Take the Quiz!

Dawn Friedman MSEd

Is failure to launch caused by anxiety?

Podcast

First let’s talk about what failure to launch is. What do we mean when we use that term? Failure to launch is generally used to describe a young adult child who is struggling with the transition to adulthood.

Maybe they’re struggling to get a job, to get their own housing. Maybe they meant to enroll in school and haven’t been able to or have dropped out. Sometimes parents talk about their adult children who have difficult connecting with people their own age or out in the quote real world. Perhaps they aren’t keeping up with their responsibilities at home like cooking for themselves or their family or cleaning up after themselves.

But failure to launch in itself isn’t a diagnosis. It’s more of a cultural description about our social expectations for older teens and young adults and the way that some individuals struggle with these expectations.

And speaking of culture, failure to launch only exists in the context of these expectations. Some families may expect adult children to live at home for some time. Some parents may have different goals for their adult children. But when I hear parents use that term — failure to launch — I understand what they’re describing is their family’s frustration and worry about that adult child’s functioning. And that adult child may share that worry or may not.

So why might an adult child struggle in this way?

Well, we need to acknowledge that there are factors outside of the individual that may create these problems. For example, it’s a lot more difficult to move out on your own then when I was a young adult. Back then minimum wage in Ohio was $3.35 and my share of the rent was $187.50. Now minimum wage here is $9.30 but if I lived in that apartment today my share of the rent would be around $1200. Which is to say it was much easier to launch in the past. So let’s definitely acknowledge that.

Now back to the original question, is failure to launch caused by anxiety? And the answer is maybe. Sure, sometimes. Or anxiety may play a part. Like all things, it’s complicated.

But let’s talk about anxiety, specifically young adult anxiety that keeps that person feeling trapped at home longer than they want or perhaps longer than their parents want. Yes, that’s a thing. Absolutely. And it deserves care and attention.

One of the reasons I don’t like the term “failure to launch” is because of its emphasis on FAILURE. And my experience in working with those families is that everyone is already feeling overwhelmed with the idea of failure. Parents are dealing with criticism — why haven’t you kicked that kid out of there already? Why are you holding them back? And certainly the young adults themselves are facing their own sense of failure in not accessing whatever it is they believe they should be able to access by now. Failure just isn’t really a helpful way to frame it. Instead, like all developmental challenges in growing up, we can consider where and how people are getting stuck. 

If we’re talking about anxiety specifically, the idea of failure is going to make everyone much more anxious. I think it’s more helpful to talk about lagging skills. That is to say, that the adult child is needing to work on and improve specific skills that will help them move on and launch. 

We’ve said before that anxiety is about avoidance and it’s also about dread. I hear more and more and more from older teens who have very real dread about the future. And it’s no wonder if you glance at the news. They’re worried about being able to handle the demands and some of them become so overwhelmed that they freeze. That’s anxiety. What they need from us is help to face those fears, tolerate the distress of stepping out of their comfort zone, and adults who believe in them.

As parents, when children — even adult children — are struggling or have struggled or have faced very real challenges and setbacks, it’s hard not to steel ourselves for more of that. We may unintentionally send a message that they are not prepared to handle the quote “real world” end quote. We may do this by rescuing them or by second guessing their choices when they do make an attempt to reach out. We may try to take charge by calling their bosses or college instructors or making ourselves necessary when really we’re supposed to be making ourselves obsolete. 

These are hard lessons for parents. Again, with anxiety, it makes sense that we fall into these parenting pitfalls where we mean to help and instead perpetuate the anxiety. If we do too much caretaking, too much interfering, too much helping we end up sending the message that they can’t handle things on their own.

What I’ve heard some parents say when we talk about this is, But what if they CAN’T handle things on their own. What if they really can’t? Well, then we work on creating baby steps to move them forward and to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not an easy 1 – 2 – 3 kind of plan. It’s a tricky, sticky, deeply individualized plan.

I’d recommend that the adult child get their own counseling and that the parents get education and support, too, separately but complementary. The adult child has their own work to do but the parents will need to learn and understand how they can best support them in reaching their goals. If the adult child is unwilling to get counseling, the parents can still do their part and get their own help.

The SPACE program, which Child Anxiety Support is partially based on, has been shown to be effective in helping families who are struggling with launching. You can see what I have to offer or go to spacetreatment.net to find other practitioners doing this work.

Is failure to launch caused by anxiety? Read More »

How do you distinguish between ADHD and anxiety in children?

Podcast

This is a great question because ADHD — Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder — is often co-occuring with anxiety in kids and in adults but they can also look very similar. Let’s dig into that a little bit. Let’s talk about the ways anxiety can look similar to ADD or ADHD? Well, some of the symptoms show up in both diagnosis. Symptoms like:

  • Fidgeting
  • Distraction
  • Difficulty keeping track of things
  • Do not seem to listen
  • Problems staying focused
  • Problems staying organized
  • Forgetfulness
  • Impulsivity

These symptoms are present in ADD and ADHD because the child’s brain works differently. They tend to struggle with executive functioning, which basically means the part of their brain that does the planning and organizing works differently than neurotypical people. People with ADD/ADHD may be able to hold a lot of thoughts at once — I tell kids it means they have a busy brain — and tend to struggle with staying on task. This can be confusing since they also are able to hyper focus, which means to put all of their attention on one thing no matter what else is going on. This is the child who can lose themselves in building legos even if there is a literal tornado going on around them. 

