was scary and I wanted it to be safe.

That’s why we parents need to focus on our motivation and through that make good decisions for helping our children learn to cope with the reality that the world is often scary and not always safe. As our children get better at coping with that reality, we might see more motivation from them. Or if they’re focused on getting access to the things that they’re avoiding, we might see some motivation there, too. That might be a child who really wants to go to a slumber party but is afraid to sleep away from home. 

But it’s ok to start before we’ve got their buy in. It’s ok to start with figuring out our own motivation.

Let’s talk about that a little bit.

The best way to understand how to motivate ourselves is to understand why we aren’t motivated. What is stopping us from climbing out of the parenting pitfalls we find ourselves in when parenting our anxious kids. For those of you who are unaware, parenting pitfalls are the things we do that keep us and our kids stuck in patterns of anxiety. An example would be my parents using that 8-track tape. It seems like a solution but it can be a trap especially if they started staying home on days when storms were predicted to stick close to the stereo. Or if — and this did happen — I started clamoring for the headphones at the first sign of wind and rain. If you aren’t sure about parenting pitfalls, you can take my quiz, which you can find at child anxiety support DOT com forward slash quiz and see if and how your family might be stuck.

Anyway, common reasons we aren’t motivated are:

      • lack of time

      • lack of bandwidth

    And I’ll say that both of those things are predictably made worse by the anxiety itself. Because parenting an anxious child is exhausting and time consuming, right? So the traps seem like a way to deal with the anxiety less even though they tend to eat up our functioning.

    Another common reason we might not be motivated, is we might have real concerns that our child isn’t capable of handling the demands of facing their fears.

    I want to stop and talk about this one for awhile because it mirrors the reason kids stay stuck, too. They also don’t believe they’re capable of handling those demands.

    Let’s take two kids who are learning to roller skate. One child isn’t anxious and they know they might fall but they figure they can handle that. The other child is anxious and they also know they might fall but they don’t feel capable of handling it. It’s not necessarily that one is predicting worse outcomes. Both children may have a friend who broke their wrist roller skating. So both might know that is indeed a real risk. But the non-anxious child may not just feel more confident in their abilities, they also may feel more confident in handling a wrist fracture. An anxious child is less optimistic overall. Their self concept — their sense of who they are — may be more negative. 

    These are the kids who say, “I know I’m going to fall. I can’t do it. It’s too hard.” And we go to reassure them, “You’re going to do great. You’ll be fine. Look, your little sister is doing it so I know you can, too.” 

    Remember, reassurance is the most common pitfall. And it doesn’t work.

    That doesn’t motivate the child because we’re making the mistake that the roller skating is the issue instead of the anxiety. The truth is, they might fall. Anyone on roller skates might fall. But then again, they might not. And if they do, it might not be so bad. And if they break their wrist, well, that’s super lousy but they will survive it. 

    Even as I say these things, I know that as a parent it can feel somehow irresponsible. Like we’re saying that a broken wrist is no big deal. That they should just blow off their fears. Let me be clear, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the big picture work of anti-anxiety learning is to figure out how to exist in a reality that is unpredictable and sometimes scary and occasionally even dangerous. 

    Such big work, I know.

    Thunderstorms are usually fine but sometimes people do get hit by lightening, sometimes homes do get destroyed in tornadoes. Sometimes even our wonderful all powerful parents can’t keep us safe.

    A hard reality for us as well as for our kids.

    So where’s the motivation? It’s in believing that our children can indeed handle it — all of the uncertainty — and can have good lives in spite of the world being scary. We have to hold that belief first so that we can offer it to them.

    You know how we talk about co-regulation a lot on social media, in parenting books and classes? This idea that we can bring our own calm to our children? This self concept piece is like that. We believe in them even when they don’t. We believe in their strength even when they feel weak. And this isn’t a suck it up buttercup, stiff upper lip kind of belief. It’s more, I believe you have the ability to grow through this. To learn about your inner strength. To learn that bravery means being afraid but doing it anyway. 

    We can motivate ourselves and our kids but taking things small. What began my ability to deal with thunderstorms, and this is a memory my dad brings up to me a lot so I know it was meaningful to him as well, was sitting on his lap on our front porch watching the storms roll in. I borrowed his bravery. He showed me how to find the delight in the big noise and uncertainty but it took practice and it took his help. Because he traveled, he couldn’t do that for me every time and my mom, with three kids five and under didn’t have time either. But that’s ok, because I got enough confidence to begin a fairly long journey of dealing with my fear of thunderstorms.

    One thing that I think can be helpful is to celebrate your child’s wins big or small. You can announce this beforehand like, “Next time we walk by that barking dog, I will hold your hand but I won’t carry you and after we will celebrate with a sticker or an ice cream cone or big hugs.” Or you can just notice the next time your child has handled something I celebrate it.

    This is different than reward charts although those can work, too. I just think we need to be cautious about relying on them too much because they can lose their effectiveness. I’m not against them — extrinsic motivation can lead to intrinsic motivation — but they can’t do the work for us. 

    My thinking is that once you have a child holding your hand instead of being carried around a scary dog, you might have buy in for a more explicit plan with a whole exposure hierarchy and stair step rewards but it really doesn’t have to be this formal. 

    If you are interested in figuring out a plan with clear steps and what to do when, I encourage you to check out the Child Anxiety Support program since this is what we do inside the membership.


    How do I motivate my anxious child to deal with their anxiety? Read More »

    How do I co-parent an anxious child with someone who causes more problems with the anxiety?

    Podcast

    The particular question I received that inspired this episode is much longer and very personal so I’m not going to read the whole thing but I will share that the listener says that the relationship between mom and dad has lots of conflict, not just about anxiety but about other parenting choices and the listener is wondering, and here I WILL quote directly:

    “Do we just carry on with how we handle her anxiety in our care despite being different? How does an anxious child cope with split homes? How do we ensure the anxious child doesn’t play the parents off against each other (which currently happens). We are lost and her anxiety is getting worse.”

    There is a lot happening here so I want to slow down and first of all address the issue of different parents doing things differently. The fact is that we have no control over how things happen in our children’s other household. In a perfect world we’d be able to talk to our children’s co-parent and come to general respectful understanding if not agreement. But we don’t live in a perfect world so the answer to the first question, “Do we just carry on with how we handle things” is yes. You carry on that way. You do the best you can, you parent in the way you feel is most helpful and healthy for your child, period.

    The second question the listener asks, is how does an anxious child cope with split homes. Well, that depends on the child and that depends on the homes. Divorced families, in my opinion as a child of divorce and as someone who has worked with lots of divorced families, aren’t automatically less healthy than intact families. My take is that happy, healthy parents are good for raising happy, healthy kids and for many families that means not parenting together. The issue that I’m seeing in this question is not that the parents are apart physically, it’s that they are so far apart philosophically and aren’t able to be supportive of each other and yes, that can be an issue for any kid but especially for anxious kids.

    I have worked with many families who don’t live together and who may not always operate on the same wavelength but if they are respectful of each other’s differences and don’t bad mouth each other I don’t think that has to be a problem. Maybe mom eats meat and dad runs a vegan household but it’s fine because the kids know that the different houses just do things differently. 

    Now both parents might have strong feelings about the way they choose to eat, which is fine. People should live out their values. And it doesn’t have to be a problem if they are respectful of each other’s right to make their own decisions in their own homes. 

    In a case like that, kids know what to expect. They know they can have pepperoni on their pizza at mom’s and that at dad’s they’ll top their pizza with soy cheese and it’s fine. They know they can talk about the different pizzas in their different homes and nobody will get upset. That shows consistency and care and respect, which matters so much and I’d argue that those kids — with parents who are so far apart in their thinking but so open and welcoming to their child’s other families way of doing things — are lucky. Because they know that if they do things differently, too, they won’t lose the love and respect of their parents. 

    They will grow up to make their own decisions and to understand that there’s lots of ways to do things.

    Likewise when it comes to trying to co-parent an anxious child, if one parent, for example, let’s call them Jill signs up for my program and recognizes that they need to create exposures for their anxious child and the other parent, let’s call them Bill is unwilling to do this, this may slow things down but it doesn’t need to halt things altogether. Exposure at least part of the time is better than never having exposures ever. 