Ok back to the symptoms that are also present in Anxiety.

Anxious children may also fidget, get distracted, have trouble focusing, listening, being organized and keeping track of things. They may be forgetful. This is because they are on high alert. Anxious children are often keyed up. They may be quick to respond to perceived threats so may seem impulsive. They may also struggle with executive functioning because their planning, organized brain is off-line since they are living in their more reactive brain. Anxious children may spend a lot of time in fight, flight, or freeze mode and so they aren’t thinking with their calm, cool and collected higher order brain.

It gets even more complicated when we consider that about one third of those who are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD also meet criteria for an anxiety diagnosis. There are some studies that indicate that number might be even higher.

Let’s consider why this might be true.

First of all, we live in a world where we expect people to have neurotypical brains. That means our systems — our schools, our workplaces, our childcare centers, our parenting books — assume that we all have brains that function like the average brain. Those children and teens whose brains work differently have to contend with being quote WRONG end quote. They may not get the circle time activities, or appreciate the social nuances of middle school. They may not get why the workplace protocol operates the way it does. They may feel like square pegs getting shoved into round holes and that can create real anxiety. If they feel that they are always missing the point or missing the boat, that’s going to make them feel anxious about their day to day functioning. 

Think of a child who struggles with impulsivity. They are the kids who are reaching out to touch the museum display before you can tell them, “Don’t touch!” They are often in trouble and aren’t sure why or how to be different. You can see how it would make a person anxious, right?

The other thing is that this high impulsivity — this immediate jump from a thought to a behavior — can also happen with an immediate jump from a thought to another more anxious thought. If a child has anxiety and has ADD/ADH, they are more likely for feelings to run away with them. If they think about a dinosaur, they may immediately go to thinking about being eaten by a dinosaur. That executive functioning that helps them slow down and be logical isn’t as strong as that impulsivity. 

Remember in previous episodes we’ve talked about the information processing bias the comes with anxiety — anxious brains tend to be more negative, spotting potential danger even in neutral situations. As you can imagine, when ADD/ADHD is also present, it’s simply easier to jump to the worst possible conclusion more quickly.

Where it definitely matters is when we’re thinking about medication. Stimulant medication, which we use to treat ADD/ADHD, can make anxiety worse. But that’s a discussion to have with your doctor. 

It also matters when we’re talking about school accommodations since your child or teen will need to have an assessment and diagnosis in order to inform the IEP or 504 plans.

But when it comes to treatment, we’re addressing the child and their symptoms and having a clear diagnosis may help with case conceptualization but those of us who work with kids tend to expect things to overlap and be complicated. Knowing if it’s anxiety or if it’s ADD/ADHD may be less important than trying things to see if they’ll work. Sometimes it’s in trying things that we learn what is the most pressing issue. I can think of times when I was working with a child who came to me with an ADD/ADHD diagnosis and as we dove in and made plans with their parents to address their concerns and their child’s challenges, we were able to figure out where anxiety was most present and how to address it with each individual child. In other words, often it is through working with the child that we are able to make recommendations for a better diagnosis and case conceptualization.

How do you distinguish between ADHD and anxiety in children? Read More »

How do I make a decision about anxiety medication for my child?

Podcast

This is not a question that I can easily answer for the podcast because not only am I not a prescriber, but I haven’t met your child or teen. 

I personally feel very cautious about treating child anxiety with medication andI definitely don’t think you should rely on a podcast for that information. Think of this just as a kind of intro; ultimately you need to reach out to your child’s doctor and talk to them about it.

When you’re thinking about medication for your child, what that means obviously is that you and your child are struggling in some way and you’re wanting to know how best to help. 

It’s important to understand that medication is not a cure for anxiety. It’s not like having a headache and taking ibuprofen, and then you feel better. Medication is part of an anxiety treatment plan.

Not every child who meets clinical criteria for an anxiety diagnosis is going to need or benefit from medication. Again, this is very personal. It depends very much on the child and on their environment and on what else might be going on.

The first thing you should do. Is make sure that what you’re dealing with, what your child is dealing with is in fact anxiety.

Anxiety sometimes gets misdiagnosed as other things. Other things sometimes get misdiagnosed as anxiety. So if you’re considering medication, your child is going to need a thorough assessment from someone who is able to do that, and that would be a counselor or a social worker, a psychologist. 

If you wanted to a full neuro psych workup, that would be someone who is sitting with your child and doing a full assessment of how their brain works, how they might be struggling, what their strengths are. Honestly, I think that is really your best bet when you’re thinking about medication, because a neuro psych is going to be qualified to also diagnose ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. Counselors, and social workers are able to do some of that depending on their training, but a neuro psych has that background and the ability to do the full workup. If your child is seeing a counselor, obviously that counselor will know them really well but a neuro-psych is doing a more formal assessment. 

Before you go to medication, it’s important that you try other avenues first. Having your child meet with a counselor for treatment would be a great thing to do. 

Talk therapy, play therapy, basically cognitive behavioral therapy in whatever form is most accessible for your child is a first step in treatment. Also, and you know that I’m going to mention this, you getting your support in order to make sure that your family is creating the healthiest systems for your anxious child is also a first course of treatment. 