    Now it may be hard on Jill. Jill may feel like she always has to be the so-called bad guy since she’s the one always pushing her child to confront their anxiety and Bill might feel like Jill is being too hard on their child but as long as they don’t interfere with each other, the child is going to learn that the different houses do things differently.

    The problem comes if Jill starts telling the child, “Your father isn’t doing you any favors” or if Bill starts telling them, “Your mom is being too mean to you.” Or if they start fighting with each other about it. Or, and unfortunately this happens way too often, start trying to pull in allies whether that be the child themselves or other people like teachers, siblings, and friends. 

    For example, when I was doing clinical work with kids, I’d have parents in my office trying to get me to go to court with them against the other parent. There’s a million reasons why this is not ok — starting with if you hire a therapist for your child it is unethical for that therapist to make custody recommendations — and also again, what happens in the other house hold barring outright neglect or abuse, belongs to that other parent.

    And if there are behaviors or parenting choices that are a concern, if one parent IS concerned about neglect or abuse then it’s even more important that their household remains as healthy and supportive as possible.

    I’m not so naive as to think that if you are concerned about your child’s safety at their other parents house that it’s as easy as going to court or getting a guardian ad litem or calling child protective services to make things change. I know that. And I appreciate how incredibly painful and upsetting that is. That discussion is way beyond the scope of this podcast. But I do want to assure you that your focus on creating a safe home regardless of what the other parent does or does not do, will make a difference. 

    All you can control is how things operate in your house so your focus should be on figuring out how to create the most supportive, loving, and healthy environment you can. And in the case of anxiety, that should include learning how to parent an anxious child so you don’t get stuck in the parenting pitfalls.

    Your consistency, your care, your safety will help your child feel safe, too. Remember that connection and healthy relationships help to mitigate harm. There is lots we can’t [protect our children from and frustratingly sometimes that includes their other parent.

    Back to the original post. There’s something else they said that I want to talk about, which is, “How do we ensure the anxious child doesn’t play the parents off against each other“

    Well, we can’t ensure that; we can only focus on how we respond when this happens. I don’t have details here with this family so I’m going to make some guesses and I apologize in an advance to the original poster if I’m missing the mark. 

    When we are trying to co-parent an anxious child, we can expect that child to play one parent off another. This is super common whether or not families are living together, it might be helpful to see this through the lens of avoidance. Remember anxiety is about avoidance. When the child plays parents off each other, what are they trying to avoid? when you see the behavior through that lens, does it make it easier to understand? 

    Can you unhook any feelings you have about the other parent from this situation? What I mean is,

    If you feel defensive or put on the defensive, can you recognize that that dynamic is about the relationship you have with their other parent. If you feel comfortable about how you are handling your child’s anxiety, if you feel confident in your choices, then can you let the other parents’ judgment or anger go? If your child says, “My other parent never makes me do that” can you simply say, “Yes, they do things differently than I do.”

    If the other parent tries to get involved and change the way you’re doing things, well, that’s about your relationship with the other parent. Remember, you do not need to convince them. It’s ok that you are doing things the way that you’re doing them.

    Sometimes in my clinical work with children of divorce, it would feel like the parents were so focused on what was happening in the other household, were understandably so frustrated or angry or sad, that sometimes they were missing the opportunity to parent well in their own home and to celebrate and feel good about their own good parenting.

    I’m not blaming here, I’m saying that trying to co-parent with someone who is not supportive of you, who is making choices that appear harmful to the kids, doesn’t feel overwhelming. 

    But ultimately we need to figure out how to let it go. I’m not saying ignore it. I’m not saying pretend like it’s not happening. I’m saying to recognize that we can only control what we can control. If our child’s other parent is a jerk, well, that sucks but some kids have parents who are jerks. It’s not fair, it’s really painful, but for those kids, what they need is at least one parent who is not a jerk. One parent who is going to keep doing the very best they can, who wills tay focused on what they CAN control, which is their own healthy household, and who will create consistency and safety where they can.

    If this means getting your own therapy, finding your own social supports, I hope you will do that. As an aside, I will add that this is why the Child Anxiety Support program is built on Mighty Networks, which has a community component to the learning. We know that divorced parents — in fact all parents — do better when they aren’t isolated and when they find a community who will help them deal with the very real, very difficult emotions that come with co-parenting in conflict. And that’s even more true when we’re trying to co-parent an anxious child.

    I wish I had better answers to this but I hope that this is validating and that it’s helpful to know that whatever you can do for your anxious child, will make a difference.



    How do I co-parent an anxious child with someone who causes more problems with the anxiety? Read More »

    If child anxiety treatment should include parents, what about treatment for ADHD or autism?

    Podcast

    This question came up after I did a reel on instagram and TikTok where I was talking about the research behind child anxiety treatment and someone said, and I quote, “Is this true with autism and adhd then too?”

    @dawnfriedmanmsed

    #childanxiety #childanxietyhelp #childanxietysupport #gentleparentingtips #gentleparentinghack

    ♬ original sound – Dawn Friedman MSEd

    I thought this was a great question so even though it isn’t anxiety specific, there is certainly enough overlap in these diagnoses that I thought it was worth discussing.

    ADHD and autism are both a form of neurodiversity, meaning that we’re talking about kids whose brains work differently than the perceived norm. Anxiety may show up as part of a neurodiverse diagnosis — and it is super common in both ADHD and autism — but we’re not trying to cure them and although I bristle a bit at the word cure, we are trying to cure anxiety. 

    Ok let me back up here.

    There are certain ways of being that make some kids more vulnerable to dysfunctional anxiety because remember anxiety itself, is a tool to keep us safe. Dysfunctional anxiety is that tool overreacting and limiting us and limiting our options and experiences. We don’t want to cure all anxiety but we do want to cure the dysfunction.

    All of the research shows that in child anxiety the parents and/or caregivers unintentionally get stuck in pitfalls that perpetuate the anxiety instead of supporting their child’s functioning in the face of anxiety.

    A super simple example would be a child who is afraid of driving over bridges — this is my daughter when she was small — and so the parents start planning their route to avoid driving over bridges. This limits the child’s chance to deal with their anxiety about bridges and disrupts the whole family’s functioning. But the parent is in charge of that and so the parent needs to understand what they’re doing, why it isn’t helping, and how to stop and deal with the fall out. And then the parent needs to take that information into all the other kinds of anxiety issues they are facing with their child.

    Also the parent needs to know how to support their child’s growth in coping with anxiety so that eventually the child can handle these exposures on their own. Plan for them, deal with them, learn to recognize when they’re anxious avoiding and start confronting. Because the child is going to be an adult and will need to know how to do that.

    When families do this, when parents get this help when parents go through a guided program, the research tells us that it’s much more effective than asking kids to do it. In fact there was one study that found that when parents had a two hour class and then six follow up check in phone sessions that 95% of the children no longer met criteria for an anxiety diagnosis. Compare this to a study that found that working exclusively with kids resulted in about just 60% no longer meeting criteria.*

    Now with ADHD and Autism we’re obviously not trying to get to a place where neurodiverse children no longer meet criteria for their neurodiversity, right? But we certainly want to see them improve in functioning and yes, parental support and parent-led interventions do have a strong research base, which just makes sense. Parents control children’s environments and so if parents can learn to be more effective and create more welcoming and supportive environments then all to the good. I do think that the purpose is a bit different because anxiety can be perpetuated by parental behavior and obviously I don’t think that’s true of ADHD or autism but certainly we can all learn better how to support our kids who need something different than their neurotypical peers.

    As far as anxiety as PART of an ADHD or autism diagnosis, the research shows that addressing parental behaviors works to address the anxiety IF the anxiety is the primary concern. That is to say, that if the ADHD or Autism is a greater challenge for the family then they should focus on that whether that’s learning strategies for the family or addressing issues through other interventions such as occupational therapy or working with a speech-language pathologist or getting some ADHD coaching or finding a social skills group.