A program like mine or another kind of support group, working with your own counselor, family therapy — these are all things to do to make sure that your child is getting the skills that they need. Those are the first steps before you look at medication. 

If it does turn out that it is an appropriate treatment for your child, there is no one who will say, just give your kids the meds and don’t do anything else because meds are only part of it. our child is also going to need to learn their skills. You are going to have to need to learn your skills. And then together with the people who are helping your family, you can start thinking about medication. 

I’m going to link here to a PDF made available by the American academy of child and adolescent psychiatry. That is their specific guide  on treating anxiety disorders with medication, and they’re going to give you information about what medications are available and how they work and how to get access to them. 

A really important thing to know is that there aren’t really a lot of medications that are FDA approved for children, particularly younger children. Now that said there are medications that people use off-label that means it hasn’t specifically been approved for the treatment of kids by the FDA. But there are studies that show that they can be effective and the physician prescribing it believes they can be effective. They are using evidence-based information to make that decision. But you do need to know that because as you’re making your decisions, you should have all the facts right in front of you.

If the child or teenoes meet criteria for medication to be part of their treatment plan the goal is the calm down the anxiety enough for them to access their other treatment, their counseling, their cognitive behavioral therapy and the skills that you’re working at at home, 

That is to say that medication alone is not the recommended form of treatment for kids; it’s medication, along with something else.  

You need to have a plan for who else is going to be supporting your child. What is the plan to get them off medication eventually? Is that going to be part of the plan? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t — that’s between you and your child’s prescribe and of course your child, as they get older and have more decision-making about their medication. But sometimes we’re going to use medication  or a shorter time so the child can access those skills with the hope to eventually take them off their medication. 

Sometimes we’re doing medication for a very short time over specific anxious periods, such as the child who needs to get on a plane or is dealing with short term things that are really difficult. 

Generally when children are prescribed for anxiety, they are given antidepressants and those are the SSRI. Or the SNRI and those change the chemical neurotransmitters in their brain to help regulate anxiety, mood, and social behavior.  

Children who are on SSR eyes, sometimes show an increase of suicidal ideation.  Don’t be so alarmed by that, that you say, absolutely I am not going to allow my child to get on medication. No, it just means that if medication is appropriate for your child, you need to have a plan about that and in that case, I do strongly recommend counseling. 

If the child is on SSRI, I think that it is just that much more important to make sure they’re in counseling. So there’s someone else’s eyes on them, someone who is trained to assess for suicidality and who can support your family in just keeping an eye on your child. 

Another medication that sometimes children are prescribed are Benzodiazepines, we sometimes call those benzos. Those are used for short-term treatment because they can be addictive. And also sometimes the prescriber will say we’re just going to use Benadryl. So if the child is scared of flying and they need to take a flight, That the doctor may say, we’re just going to do some Benadryl or we’re going to do some beta blockers or something like that. 

Those are short term solutions, the SSRI. And SNR eyes tend to be longer-term solution. Benzos, benadryl things like that are kind of one-off medications that might be used in specific circumstances.

Again, these are things you need to talk about with doctor with because treating anxiety is complicated, which goes to, how do you find someone to prescribe this for your kids? 

If your child is going to get medication for mental health then that prescribers should be someone with a psychiatric background, whether that’s an actual child psychiatrist, or a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I think it’s best to go with those kinds of doctors because they do get more training about psychiatric medication and specifically how to prescribe those for growing kids and how to change things up as the child continues to grow. 

I know it can be hard to find a prescriber and sometimes the wait lists are really long so first I encourage you to go to your child’s general practitioner or pediatrician and start the conversation. They may be able to get you in somewhere more quickly. They may feel comfortable making those prescriptions themselves and supervising them and then that’s a conversation to have with them. Why they feel comfortable doing that, how they would know if they weren’t comfortable doing that, what are special things you need to look for?  

I think it’s also important to know that all of us who work with anxious kids, anxious families. We are seeing them through the lens of our background. Because I have a clinical, mental health counseling background, I see it through the lens of counseling. How can I support families in shifting those patterns? What kind of psycho-education can I offer what is the longterm treatment plan and bringing those skills to kids? 

However, when you talk to a medical prescriber, they’re going to see it through the context of their medical training and background. So they may recommend meds and maybe that’s the right choice, maybe it isn’t, but that is how they’re going to see it. They’re going to see it from a medication standpoint. 

You get to ultimately make the decision for your kid. You can talk to a therapist and you should, you can talk to a doctor and you should, you can talk to your child’s teacher, their school counselor, but ultimately you’re going to make the decision. So ask yourself, What is the information I am missing that will help me make that decision. What are the questions I have that need to be answered? What are the concerns that I need to have addressed? And I think it’s really important when we’re talking about meds to say. How will we know if it’s not working? What will our plan B be? And how will we get the child off them? If this is going to be a temporary plan? 

I hope this was helpful if you have other questions please post them and I’ll be happy to answer them on a future podcast

How do I make a decision about anxiety medication for my child? Read More »

How do I help a child with separation anxiety go to sleep?

Podcast

How do I help a child with separation anxiety go to sleep?

I like this question because the person answering it already knows something that a lot of parents miss, which is that sometimes our bedtime challenges with kids have to do with separation anxiety.

Now remember anxiety is more than a preference. Lots of children would prefer to sleep with their parents or have their parents lay down with them to help them fall asleep. And this is absolutely fine as long as it’s fine for the family. Bedtime routines and co-sleeping are personal family choices and if it’s working for the family, great. The concern is when it’s not working for the family. The concern is when

—A parent wants time alone in the evening and can’t get that time because they have to lay down with their kids

—Or when parents and kids are losing sleep

—or when a child would like to go to a slumber party or sleepovers at a grandparents house but they’re afraid and so are reluctantly missing out.

It’s also ok to focus on change because the parents want change. MaybeThey’re sick of laying down with their kids, they’re sick of tantrums when they try to leave, they want their beds back to themselves and can’t get their kids to move out. 

Often the parents I talk to feel guilty because when they push their children to sleep on their own, the kids seem truly unhappy and afraid. the parents may worry that their own need for space or time alone or privacy is selfish.

To that I say, if it’s not working then it’s not working. And the answer isn’t always that parents  just have to suck it up, buttercup. No. This is especially true when we’re talking about anxiety — if we’ve identified separation anxiety as the issue — then it needs attention because anxiety does NOT get better without a plan. 

If you’re not sure whether or not it’s separation anxiety you can look to see if worries about separation are present in other areas for the family 

For example a child who struggles with playdates or getting dropped off at school. Perhaps the parent has trouble leaving the house without the child. I’ve talked to parents whose kids will chase the car down the road because they don’t want their parents to leave.  

Sometimes parents report to me that they aren’t able to go down to the basement to do laundry or that their child will check in if the parent is in the shower for too long. 

But often the problem starts with sleep issues. (I’ll say as an aside, if it’s not anxiety and is a preference — if separation anxiety isn’t present anywhere else — it’s still ok to change things up if you need things to change. It’ll probably just be a bit easier.)

Starting with sleep can make sense for anxiety intervention because it is a regular routine for the family. Remember that anxiety is about avoidance and what the child wants to avoid is separation from you so what you’re going to need to do is separate. 

This sounds simple but of course it’s complicated. In the child Anxiety Support program, specifically the Strong Kids, Strong Families course, we talk about the way to design a personalized plan to address your child’s anxiety. 

The plan needs to include what to do when things go badly. This isn’t pessimistic, it’s realistic. Children who don’t want to do things that scare them will try not to do them. They will cry, they will beg and plead, they may meltdown and get destructive. We need to know what to do when this happens. We need to recognize it as an anxiety response and prepare to care for our kids through it. And for ourselves. 

It’s not easy to see our children struggle and it’s not easy to be the target of that struggle. Not only will we feel impatient and even angry, we also are likely to feel guilty or worried that what we’re doing will somehow harm our child. When we plan for the worst case scenario then we are ready to lovingly, respectfully and supportively address the anxiety.  We know what to do. We already have a response plan in place.

Every child and family and parent is different so your plan needs to make sense for your child and for you and it needs safe for everyone. 

I remember talking to a parent about addressing sleep issues with their child and as they talked through their fears about what might happen, they recognized that some of their fears were unrealistic. 

They also realized that like their child, they were avoiding their own anxiety. Just as their child was avoiding separation because they were anxious about being alone, the parent was avoiding upsetting their child because the parent was anxious about their child’s meltdowns. 

This is why the process is so important; not only are you helping your child to face their anxiety, you are learning to address and manage your own anxiety about your child. This is good stuff. It’s why facing child anxiety heals the whole family.

You might notice here that the first step in helping a child with separation anxiety go to sleep — which was the original question — is not focusing on sleep. It’s focusing on the anxiety. Sleep comes later. Sometimes much later. Sometimes much later that night — I would assume people were going to get to bed late the night that start their intervention — and sometimes much later in the process.

But not always. Often when kids get a taste of their ability to face their fears, they do better. They get stronger. They grow more quickly. It depends on the child, it depends on the plan, it depends on the parents ability to execute that plan, and it depends on how entrenched the family is in their child’s anxiety. The longer the family has been avoiding dealing with the anxiety, the harder it might be to get unstuck. But what a great motivator to deal with it now, right?

If you need help for an under five and getting them to sleep, I’d encourage you to check out Macall Gordon’s work at LittleLiveWires.com. But if your child is five or older and you’re still struggling with bedtime separation, please reach out to me. If you go to my contact page you can reach out to me via the form or even schedule a quick free consult to learn more about the program and see if it’s a fit for your family.

How do I help a child with separation anxiety go to sleep? Read More »

Is social anxiety disorder caused by traumas and bullying?

Podcast

First let’s talk about what social anxiety is and how it’s diagnosed.

Social anxiety is not being introverted and it’s not being shy. Social anxiety is when a child struggles to function in social situations. An introvert may prefer their own company and a child who is shy is a child who is slow to warm up in social situations but they’re able to get there. In social anxiety, the child’s anxiety prevents them from participation. 

There are two aspects to social anxiety. The first is what you might call stage fright where the child’s anxiety is centered around the fear of performance. This isn’t just being afraid of being on stage or public speaking, this is fear of raising their hand in school or ordering at a restaurant or answering the phone or being at an event where they will be seen. The focus here is on the performative aspect of being observed. Most of us don’t want to be the first person on the dance floor, right? Perhaps you can imagine how that feels. The stage fright part of social anxiety is that feeling — that feeling of being first on the dance floor — in any aspect of social performance. So these kids might have trouble getting up in class to sharpen a pencil. They may have bathroom accidents because they can’t ask the teacher to be excused. They might struggle in sports of gym class because they have to practice in front of their classmates or team members. You know, like when your coach lines you up and you take turns running up to kick the soccer ball into the goal. 