    Personally I advise parents to start with one step, whichever issue feels most pressing for the family, address that one first and then when they feel they have a handle on that — whether that’s seeing some improvement, or feeling like the family is coping fairly well — then take next steps.

    It’s tempting to do everything all at once and in some cases early intervention in several areas can be part of the coordinated plan but it’s also ok to take things step by step. Otherwise everyone is going to get overwhelmed.

    I also wanted to address a comment I got on TikTok where someone said, and again, I quote, “I really think if a child is in therapy then the parents need to be in therapy too.”

    So let’s talk about that. 

    I don’t agree that every time a child is in therapy the parents should be, too. I think it can help. I think for parents who are struggling with whatever brought their child to therapy that can be a help. For example, if a child experienced a traumatic event that can certainly be traumatic for parents. 

    But sometimes I think it’s less about therapy and more about supports, or more about finding your village.

    One of the things we know about anxiety, for example, is that parents do better when they don’t feel alone. And so an advantage to groups is that parents get to talk to other parents. When I was focusing more on one to one clinical work, that was a big frustration for me, to see how lonely it can be to parent and to not have more resources to share. It’s one of the things that inspired me to create Child Anxiety Support is that it allowed me to build it in a platform where people can talk to each other and not just me. I tried to do that in real life but it’s awfully hard to build momentum to get a parent group working. It’d seem like we’d figure it out and then soccer season would start and everyone’s schedules would blow up and the group would be back to square one.

    Anyway. I don’t think everyone needs therapy but I do think everyone needs something when a child is struggling.

    Especially if we’re talking about a teenager. I mean, sometimes that makes sense. Sometimes the family’s functioning is suffering, sometimes parents need help figuring out how to parent a teenager, sometimes family therapy makes sense. But other times, a child or teen just needs someone else. They just need someone else to talk to. 

    I think back to several kids I’ve seen with great parents and the kids were just struggling a little and part of the parents’ building the child’s resiliency and building their child’s toolbox was showing them that there are other adults they can trust and count on to support them. These parents valued counseling as a tool and so they felt comfortable saying to their child, “Hey, this person can be part of our toolbox.” Those parents didn’t need counseling but those parents valued counseling and valued creating and promoting a family culture where getting help is accepted and normalized. 

    Now I do think that parents and counselors should always be communicating to some extent. More so when kids are younger, less so when kids are teens but enough that the therapist has a rough idea of what’s going on with the family and the parents feel they can trust the therapist to communicate with them should the need arise. Obviously the child or teen needs to trust the therapist’s confidentiality and so the therapist always needs to clear and upfront about when and what they will share with parents. But that, my friends, is a whole different topic.

    Dobham, V. E. (2012) Do anxiety-disordered children need to come into the clinic for efficacious treatment? Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 80, 465-476.

    James, A. C., James, G., Cowdrey, F. A., Soler, A., & Choke, A. (2013). Cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. Cochrane Databse System Review, 6: CD004690.pub4.

    If child anxiety treatment should include parents, what about treatment for ADHD or autism? Read More »

    How do I support the siblings of an anxious child?

    Podcast

    Recently a reader wrote to me with this question, “How do I effectively meet the needs of my oldest child who is anxious without my middle child getting lost between her older siblings and her toddler, sibling. The guilt is real.”

    Reader, let me just say, I hear you. And I understand what a big challenge this is. I’m sorry that you’re feeling guilty about it, but I get it — to be a parent is to feel guilty. We’re always really struggling to do the best that we can and frankly, sometimes we’re going to feel like we’re not measuring up.

    When we’re feeling guilty. I think we can use this as a reflection. What do I want to be different? What would I like to change? Guilt can be a good tool. It can be a good motivator if it’s well-placed and if the guilt is warranted.

    Now I’m a middle child so I know what it is to be the kid that sort of caught between the oldest kid and the youngest kid and it’s not uncommon for middle children to be lost in every family although I will tell you, the research shows that us middle kids were really good at handling things on our own; we tend to be pretty independent and capable. That’s the plus side of it, but let’s go back to what can you perhaps do differently?

    When you’ve got an anxious child, it stands to reason that siblings are impacted by the anxiety and even though anxiety can run in families, if you’ve listened tuned in to other posts, you know that people with anxious brains tend to have children who have anxious brains. And that anxiety is also learned behavior. When kids see us be anxious, they learn to be anxious.

    So anxiety can run in families, but it doesn’t mean that every child in the family is going to have anxiety. Let’s be really clear about that.

    Before we get into the specifics of the anxious family, I do want to say that sometimes in families things are not going to be even. You say you have a toddler and toddlers take up more time. That’s just going to happen when a new baby arrives, right? New babies, take up more time.

    In other words, it is natural and it is appropriate that in seasons of a family life, one child will be taken up more of the oxygen than the other children. That is going to happen.

    Now back to anxious kids. What we do know from looking at the research is that when it comes to the parenting pitfalls — the things that parents unintentionally do that trap their child and the family and anxiety — are things that impact siblings as well. Siblings usually become part of the pitfalls. If you want to take my Parenting Pitfalls quiz, just go here. This quiz is based on the research that looks at the ways families get stuck. So when you take the quiz, Hopefully, this will give you some insight and understanding that the ways that families get stuck are very predictable and very understandable and not a sign that the family is doing things wrong, but are a sign that the family needs help.

    That anxiety gets people stuck so the child is stuck, the family is stuck, and the siblings are stuck too. What the pitfalls are all about is when we do things to avoid upsetting the anxious child. Parents do this and siblings do this. This could be something like limiting family movie night. Say one child really wants to watch a new superhero movie or something like that and the parents say, no, that’s going to upset your sibling. We can’t watch that. Or that one has a giant spider in it and your sibling is afraid of spiders.

    It can also mean skipping events that the family maybe is going to go to an event, a party or something, and they need to leave early because the anxious child is getting upset. It may mean when the family is trying to cajole the anxious child, get them out the door, get them to do something and the other children are left waiting.

    It can also be times where if everybody is used to the anxious child, getting upset and being a little more sensitive that we’re asking other children to make way for that. A classic example would be, you know, that your sibling gets very upset when this thing is happening. So can you just give them the iPad? I know you were playing it, but your sibling is really upset. Can you just give it to them? So we need to notice when we’re doing these things and taking the quiz can help you identify ways you might be doing this, but let’s talk a little bit about why that happens.

    When the child acts up and gets really upset. The family tends to do more avoiding and caretaking. That means the anxious child learns that avoidance and caretaking is necessary. For example, if you felt like, “I don’t know how to walk upstairs, I can’t walk upstairs.” And so I carried you up the stairs every time you would learn that you really can’t walk upstairs. You would never get the chance to try.

    If you did try and you fell apart and begin to weep, I might carry you up the stairs. You’re not learning the skills to get up the stairs. You’re not learning how to tolerate the discomfort of getting up the stairs. My carrying you seems helpful, but it’s actually holding you back. The more adverse a child is to face in their discomfort the more they may act up or act out or break down.

    If a child screams every time they see a dog and we hustled the dog away, they learn that dogs are scary. And they also learn that the way to let us know that dogs are scary is by screaming. We may say, “Don’t scream, use your words” but our actions show otherwise.

    When I was a toddler teacher and sooner or later in every class that I had with toddlers, there would be a toddler who would bite. I’m going to call him Hank, (which was not his name). And Hank was a very bright child in the toddler room who learned that biting was a really good way to get things done. So if another child was holding a toy and Hank, wanted the toy Hank would bite. And the whole room would explode with action and excitement!

    Hank would get hustled away by us. There was lots of screaming and crying and action, and the other child would drop the toy. So biting worked. It didn’t mean that Hank necessarily got the toy because usually the toy was a casualty in the whole big excitement of biting. But Hank did learn that biting made things happen.

    So unintentionally by reacting the way that we did when Hank would bite, which was to get involved and to get involved specifically with, “Hey Hank, no biting you know better, blah, blah, blah.” What we were doing was teaching Hank that biting was a means of getting control. Even though it was creating chaos, it was creating chaos on Hanks terms. What we learned to do instead is that when Hank bit we immediately put all our attention on the bitten child.