The second aspect to social anxiety is about the interaction. This can be present with the performative aspect or may show up on its own. In this case, there is intense worry about disappointing other people or making people mad or having people judge them. They may have trouble making eye contact (and this is separate from children who are on the autism spectrum — social anxiety is often co-diagnosed with spectrum disorders but lack of eye contact is not always an indicator of social anxiety). We all have had those middle of the night worries about having said something stupid after a social event. Most of us can shrug it off; we know people are forgiving and also most people aren’t paying that close of attention to us. But when social anxiety is present, those ruminations about possible social gaffes can be overwhelming. 

Kids with social anxiety fear negative judgment. Their avoidance is around this perceived negative judgment. To avoid it they may limit their socializing or withdraw from social interactions, basically going along to get along. 

In severe cases of social anxiety, the child might also meet criteria for a diagnosis of selective mutism where the child’s anxiety is so great that they are unable to speak to people outside of a select few, usually family members. The child is able to speak — they have no physical limitations — but their fear stops them from speaking.

Our children may ask us to reassure them that no one is mad. They may need to process the event over and over. They may apologize for perceived slights or insults, taking responsibility for things that aren’t an issue.

As an aside, I see so much of this in middle schoolers — such a socially anxious age — where conversation between two kids may halt entirely because they are both so caught up in apologizing for each other. Of course middle schoolers can also be incredibly thoughtless and cruel to each other. It’s a complicated age and the same child who is ultra sensitive in one social context may be clueless in another. There are estimates that up to 30% of adolescents experience some measure of social anxiety — I think it might be under diagnosed since I meet lots of adults who don’t realize that they have social anxiety but instead report that they are just very introverted. 

Which brings us to the original question. Is social anxiety disorder caused by trauma and bullying? The answer is yes, it may be but it isn’t always. 

Some children have a difficult experience in school and this contributes to their understandable fear of continued bullying and unkindness, i.e., social anxiety.

Other children develop social anxiety without a clear precursor. Although there is research showing that children who have separation anxiety when younger — that is struggle to separate from caregivers for longer than is developmentally expected — are more likely to develop social anxiety. 

Interestingly some children with social anxiety who do not have bullying in their background may still perceive some of their social interactions more negatively than they actually were. This is not because they are liars; it is because some children are more sensitive to negative reactions — real or perceived. What this means is that a child may tell you that someone doesn’t like them and even have examples but this is more about their perception than what really happened. So another child might casually say, “Wow, your shoes are really bright blue.” And the child may hear that as critical or mean when the other child was simply making an observation.

All right, so what do you do for a child with social anxiety? 

Remember that anxiety gets worse with avoidance so we want to encourage those children to have more social interaction. Now this doesn’t mean just sending them off to school and saying, “go make some friends!” That’s not going to work for every child. For some? Sure. Kids who are more motivated, who have already built some emotional muscle in overcoming social anxiety, who have some measure of social support — they may be able to simply push through it. But lots of kids need help with skills building.

You can reach out to the school counselor and ask them about social opportunities. Some will have groups — a lunch bunch or a more formal group — that the child can attend. Some may have ideas about getting the child more involved with extracurriculars that interest them and might feel safe. They may be able to connect the child with appropriate peers.

You can also look for social opportunities that are a better fit for your child. Girl Scouts, a church group, 4H. If your child has a special interest you could see about connecting them to peers that way. If you’ve got a child or teen who does a lot of online activities, head to the local comic book store and see if you can get your gamer nerd to open themselves to other nerdoms like D&D or Magic the Gathering. Our little neighborhood library used to host gamer meet-ups to get the kids off-line and talking to each other while still honoring that gaming was an important interest to them. You can try that, too. 

The reason I bring up computer games, is that kids who are social anxious are more likely to have what the researchers call problematic internet usage. That is to say, avoiding real world social interaction by increased used of online social interaction.

I do want to pause here and say that I believe that online relationships are real and important and they matter. But they are not a substitute for real world relationships. It’s great to have good social keyboarding skills. But we also need to be able to interact with people off-line. It doesn’t need to be one or the other and we can encourage real world friendships without denigrating online friendships. This is important when we’re talking about supporting our kids since many will feel rightfully defensive if we turn it into an either/or discussion instead of a both/and. 

If you can’t find the right social environment, you could consider creating one. Social media makes it easier to network with other local parents and perhaps you can find or create the social group that would feel welcoming to your child. It doesn’t have to be a large group. It can just be a couple of kids who are willing to hang out.

You can also talk to counseling practices and occupational therapy practices, which sometimes host social skills groups. Sometimes these are specific to a diagnosis — for example, for autistic kids. But some are open to any child who is needing opportunity and practice in learning how be with other kids. The leaders of these kinds of structured groups know and expect that the kids may be awkward and may struggle. Talk to the facilitators and see if your child is a good fit for the group and that the group is a good fit for the child. Some of the will organize around a particular theme. 

Getting intervention sooner rather than later is important. Sometimes we figure middle school is just awkward and they’ll grow out of it but social anxiety leads to depression if it continues through the teen years. Social anxiety tends to create dependence as children increasingly rely on their parents’ support and intervention. Parents naturally start assuming their kids can’t function on their own, which leads to more parental control, which leads to greater social anxiety. It’s basically an echo chamber. As in all things, parents need to recognize when what they’re doing is hurting more than helping — always a tricky thing with anxiety — and learn to step back.

If you need help with that, I encourage you to check out my program.

Is social anxiety disorder caused by traumas and bullying? Read More »

How can I be more patient with my anxious child?

Podcast

When I heard this question — and I hear versions of it a lot — is what exactly do you mean by that specifically? Are you asking in the moment when you’re getting impatient with your anxious child who’s right there in front of you? Or are we talking big picture? How can I be more patient as we work through our anxiety?

Let’s answer both versions of the question and let’s start with the first one and that’s, you’ve got an anxious child in front of you and you’re feeling impatient. Maybe it’s because you’re trying to get out the door and your child is whining because they’re afraid of whatever’s coming next whether you’re trying to get them to school or to an activity, maybe you’re trying to get them to go to sleep and they don’t want you to leave the room and you’re getting impatient because you really need a break from parenting.

The thing about getting impatient is that there are two things at play here.

One is that we need to remember that when your child is anxious, you’re going to catch their anxiety. You’re going to catch it in part because you’re human and we are meant to catch each other’s anxiety as a way to stay safe.

Anxiety alerts us to danger and so if you’re feeling anxious when your child is anxious, that’s because their body and their energy is alerting you to danger even though there’s no danger there.

And you may feel that as being angry, being irritable, being impatient. So there’s that. You might be catching it from them and that’s normal. That’s part of anxiety.

To that end. I would say that, remember, one of the things we’re trying to teach our children is how to tolerate uncomfortable feelings so we need to tolerate our uncomfortable feelings.

When we’re feeling impatient that’s a really great opportunity to stop and say, oh yeah, this is, this is that uncomfortable feeling I need to learn to tolerate.

Because it’s hard, that’s why we need to practice it.

There are tools that you can do to help bring some more calm (and I’ll mention those at the end of the post because I have an offer for you), but there are tools to create more calm and just as anxiety is catching, so is calm.

As you calm yourself, you’re going to be changing the energy of the interaction between you and your child, which isn’t necessarily going to change how they behave but hopefully we’ll change things for you a little bit.

So there’s that part of impatient when you’re in the moment and you’re feeling impatient.

The other one is more big picture, which is impatience is a really useful parenting tool actually. I know we beat ourselves up a lot for not having the best, most perfect, most greatest calm and patient feelings with our kids.

It’s what we do as parents. But I am a huge believer in your inner wisdom and when you’re feeling big picture impatient with your child, which means, “I’m getting impatient that they never unload the dishwasher. I’m getting impatient because they’re not figuring out how to use the potty. I’m getting impatient because I feel like they’re ready for a developmental milestone!” Part of that is a sign that, yeah, something needs to change.

Your instinct, your impatience tells us that something needs to change. Maybe your child really is ready to grow, and there’s something that’s getting them stuck that needs to be examined, or maybe your expectations are unrealistic and you need to figure out what is realistic to expect of a child at that age.

If you’re not sure whether or not your expectations are developmentally appropriate, it’s pretty easy to find out. You can ask friends who have kids the same age. You can check in with the teacher, the school counselor, a general kid counselor. You can ask the pediatrician and you can look at books. I’ll add that in the child anxiety support membership, we do have a nitty gritty child development course that’s just really quick, easy, almost like information cards that you can just look and say, what’s going on with my kid at this age that could be driving some of this behavior. As kids get older, their, their development gets more and more individualized, which means it’s not like when you know an 18 month old should be doing X, Y, and Z. A nine-year-old is a much more complicated person developmentally than an 18 month old, but there’s still some general things that you can expect of your 9-year old

if you are feeling impatient, that’s one of the first places to look. Instead of saying, what’s wrong with me? Why am I so impatient? What’s wrong with my kid? Why aren’t they behaving first stop and find out, is this a developmentally appropriate expectation? And if it is, then it’s a sign, this impatience that you’re having with your child, that they need your help, they need your help. They’re stuck.

And this is definitely true with anxiety. That’s what we know most about anxiety is that anxiety gets families and gets kids stuck. So naturally you’re going to feel impatient. It’s, it’s sort of how we do an assessment if things are going okay. So don’t beat yourself up about it instead. Say, okay, my impatience is telling me things need to change.

Back to that offer, this is what I want to share with you. I have a quiz at my website. It’s a Parenting Pitfalls quiz. And it’s about that impatience. It’s about that stuckness. The quiz is based on the research that tells us 94 to 99% of families are doing things that get everybody more stuck.

94 to 99% that blows my mind! And that 1 to 6%, frankly, I think we just caught them on a good day. Because if you have an anxious child, chances are you’re going to get stuck periodically. When there’s needs to be new growth, if you’ve got an anxious child, they’re going to get anxious about it.

And they’re going to do things to slow down that growth because it scares them and anxieties about. Unfortunately, as parents we’re trying to help our kids. And instead what we do tends to get them more stuck. We get more impatient, we feel more guilty about it. We feel more stuck because we’re sort of overcompensating since we’re feeling guilty. And that’s how you get patterns of anxiety that impact an entire family. So this is what the quiz is about. When you take it and you don’t have to give me your email to take it, you don’t have to give me your email to get your results. It’s going to give you 10 questions.