    Now before it would be, somebody would go to the bitten child. Somebody would go with Hank, but in this case, xomebody would be guarding Hank because we didn’t want him to buy it again. But we were focusing our attention on the child who was bitten. One teacher would go towards the child who is bitten. I was in charge of Hank.

    I will add here that the reason I would be in charge of Hank is that I have always really liked to work with the kids that are a little more explosive and difficult. So guaranteed if there was a biting kid in the classroom I was usually the teacher assigned to manage and work with that biting kid; i’ve just always liked difficult kids.

    Anyway instead of immediately engaging with Hank, I would move Hank and use my body to protect other students from Hank. And model attention and concern being on the child who was hurt.

    Once we were clear, the child was not hurt or caring for their bitten self. Then we would turn our attention to Hank. Now this doesn’t mean we were ignoring Hank. It means that we were shifting our attention in such a way that Hank was learning that biting did not actually give him control over the classroom.

    Is this making sense? I hope this is making sense. So this is what we need to do with the anxious child.

    Please notice that where we give our attention then we can see things increase. When we give our attention to the child’s anxiety, the anxiety will increase. I understand why we do it just like I understood why we would immediately go towards Hank who was biting, but it’s not helpful.

    We need to step back and reassess and say, who is getting short shrift in this situation? And where are we giving attention?

    Now it’s going to be a very specific plan for the anxious child. I can’t give you all of the details here, because it would be very specific to the anxious situation. It would be very specific to how entrenched the family is in the parenting pitfalls. It would depend on the child who is maybe needing more attention, what that looks like. But I will say that I think a good thing is to take the pitfalls quiz cause that’s gonna help you see, first of all, where you might be stuck, that you didn’t know you were stuck and also how stuck you are, like, are you super, super stuck or are you medium stuck or are you. Just starting to get a little bit sticky understanding that will help you be more realistic about where you need to go.

    So let’s go back to Hank again. If we had let it go on for a long while, the whole classroom may be organized around how to keep Hank from biting other children. And so we would have a longer ways to untangle that focus.

    So it’s the same way with child anxiety. The more your family is entrenched in the anxious, stickiness, those parenting pitfalls, the harder it is going to be to pull yourself out of it. But that’s okay. You’re going to start with baby steps and the first. Baby step you can take is to notice what’s happening to the child who is not getting attention when the anxiety happens.

    Just notice it. I know that there is a poll to immediately pay attention and take care of the anxious child in the moment. But give yourself a minute, just give yourself a minute and say what’s going on here? Is this pull I’m having towards the anxious child my anxiety? Am I anxious about their anxiety? And that is a big part of Child Anxiety Support membership — untangling our anxiety from our child’s anxiety.

    Then we figure out where we can start pulling some of that attention away. Where we can start focusing on the child who is not anxious and is getting a little bit left behind. Once you have a picture of that, which again, starts with noticing what you’re already doing and really noticing in the moment.

    Then figure out where can you give that non-anxious child a little more attention? What can you do in the moment? So for example, If you have an anxious child that melts down and kicks and screams, and it’s pretty dramatic. And, you know, you can let them melt down and kick and scream for a minute. You can just stop and turn and look into the child’s eyes, the middle child and say, are you okay? Is everything good? Are you all right? Just give them even that sort of touchstone attention before you turn to their sibling.

    You can let them know, “I’m concerned that we’re getting stuck and the whole family is going to need to work on it.”

    It’s not just on the anxious child to work on it. In fact, they can’t work on it unless we’re all working on. It. And then we are asking the siblings to also help us in getting this unstuck.

    One thing to know when we start pulling attention away from our anxious child, when we stop being stuck, when we stop doing the things that get us stuck, we can expect things to get worse before they get better.

    Let’s go back to that child who screams when they see a dog. They have learned that screaming is what they do. If we have decided we’re no longer going to respond to their screaming then they are going to scream more.

    Because they’ve learned that screaming works so they’ll think, “I must not be doing it loud enough. I must not be doing it long enough because it works. I’m going to go past the time when it usually works and amp up more than the limit of where it usually works because I’m expecting it to work.”

    So you can expect things to get worse, which is another reason to start with baby steps. You don’t want to start way at the end where things are already difficult and challenging. You’re going to start and really tiny baby steps, making slight changes. And that again starts with understanding where you’re getting stuck. All right. So that’s the answer to this week’s question. And if you have other questions I’d love for you to reach out to me.

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    What can I do about my anxious child’s temper?

    Podcast

    We have a terrific question today and that’s what can I do about my anxious child’s temper? This is a really common problem and a typical reason that parents reach out to me. An anxious child often has really difficult behavior, like temper tantrums, meltdowns, and flip outs.

    Sometimes this includes screaming at their parents or saying really mean things like, “I hate you. You’re stupid. I wish you’d die.” Sometimes these children are hurting other people, siblings, or pets, or they’re hurting themselves, hitting their own head. Sometimes they’re hurting parents — pushing their parents, or hitting their parents.

    Very often, these kids are also trashing rooms. Their parents will send them to their room for some reason, or send them up to bed and the child will tear up their room, break toys, tear up mattresses. Sometimes they’re tearing up other people’s property.

    Understandably, parents reach out to me saying, “How do I deal with my anxious child’s temper? They’re out of control. I need help with this behavior!”

    But when we’re starting with the behavior, we’re actually starting backwards. One of the very first things that parents do when they join the Child Anxiety Support membership is take a child anxiety assessment so they can get an idea of the shape of their child’s anxious behavior,

    Where is it showing up? Are we seeing general anxiety or are we seeing separation anxiety? Are they having somatic symptoms like stomach aches and headaches? Basically how anxious are they? And if we find out they indeed are pretty anxious then we can understand the why behind their behavior, which is that it’s anxiety.

    We have to address the anxiety before we can get to the behavior. Now, I’m not saying that angry outbursts or hurting people is acceptable. Of course it’s not, but in order to deal with it, we need to see it through the lens of anxiety and see it through the lens of fight, flight, or freeze and what we’ve got here is kids who are fighting.

    Now I absolutely get that parents want to start with behavior. Behavior like this — behavior that’s hurting people — is disruptive. It can be scary. It can be getting the child in trouble at school or with friends. Other family members may be alarmed and telling you’ve got to do something. And you, of course may feel really urgently that something needs to happen, but you need to understand that starting with anxiety is doing something. No, it’s not addressing that big angry behavior. But it’s starting at the front at the tip of that angry iceberg.

    One of the resources that I have is a bill of rights for anxious kids. This is based on Ross Green‘s work. He’s the author of the Explosive Child, and he wrote a bill of rights for behaviorally challenged kids that I used as a model for my bill of rights for anxious kids. The gist of it is that when we understand anxieties behind the behavior, we acknowledge that we need to start with anxiety. We need to start with all the anxiety work. That means starting with educating our kids about their anxiety. Building their coping tools and importantly, seeing this as a developmental challenge for our child.

    I encourage you to check this out because it’s a paradigm shift, seeing your child as someone who is having a big developmental struggle and not a child who just needs to be parented towards a fix. It’s a lot more complicated than that. Developmental challenges are not the kind of thing that you just start using a different tone or using a specific behavior modification program and it goes away.

    Developmental challenges like being an anxious child whose anxiety comes out as anger is a big picture, long range, ongoing pursuit. Now. This does not mean that we give up and let our child’s anger run rampant. No, absolutely not. Reasons are not excuses and being anxious may be a reason, but it does not excuse behavior that hurts people.

    However we do need to be realistic. For example, I get lots of calls from parents, with kids who are trashing their rooms. So the first step in that is accepting the fact that you have a child who trashes their room. That’s a fact. And something we’re going to work on, but while we’re working on it, we need to accept that the room is going to get trashed.

    So we remove things we don’t want broken. Ideally, we would do this with our child while they are calm and we would talk about it without judgment. It wouldn’t be a punishment or shaming. We might say something like, “I notice that when you’re upset, you really struggle and sometimes that means in your struggle, you are trashing your room. So I need to remove things that we can’t afford to replace, or that might hurt you if they’re broken. Now I know you’re growing and you won’t always be trashing your room.”

    You need to say that part because you need to give them hope. You need to show them that you believe in them, even if they don’t believe in themselves and that you believe in their ability to outgrow and get a handle on this behavior.

    Now it’s okay to fake it. You may worry that they are going to do this forever, but for now give them hope. Say to them, “I know you won’t always trash your room.” So you remove the things that you need to remove, and then you ask them, “Is there anything that you want to remove?”

    The challenge here is it can feel like giving in. It feels like letting them get away with it. If you just accept this behavior as a reality, does that mean you’re condoning? It. No, no, no, no. But in reality, it’s accepting that controlling one’s temper has lots of developmental challenges. These kids have growing frontal lobes growing impulse control and of course, growing in learning to manage anxiety. They’re growing.

    Meanwhile, we’re going to work on their anxiety. Not because their behavior is bad. Not because we’re trying to fix the behavior. But because anxiety is difficult and painful. And as our child learns to manage their anxiety, we will see changes in their angry outbursts.

    In anxiety we’re working on lots of things.

    We’re working on their coping tools, their ability to handle this regulation and discomfort. And the big one is their sense of self. And that’s why hope is so important. If your child sees themselves as someone who is out of control, of course they will act out of control. This is what I mean by accepting that your child is going to act out of control until they don’t. That’s where the hope comes in.

    So you say to your child, “You are struggling with this but you will not always struggle. You’re going to get better at it until you get better at it. I need to protect you. I need to protect your siblings, myself, the household, whatever it is.”

    Now I want you to think, how would your management of this situation change if you gave up on the idea that your child. Is capable of handling their temper right now. And that is at the heart of Ross Green‘s work, which is kids do well, if they can and is at the heart of the bill of rights for anxious kids.

    When we see them as growing individuals who are struggling, then we are working with them with an acknowledgement they’re not ready yet. This is your anxious child with a temper, just like having a toddler who’s a messy eater. Toddlers are going to be messy eaters until they have the skills to eat neatly. Kids who are struggling with their tempers because of anxiety are going to continue to lash out until they have the skills not to. Meanwhile, we work on the anxiety with the understanding that as they get better control over their anxiety, as they grow in those developmental skills — the impulse control, the handling dysregulation, the concept of themselves as someone who can handle things well — we will see changes.

    Now it can feel really slow going for the parent and this is why I think it’s so important to have helpers. Whether that’s a therapist, an understanding family member, a group of friends who also have kids with big behaviors. Maybe it’s a support program like mine, but basically people who can help you see the growth, even when you feel stuck in it.

    I can remember working with a family who had a child who used to be really destructive — punching holes in walls — and things got better and they got better. Then one day the child slipped because we’re going to slip as we’re growing and punched a hole in the wall again. the parents said, “Oh my gosh, are we right back at the beginning? Are we starting over?”

    We were able to look together and say, this is the first time in a long time that my child has done this. They are growing and getting better. Sure, they had a slip, but the work that we’ve done is making a difference. Look at how well they’re doing, let’s look at all of their successes. Then that family was able to share that with the child because they get discouraged, too. They think of themselves as people who are problems, who are upsetting, the family who are destructive, it takes time to change that mindset.

    So the answer is what can you do about your anxious child’s temper is accept that the temper is an issue and start making plans to protect the people and things, the household, the other family members and meanwhile, get to work on the anxiety. Accept that your child is going to lash out. Figure out how you would like to keep everybody safe and focus on the anxiety. Usually that means starting with baby steps.  

    If you’re struggling with this if you’re not sure how to do it please reach out to me and let’s see if child anxiety support could be a help.

     

     

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    How do I stop getting angry with my anxious child?

    Podcast

    Our very first question for this year is: “How do I stop getting angry with my anxious child?” This is a really good question. I wouldn’t be surprised if the person asking this question is feeling guilty about getting angry with their anxious child so the first thing I want to do is assure you that getting angry with your kids is normal.

    Anger is just a feeling and feelings are neutral. It’s okay if you get angry with your kids; it’s how we express the anger that matters. So when you say, how do I stop getting angry with my anxious child? My answer would first be it’s okay that you’re getting angry. Now, if you’re yelling or if your anger is making things more difficult, if you’re snapping at them or if anger is motivating how you care for them when they’re anxious that can certainly be an issue.

    And again, I want you to stop feeling guilty about this and just recognize that. Anger is normal. So let’s talk a little bit about why anger is normal being around anxious people makes us anxious. If our kids are anxious, we’re going to catch their anxiety and anxiety can feel like irritability and tension, right? Because anxiety sends us to fight or flight or freeze and fight looks angry, right?

    Fllight can also look like anger. It can look like impatience. It can look like wanting to get away from the child, wanting to push the child away. And freeze can look like shutting down, ignoring them, turning away from them. 

    These are all things that we may interpret as anger and actually it’s that fight, flight or freeze we’re catching from our anxious child.

    Now the fact that we’re catching it again is totally neutral. We’re catching it. Anxiety is meant to be caught. We are meant to catch each other’s fears so that we can do things to protect ourselves. Let’s just forgive ourselves about that. Instead let’s talk about what we can do to take care of our anger, our irritability, our want to ignore them.

    So the first step is understanding that anger is normal. And the next thing is to look at what might be underneath the anger. So we talked a little bit about fight, flight or freeze, but here I want to share an activity that is in the Child Anxiety Support membership site. There’s a part of the site that’s called CBT Family. I describe this as a recipe box of ideas, activities and things you can do to teach your child cognitive behavioral tools as they continue to learn how to cope with their anxiety. CBT Family has a series of categories so that you can think about which tools your child might need as they deal with their anxiety. Those categories include things like understanding anxiety, self-esteem and self-concept, calm down tools and feelings literacy. And this activity that I’m going to share with you is under feelings literacy, and it’s called angry sandwiches.

    I used to use a card game called Schmear, which is with bagels because you can buy that really easily on Amazon or any store that sells games. And this Schmear has pictures of bagels. And then the kinds of things you might put on a bagel like Nova lox and cucumber and cream cheese, these basic things you might put on a bagel. And what I did was take the bagels and write ANGER. That’s the basic emotion, the essential ingredient to our Angry Sandwiches. And then on each of the different kinds of toppings, I put different emotions that anger covers up. Anger is a secondary emotion. It covers up the primary emotion in other words, anger is always fueled by other feelings. 

    Not all kids are familiar with bagels or the kinds of things we put on bagels so I also made sandwiches by just cutting out pieces of paper in the shape of bread, writing ANGER on it, laminating it, and then things like lettuce and cheese and tomatoes, onions, different things to make angry sandwiches.

    First, I’m going to tell you what the other emotions are that we might put on our angry bread or angry bagel. And that would be, are you ready? Sadness. Guilt. Frustration. Disappointment. Embarrassment. Jealousy. Hurt. Shame and fear. So when a child is feeling angry, I would say to them, What’s on your angry sandwich? Let’s build your angry sandwich and they would identify these other emotions and put them on the sandwich. And then we would pretend to eat the sandwich. Or I have the little angry guy from Inside Out, the little red guy, and he would eat the sandwich. And it was a really good activity for kids to explore what other feelings were inside their anger.

    We would do this for their own experience and then we also might talk about other people. I might say, “When your parent got angry with you what do you think was on their angry sandwich?” Then we would bring the parent into session and have them talk together about what was in my angry sandwich to also help kids understand that parental anger is complicated too. Their own anger is complicated. Parental anger is complicated.

    We, as parents, can benefit from doing this activity as well. What’s on your angry sandwich when your child is anxious. Let’s go back through those again. It’s sadness, guilt, frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, jealousy, hurt, shame or fear.

    When you get angry with your anxious child, what’s happening? Part of it is you’re catching their anxiety. So that would be fear. Fear would be on your sandwich. Maybe you’re catching their anxiety and you yourself are just feeling some fear. But what often happens is we’re feeling afraid of what their anxiety is going to do.