And those questions are the common pitfalls that families get stuck in. In other words, if you answer yes to any of them, you are so not alone. So you take the quiz and then it gives you your results and it will tell you exactly how stuck you are.

You will also get an offer for a free gift from me, which is the seven day, Get Yourself Grounded email course. Absolutely one hundred percent free. The point of the course is to give you tools that you can use in those moments when you’re getting impatient with your kid right there in the moment where you’re trying to get them out the door, where they’re whining about the exam tomorrow.

Where you’re both kind of fed up with each other. It gives you tools to unhook from your child’s anxiety and to bring calm to the interaction. Once you’ve taken the course you’ll know me a little better, and that will help you figure out whether or not you feel like your family is a good fit for the child, anxiety, support membership.

If you are feeling stuck, then I’d say you’re a good fit. The child anxiety support membership is asynchronous courses, which means you take them on your own time and community support. And also I’m there too. If you need help, you can reach out to me. There’s message boards, there’s private messaging, and I can help direct you.

I can give you very specific information related to your specific challenges or direct you to other resources on the site to give you a hand. There is no ahead or behind in Child Anxiety Support. There is a central course, Strong Kids Strong Families, and that is very structured, but you don’t have to do it all at once.

You can dip in, you can dip out, you can take a minute. There’s other things you can work on too. The thing is about child anxiety is it’s going to require big structural systemic change in your family. Now that sounds overwhelming, but it’s really not because we tease it out bit by bit to help you figure out what you need to do in the moment.

It builds your skills and teaches you how to build your child’s skills so that you know what to do later on down the line. If you’re dealing with a five-year-old, who’s struggling to sleep alone. And then later on, you’re dealing with a 12 year old, who’s worried about middle school. Those tools will work, whatever the situation is.

So. Bringing tools that will last a lifetime of parenting. You can start just by taking that quiz. Let me know what your answers are. I would really love to hear about it, and I’d really love to hear if taking the quiz brings anything up for you.

Is there anything that you didn’t realize was a pitfall? Did you think it was a help and now you’re discovering it’s a hindrance. How do you feel about that. What do you think? I look forward to hearing from you and I’ll see you all next week.

How can I be more patient with my anxious child? Read More »

Why doesn’t validating my anxious child work?

Podcast

This was actually a much longer question and I’m going to read it in its entirety here (with some personal information deleted).

“I’ve been following your instagram and listening to your podcast for sometime. You tell people to validate their child’s feelings but this does not work. It doesn’t calm down my child or make her less anxious so why are you recommending it?”

Listener, thank you for following me and thank you for coming to me directly with this question and giving me permission to answer it here as well as through our email exchange. 

I usually think about this podcast during my run and I was thinking about this one after my long run last Sunday when I was walking up this absolutely gargantuan hill. I dread this hill every time I run that route because it’s a monster and I’m already tired since Sunday is my longer run day. 

I was very whiny in my head because I was also thirsty and my icy cold water bottle was at the tippy top of the hill sitting in my car just waiting for me. It got me to thinking about going on long walks with thirsty kids. And it also got me to thinking about being a thirsty kid, which made me think about validating.

Validation is magic. It really is. And sometimes it does work if we’re defining work as helping a child calm down and move on from whatever is bothering them. It works with kids and it works with adults because validating says, “I hear you. I am with you. And I believe you.”

As parents we tend to want to problem solve or teach, to pass on an important lesson. Our child is struggling and we point out the ways that their struggle is due to their choices or the ways it’s inevitable — like, yup, welcome to reality. I know I am often guilty of this with my own kids. There is something just kind of pulls us toward turning everything into a learning opportunity. I mean, that’s what parents are for, right? Raising kids which means teaching and guiding.

So it’s good to validate. It’s good to stop in the moment and just say, “I hear you. I am with you. I believe you.”

Back to that hill. If you have ever gone on a walk with a thirsty child and forgotten your water bottle then you are familiar with whining. 

Children whine out loud for several reasons.

1. It works. Whining works. It gets our attention, we usually want it to stop so will look for ways to make it stop.

2. The younger the child is the more they see us as an extension of themselves and so whining is part of processing. Children process out loud. They process to their parents because it’s part of processing to themselves. 

3. And finally again, the younger the child is the more powerful they think we are. If they are thirsty and they tell us that they are thirsty, they expect us to give them something to drink. When we don’t — perhaps because we are at the bottom of the hill and the water bottle is at the top — they think we’re holding out on them. Or that we don’t believe that they are thirsty.

This is what I was remembering on my own slog up the hill earlier this week. I was thinking about being a child and being thirsty and feeling like my mom must not get how thirsty I was or else she would be giving me water. So I kept trying to explain.

I also remember when I was a preschool teacher and I used to babysit for some of the kids in the class. And I remember taking care of twins and putting them to bed. One was wearing a purple nightgown and the other wanted her purple nightgown but it had chocolate milk spilled all down the front so she was whining and I was explaining, logically as you do, and she then laid herself down on the stairs and just wailed and I was standing there flabbergasted, like what did she expect me to do? I said to her, “I am not magic, I cannot make your purple nightgown clean” and as I was saying it, pretty frustrated, I realized that yes, she thinks I’m magic because she is three and she is so unhappy about the nightgown and she thinks I’m holding out on her. She thinks I do have the power to make instantaneous clean nightgowns or the power to lift her sadness and frustration.