    We’re afraid that they are going to continue to struggle with anxiety. That their anxiety is going to be out of control, that their behavior is going to be out of control that people are going to judge them. That they are never going to learn how to cope with it, all these things we might be afraid of, but other things might be on our angry sandwich too. So let’s run through the list. It could be sadness because it’s hard to watch our children suffer. And that makes us sad. It could be guilt. We may feel like a bad parent for having an anxious child or feel guilty.

    We don’t know how to handle it or feel guilty that we are getting angry. We might be frustrated. And in fact, every angry sandwich I have ever made. For myself with a child. With a parent in session. Frustration is always there. There can be disappointment. We may feel disappointed that our children are not handling this better. We’re disappointed in ourselves for not handling it better.

    We can certainly be embarrassed. If there are other people around, we may feel embarrassed by our child’s behavior or our own behavior. Jealousy can come up to if we have friends or family who seem to have an easier time parenting. We may feel jealous about that. And so some of our anger might have jealousy or resentment.

    We may be hurt by the things that our anxious child says to us like you’re the worst parent ever. You just want me to do badly, or we feel hurt because. We are struggling with their pain and that’s causing us pain. And we may have shame at our inability to cope with their anxiety or shame that we have a child that has such a difficult time.

    In short, there are many reasons why you might feel angry with your anxious child. 

    So back to the question. Can you stop being angry with your anxious child? I would say worry less about stopping it. And learn more about caring for it, which is what we’re working on with our child as well. 

    We are not going to be able to stop our anxious child from being anxious. We want them to learn how to cope with their anxiety. 

    That’s the same thing for us. We may or may not be able to stop feeling angry with our anxious child. Sometimes going through the angry sandwich activity will help us deal with that anger and magically, it goes away when we recognize it as these other feelings, but if you continue to get angry with your anxious child, just notice that’s happening.

    It does not have to drive your behavior. 

    I often got angry when my kids were anxious because I was catching their anxiety. I recognized that and learned that before I deal with them, I need to deal with myself. Whether that means taking a deep breath and shaking off these feelings I’m having, whether it means removing myself from the situation until I can get some perspective. 

    Usually what happens for me when I get angry is that I try to remind myself not to do anything, not to do anything yet, not to knee jerk my way into a reaction and instead recognize I am really feeling this. I’m really feeling this anger. I need to stretch out my shoulders. I need to get some physical distance. And then I’m able to respond and sometimes my response is: “I can’t help yet. I can’t help right now. I need you to give me a minute.”

    That’s perfectly fine because anger is not driving my behavior. I hope that’s helpful. I hope that maybe you’ll think about trying the angry sandwich activity.

    And let me know how it goes for you. Let me know what your thoughts are. What is underneath your anger, what is on your angry sandwich? And this is an activity you might do with your child sometime when they’re calm to revisit a situation. You could share with them. This is what’s on my angry sandwich. This is why I was having a hard time helping you when you wanted my help.

    What was on your angry sandwich when you realized I wasn’t going to be able to help. If you have other questions that you’d like me to address on the show, you know what you need to do. Go here to ask your question.

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    Why isn’t therapy working for my anxious child?

    Podcast

    This is such a useful question and I’m really glad that a listener submitted it. Now the poster didn’t say what they meant by “working” so I’m going to assume that their anxious child is still anxious even though they’re in therapy and that’s how I’m going to answer it. So. Why isn’t the therapy working? Why is your child still anxious?

    There could be several reasons. Let’s walk through them.

    First of all, it may be the wrong therapist for your child. The greatest predictor of therapeutic success, meaning the client makes progress towards their goals, is a good fit therapist and that means different things for different people. Same goes for kids. Think about all the teachers you had growing up. I’m sure you liked some of them more than others. Just being a teacher doesn’t make you the best teacher for every student. My very most favorite teacher, Mrs. Schwartz, made my third grade an absolute dream. Then when my little brother got her, his third grade didn’t go as well. She just wasn’t the same personality fit for him that she was for me.

    If you’re not sure if the therapist is a good fit, ask your child and ask the therapist. How do they think things are going? Is the child participating? Are they sharing in session? Does the therapist feel like they have a handle on what’s going on? 

    A wrong therapy fit may also be that the therapist doesn’t see things in the same way that the family does — whether that’s the parent or the child. Let’s pretend a therapist is working with the Ingall’s family, you know from Little House on the Prairie. Carrie was always kind of nervous in those books, right? So maybe the family brings Carrie to therapy and the therapist says, “Your family needs to quit moving around all of the time. This constant traveling around the country is a covered wagon is too disruptive for a child like Carrie.” And the family’s like, “Hey, listen, that’s how we do things. Telling us to just stop isn’t helpful or realistic.” See, that might be a poor fit. They might do better with a therapist who’s like, “Yeah, my dad moved us a lot, too, I get it. I know how it is. I can totally address this with Carrie in session.” 

    It may be that therapy isn’t working because the therapist has a different conceptualization of what’s going on. So make sure you know what the treatment plan is — what are the goals? Maybe your child isn’t reaching them because you and the therapist have totally different ideas about what should be happening next. Maybe you’re hoping they deal with your child’s sleep problems and they’re working on test anxiety. Keep those lines of communication open so that  you’re sharing and collaborating.   

    Sometimes, especially with younger children, the therapist isn’t offering developmentally appropriate interventions. Working with kids is a specialized skill that requires specialized training. I remember talking to one family who took their kindergartener to someone who said they worked with younger kids but had no toys in their office other than an antique tin ferris wheel that the child wasn’t allowed to touch. The younger the child is, the more therapy should be play-focused.

    Another reason that your child’s therapy may not be working is because your child isn’t interesting in changing. Now there are ways to work on motivating an unmotivated child or teen for sure but ultimately we cannot force ANYONE to behave differently if they don’t want to. Some children resent being in therapy and won’t participate. Some children will perform well in therapy — doing what the therapist asks, answering questions — but it’s all surface-level and the child is unwilling or unable to bring that work out into the real world. 

    Lots of times kids are coming to therapy not because they want to be there but because their parents have decided they need to be there. Or the child is willing to come but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to really participate. The anxious child might not be interested in learning new skills or facing their fears. They might not care whether or not their parents stop nagging because their fear is greater than their discomfort with their parents’ reactions.

    I’ll tell you that my bias is not to send kids to therapy against their will. Especially if they’re anxious children. That’s because therapy is likely to be something they will want or need later on in their life and I think it’s important that they have a good feeling about it. I have a strong pro-therapy bias, obviously, and I don’t think anyone especially kids should be coerced into going because it’s likely to give them a bad feeling about counseling and make it more difficult for them to reach out when they’re ready.

    Another reason therapy might not be working is that the parent isn’t doing their part in creating change. I’m not blaming the parent here. Sometimes this is because they don’t even know they’re supposed to be doing anything. If the therapist isn’t sharing that with them, how would they? 

    Even if an anxious child is in therapy, if their environment isn’t shifting to supporting instead of accommodating their anxiety, then the anxiety will continue. And even if the child is making progress in session if they aren’t getting the opportunity to practice coping, to confront their anxiety, and deal with their discomfort then the progress will only exist in session.

    In my own clinical practice a frequent challenge would be that I would work with a child on an anti-anxiety plan that was clear, that the child agreed to, and was committed to, and was ready to implement and then they would take that plan home with the parent and the parent would unintentionally undermine it. The child would be ready to do the difficult thing — whether that was to confront the challenge at school or socially — and the parent in an effort to be helpful would undo that child’s hard work and preparation by questioning them or reassuring them or interrupting the process.

    This could look like a child about to step on stage and the parent says, “Are you sure you’re ready?”

    Or the child is trying to sleep alone and becomes tearful and the parent says, “Do you just want to try tomorrow?”

    Basically the child may be doing the prep work but still needs their parent to hold the boundaries and to remind them of their skills.

    No matter how often I was telling the parent they needed to do this part, for some parents it was just really hard. They needed more direction and more encouragement which is why ultimately I shifted to working directly with parents. As I dug into the research, it became clear that the real key to change for anxious children and teens is their parents. If the parents can do their part, then the children — even without therapy — are able to do theirs. 

    I personally think an ideal situation is the anxious child would be in therapy with a good fit therapist and the child’s parents would be working in or with a program like mine. That one-two punch is the best bet to learning to deal with child anxiety. If a therapist isn’t available for the child — and I know there’s a shortage right now — or the child is unwilling to go, that doesn’t have to stop the parents from doing their own learning and shifting the way they deal with anxiety in their home. 

    I’m curious, if therapy hasn’t worked for your child, which of these issues do you think was contributing to that? Or was it something I didn’t mention here? Feel free to let me know and reach out if you have any questions or thoughts. 

     

     

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    How do I change my anxious child?

    Podcast

    Our question this week is simplified for the podcast title but it’s part of a longer question. The asker described their situation — they have an anxious child, the child is older elementary age, and the child isn’t interested in dealing with their anxiety often melting down when the parent attempts to talk to them about it. And the parent wants to know, how do I get my child’s buy in. How do I talk them into dealing with their anxiety. How do I make them change.

    The short answer is you can’t. We can’t make anyone change. If you get into a power struggle with your child, you have already lost. They are better rested than you and they aren’t going to get distracted by things like needing to pay the mortgage or laundry. So before you try to change your child, give up on changing your child.

    But just because you can’t win a power struggle doesn’t mean that you’re not powerful because you are. You are in charge of the environment and you are in charge of yourself and what you choose to do. So those are things you can and you should focus on changing.

    At the heart of child anxiety is their relationship with you. That’s where we find the answers in treating their anxiety. You hold the key. And all of the hard work that you’ve done to build a loving, respectful, and responsive relationship is going to pay off when you turn your attention to helping your child meet the challenges of their anxiety. 

    This is true for all facets of parenting and there’s a paradox at play here and in fact at play in all of parenting. That is that you are deeply essentially part of your child and they are entirely their own person having their own experience. It’s within this paradox that change happens.

    Let me explain.

    In parenting, especially in highly attuned and connected parenting, we and our children are sharing experiences. We are catching each other’s moods. We are impacting each other’s functioning. If your child is in a bad mood, you might feel bad and vice versa. If you are worried about something, your child might catch your worry. We are living in the same space. You are choosing fundamental experiences for them like the food they put in their bodies and the clothes they put on their backs. You are choosing where you both live. Whether or not details like open windows, colors of carpet, the presence of pets. You share relationships with other family members and other people outside the family. 

    At the same time, you are having entirely separate experiences. You may love the open window and your child might find the sounds coming in from the street annoying or upsetting. You may be struggling with your child’s other parent and they are full of adoration for that other parent. You may serve oatmeal for breakfast and buy them a cozy sweater for chilly days and they may insist on Lucky Charms and choose to wear their favorite tee shirt no matter how cold it is that day.

    And you may want them to deal with their anxiety and they are strongly committed to the avoidance that makes their anxiety worse. You can’t change that for them. You can’t change their commitment. You can’t talk them into it. So you will have to change yourself.

    One of the most important things you can and should do is realize that your child’s anxiety belongs to them. It is part of their journey as a human being. Your anxiety — even if your anxiety is about them — belongs to you, not them. You have to figure that piece out. I talk to parents who get confused — where does their anxiety leave off and their child’s begin? Or they don’t know how to tease out the differences between them.

    This essential separation is at the heart of parenting. It’s the work we’re doing for 18 plus years with an emphasis on the plus. We are dancing the weaning dance all of our parenting careers — figuring out when to step in, when to step away, when to offer support or advice, and when to let it go. Very often any conflict we are feeling in our relationship with our child goes back to this essential work. Either they are wanting more separation or we are wanting more separation and we are constantly pushing and pulling to figure it out.

    It’s inevitable that we’re going to make some mistakes and step on each other’s toes. I think there is so much learning in these conflicts. Anytime you’re hitting a point where you are fed up with parenting in general or your child in particular, you can look to see at it’s roots there is this push/pull happening.

    This is especially true with anxiety. 

    You cannot make your child learn the skills they need to handle their anxious emotions but you can offer them. You can make them part of your family culture in the same way that you have shared your other beliefs, your other expectations, and your other everyday routines. You can show them by internalizing and practicing these skills yourself. You can use them to deal with any anxiety you have about your child’s anxiety. Children learn directly but also through observation. A child who is reluctant or resistant to learning is not going to be happy when you tell them to learn anyway. But if you do the learning yourself, they’re going to pick up on it. 

    You can also decide your boundaries. Remember that your child’s experience of anxiety is theirs. But your experience of raising an anxious child is yours and you get to decide how you’d like to manage that. If you are experiencing frustration or unhappiness because your child’s anxiety seems to be demanding particular behavior from you, you can choose whether or not to continue with that behavior, to cease it altogether, or to change it. When you change things — whether it’s your behavior, or the environment — that will change things for your child. 

    When we recognize and address the parenting pitfalls of anxiety, and change what we do, that’s how our child changes. 

    Child anxiety tends to enmesh parents and children. It gets us all tangled up and forgetting or misunderstanding what belongs to us and what belongs to them. It’s the parental dilemma but on steroids. If you are unsure of where to start, I encourage you to go to childanxietysupport.com/pitfalls that will lead you to my quiz based on the research about how parents get stuck in parenting their anxious kids. Once you’ve taken it if you have questions, please reach out to me. 




    How do I change my anxious child? Read More »

    How do we know when to push our anxious child and when not to push?

    Podcast



    How can we tell between a child’s anxiety about an activity and their genuine dislike for an activity? 

    This is such a good question but I’m afraid I”m going to disappoint you with not such a great answer and that is, you might not be able to tell. And in fact, your child might not be able to tell.

    And part of that is because if you think about it, we’ve got reason to dislike doing things that scare us. It’s why I’m never going to learn to ski. Going down hill fast is my idea of a terrible time because it scares me. I wear the brakes out on my bike because I keep ‘em on when I’m going down hills.

    So I dislike going fast downhill and I dislike it because it scares me; it’s not fun. 

    But using my brakes on my bike and not learning to ski doesn’t hamper my life in any way. Now someone who loves to ski might say I’m missing out but it’s a choice I’m perfectly content to make. 

    On the other hand, there are other ways I’ve confronted my fears like public speaking. It scares the heck out of me but I’ve also learned to enjoy it. The results are worth it to me. So I have had opportunity to face my fears and learn to cope with my anxiety to access the opportunities I want to access.

    With kids it’s harder because they don’t really have the far range thinking to figure out what’s worth it and what’s not. So we have to be part of that decision-making with them, which is really difficult. For one thing, we might have strong feelings about what’s worth it and what’s not.

    If I’d grown up in a family where skiing was my parents’ favorite winter sport, maybe I would have conquered that fear because it would have been part of the family functioning to go skiing. I don’t know. Maybe it would have been worth it, right? To not miss out with the family. Or maybe I would have thrown such a fuss that I would have stayed at the lodge sipping cocoa. 

    It depends on a lot, doesn’t it?

    When you’re trying to figure it out, you’re going to have to look at the big picture. Generally anxious kids have anxiety that shows up in many different places. Figuring out where to address it, where to start, is part of figuring out how to parent a child with anxiety. 

    How we make decisions in addressing our child’s worry will depend on how we consider a number of things:

    1. How is our family functioning? Where are we — all of us — struggling most? 
    2. How is our child’s functioning? Where are they feeling most limited or unhappy?
    3. How much time and energy do we have to tackle things right now? Are we ready to dive in and do big work? Or do we need to focus on small wins?
    4. How anxious is our child? Are we talking about every day niggling fears or are we talking about great big disruptive meltdowns?
    5. How motivated is our child? How interested are they in change?
    6. Are there skills we need to address first either in ourselves or our child? Are we able to cope when they’re not able to cope?

    It’s a long list and we haven’t really dug into the details involved in each of those decisions. They’re all worth a conversation. 

    Choosing where to address our child’s anxiety is intensely person. It depends so much on what we value and what we hope our children will value. If we know our child meltdown when we push, we have to know what’s worth pushing and how to do the pushing so there’s growth. 

    We need to be realistic about our kids and their capacity

    And we also need to be realistic about ourselves. Learning to parent an anxious child means shifting our perspective as well as changing our behavior. That perspective change is critical and that’s a bigger challenge than remembering to respond with this when our child does that. We need to know why we respond that way and we need to buy into it. 

    For some kids and families we need to start super small. We need some easy wins before we head to the big targets. This is especially true for very sensitive children and very sensitive parents. We need time to acclimate and experience ourselves as a family that can do this hard work. 

    For super motivated kids and families, we can start with the heavy hitters. We can sprint right to the top and dive into bigger exposures.

    As an example, we might have two families with 10-year olds who are still asking parents to stay in their room until they fall asleep and that’s where the parents are hoping to see some change.

    But maybe one child is dealing with the recent death of a beloved pet. Or is having a hard time in school. Or has no interest in sleeping alone. And the other child is more motivated. Or has less pressing worries outside of sleep. 

    And we can look at the parents. Maybe the parent of one child has been working overtime. Or is worried about budgeting for the holidays. Or gets completely wound up when their child is crying. On the other hand, the other parent has a good friend who has offered to sit with them while they deal with bedtime. Or has a great meditation practice that helps them stay calm. Or is just fed up enough that they’re clear that this is what they want to do.

    Any combination of this — a motivated child but a waffling parent or vice versa — makes it a whole unique proposition.

    You know you’re pushing too much when you get overwhelmed either with your own emotional reactions or with your child’s. The people who I work with don’t tend to be people who are unreasonable with their kids. I tend to work with people who identify as gentle parents or respectful parents or attachment parents — there are a lot of terms that basically mean highly attuned, thoughtful, sensitive parents who care deeply about their parenting. These parents tend to go much easier on their kids than on themselves. They tend to sacrifice their own well being for the sake of their children in ways that don’t serve the family well. So I am less concerned that they are being too pushy with their anxious children and more concerned that they are pulling back too soon.

    Or they are focusing on one area that is less important than another. So they are putting their energy in an anxious area that doesn’t necessarily align with their family values because they are trying to do what they think they ought to do. Parents of anxious kids — especially the ones who act out — are generally dealing with a lot of criticism and concern from others. Sometimes what we need to do is get really honest about what matters to us most. Maybe we don’t care about sitting with a sleep 10-year old but we do really want them to go to soccer practice.

    See, those are very personal decisions. 

    When you’re trying to figure out when to push and when not to push, I’d say where are you and your child most unhappy? Where is the easiest win? Start with that easy win and build on it. You both need to start experiencing your child as someone who is capable and brave. That can be very tiny. It can be a child who tolerates being alone on one floor of the house for two minutes longer than they used to tolerate it. Celebrate that success and go a little further. When you’ve got a handle in that area, look for where you’d like to take those skills next.

    When it comes to parenting anxious kids, it’s a dance we’ll be doing all of our lives together. We’ll always be learning how to support without creating dependency, how to cheer them up even when we ourselves are scared, how to cope with our anxiety as we continue to celebrate their growth.



    How do we know when to push our anxious child and when not to push? Read More »

    What if my child’s anxiety is rooted in real fear?

    Podcast

    The example that came in with this question was specifically about a child who was being bullied at school and so was afraid to go to school. Well, that’s not an anxiety disorder, that’s appropriate anxiety. If the situation is not safe then the child’s anxiety is serving its purpose. That is what anxiety is supposed to do. We cannot address anxiety unless things are safe.

    So before we can face our anxiety, we need to be clear. Is this appropriate anxiety? Is it keeping us safe from something that is truly dangerous? Or is it dysfunctional anxiety? Is it keeping us from growing through our lives?

    Sometimes this is an easy thing to figure out. If you have a child who is afraid of your neighbor’s friendly toothless basset hound, that’s pretty simple. A friendly toothless basset hound is unlikely to be harmful. You can definitely do some exposures to help your child confront their anxiety in that situation.

    But sometimes it’s more challenging. If a child is refusing school because they are being bullied as in our questioners situation, then school is not safe. If a child is refusing school because they were once being bullied but now are safe and are protected from the bully or the bully has been removed, that’s a bit more complicated. 

    It will take careful planning because we’re not just dealing with the anxiety, the child also needs support in healing from the experience of being bullied.

    In other words, if a child’s anxiety is rooted in appropriate fear then we need to get them safe. It is not dysfunctional anxiety; it is protective anxiety. 

    Once the child is safe, facing their anxiety in supported ways can be a truly healing experience. This might mean trauma-informed counseling. This might mean helping the child connect to resources that allow them to see themselves as someone who can access supports and advocate for themselves.This also might mean changing the environment entirely, for example, if that particular school is an overall poor fit, changing the school is not avoiding; it’s choosing a better fit. 

    I want to stop for a minute and dig into this a bit more from the parents perspective. Because it’s been my experience that we, as parents, often need to address our own neglected experiences of harm in order to take care of our anxious kids. Sometimes we struggle to assess for safety because we ourselves struggle, due to our own anxiety, to know what is safe. 

    I’ll use a very clear example from my own life. I have always been afraid of water. I think, as an aside, that this is related to undiagnosed and unaddressed vestibular and proprioceptive sensory issues. In any case, I am very afraid when I am in water over my head. It’s something I avoid. Because of this, it was difficult for me to watch my children swim in deep water. Heck, I can’t even watch the shipwreck scenes in Castaway. I mean it, this is a big fear of mine. Anyway, because of this I was not involved in teaching my kids to swim. I had to farm that out. I also had to sometimes walk away when they were swimming with their dad. I just can’t really assess safety in those situations. I know this about myself and I built supports that allowed my children to grow despite my own anxiety. They both love to swim. I’m never gonna like it but that’s ME. I can’t visit that on them without limiting their lives.

    Like I said, that’s a very clear example. 

    Other examples from my own life are more challenging. I also struggle with social anxiety and so when my kids had a social challenge it could be difficult for me to assess whether or not the situation was truly safe. I can look objectively at them swimming in a pool with an attentive adult nearby and know it’s ok even if it feels scary to me. That’s not necessarily true with social situations. 

    In those cases, it took more effort to figure out what was mine and what was theirs. This became particularly salient when my daughter, who had been homeschooled all through elementary school, decided to attend middle school.

    Can we just stop and acknowledge the tremendous bravery of this kid who decided her first introduction to traditional school would be in seventh grade. Needless to say, my own experience of middle school was terrible. I say that it’s needless to say because ain’t that the truth for many of us. In particular I did have a bully in eighth grade so when my daughter dealt with some mean kids, I had to work very hard to recognize that her experience was not my experience. That her school was altogether a safer, more attentive environment than mine was. That she had parents who were involved and able to coach her through difficult social situations, while my parents were simply unable to be there for me in that way. In short, I had to recognize that her anxiety was not my fear and so she could safely confront it.

    I didn’t need to pull her out of school. I didn’t need to march to the guidance counselor’s office and demand that they move my child to another classroom. I didn’t need to call up the other kids’ parents and ask for a mediation. In short, while our situations had similarities, my daughter was safe. She was anxious, for sure, but she was safe. And so we were able to come up with a plan that allowed her to confront her anxiety, deal with the bully, and grow stronger through the experience.

    SWhen we check for safety around our child’s anxiety — when we stop and assess are they safe? Is their anxiety protective? Or is it limiting? We also need to check in and see if we need to address our own history and take care of some old wounds.

    This is all very tricky. I often say that parenting is the most triggering thing you can do. It’s hard work. It’s heavy lifting. But ultimately I believe that our experiences in parenting are opportunities for growth and healing.

    I think sometimes in an effort to be clear and concise, I send the message that anxiety is always and easily cured by exposure and that’s definitely an oversimplification. Anxiety is complex, people are complex. Exposures, frankly, are also complex. Addressing anxiety must be personalized and fit not just the individual but also the individual’s family. School refusal is one situation that brings up all of this. The child’s real experience, the child’s perceived experience, the child’s temperament, goodness of fit in the school, the family’s history, the family’s needs, the surrounding culture. And on and on and on. 

    There’s not one right way to do this. There’s not a singular best practice. It’s personal. If you need support, you know what to do. Reach out. Let’s talk. 



    What if my child’s anxiety is rooted in real fear? Read More »

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