That is being three.

That goes on for a long time. Heck, as an adult there are times when I think, “This is just not possible.” You know, the car breaks down, the check bounces, it all happens on a particularly terrible day and we think, “C’mon, how am I supposed to tolerate this?” And we’re grown people who have a sense of time, who have been through good times and bad. 

Now consider being a kid. And time seems to stretch on forever. Remember how long summer vacation used to be? And how short it is now as a parent? Now think about slogging up that hill.

In other words validation is not magic. Validation will not make the whining stop, it will not make the anxiety stop. Validation is a tool that says, “You are not alone.”

So much of parenting is about repetition, which is why the experts are always talking about consistency. The more often we response in the same way to the same circumstances, the easier it is for our child to understand how the world works. Now that doesn’t mean you need to be a robot. We’re all going to be inconsistent sometimes. But if we are generally predictable our children learn that they can more or less, kind of sort of predict the world.

They will whine their way up hills both literal and metaphorical but eventually they will learn that hills end. There is water at the top. It will take a lot of whining to get there. 

This is all to say that when we talk about certain parenting choices “working” — remember the original question was about how validating doesn’t “work” — we need to redefine working.

No it doesn’t work if your main goal is to get your child to stop whining or stop being anxious.

No it doesn’t work if you’re hoping to cure your child’s Anxiety.

Validating works as part of big picture parenting. It works in helping your child learn that they are not alone. That you do understand them. 

If we believe that validation should work, then we may over validate. We may join our child in their suffering, which perpetuates their suffering. If we sat down and wailed with them about the lack of water on the way up the hill, we’d never get to the top of the hill.

You’re not failing your child when you can’t fix things immediately. They may think you are – I’m pretty sure that twin felt betrayed by me in holding out that purple nightgown she obviously thought I could magically produce at will. And feeling their sense of failure is painful for us. It hurts — it can make us angry or weirdly feel guilty. Maybe guilty because we forgot to wash the nightgown or pack the water bottle or guilty because the whining catapults us into anger. So I encourage your to step back. 

Parenting is a long game. It’s lots of busy work and boring tasks and a daily grind that all leads up to helping grow a full fledged person. We get lots of chances to get it right, lots of room for course correction.

The other thing I was thinking as I dragged myself up the hill, which as you can tell from the long convoluted thinking I did, was a very long hill. Or maybe I’m just slow but likely a little bit of both. Is that this impatience with wanting to find a tool, wanting to find a fix is an awful lot like your child’s demand for water when there is no water yet.

This yearning to help our kids and to make things better immediately is a reminder of how they’re feeling. We’re echoing their experience.

They want water and we want to give it to them. And we both need to tolerate how uncomfortable it is to have to wait.

By the way, I want you to know that the very sad twin lying on the staircase and wailing is now an MD. I found this out when one of my clients mentioned her doctor and I recognized the twins name. I said, “next time you see her, tell her your therapist used to change her diapers.

Ok, have a great week. 

Why doesn’t validating my anxious child work? Read More »

Why do gifted children have anxiety disorders?

Podcast

Why do gifted children have anxiety disorders?

gifted children

Why do gifted children have anxiety disorders?

gifted children

Are you ready to bring calm to yourself so that you can bring calm to your family? Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll get my FREE 7-day Get Yourself Grounded course!

Are you ready to bring calm to yourself so that you can bring calm to your family? Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll get my FREE 7-day Get Yourself Grounded course!

Why do gifted children have anxiety disorders? Read More »

What do parents get wrong about child anxiety counseling?

Podcast

This question is a bit of a trick because no one’s actually asked it but I wanted to answer it anyway because I want to help families get help. 

The biggest misconception that parents have about any kind of child counseling is that the counselor is going to fix things. What things? Well, that depends on why the parent has brought their child to counseling. Maybe it’s the child’s behavior, or the relationship the parent has with the child, or the child themselves. But this is not how counseling works.

Counseling works by creating a relationship between the therapist and the client — in this case the child — and then leaning into that relationship to explore and guide. By explore I mean learning who that client is. What motivates them? What are their strengths and challenges? What beliefs are holding them back? What beliefs are serving them well? Who is in their support system? How can they tune into that or how can their support them get better at helping?

By guide I mean giving information and teaching skills. Counseling works by metaphor. Therapists are trying to find a way to explain ideas and concepts in a way that makes sense to the client and gives them greater insight into themselves and into how things work. And they are working to connect the client with skills to make their efforts more effective.

Counselors generally don’t tell people what to do. Ok, sometimes they do. Sometimes they say, “You need to quit drinking” but that’s not very useful if they haven’t done a good job of connecting with the client, given them insight into how their drinking is impacting their functioning and relationships, and helped them identify the resources that are available to them. 

There is a lot of repetition in the therapeutic relationship. People need to hear the same things over and over again, often in new ways and in a new context because what doesn’t have an impact one day might have an impact on another day because the client is finally ready to hear it.

With children it’s even more complicated and the younger they are, the more complicated it is. So let’s talk about some of those challenges.

Generally it’s not the child who has decided that they need counseling; It’s the parent. Therefore the counselor needs to work a little harder to get the child’s buy in. The child doesn’t necessarily think anything needs to change. If a parent brings their 7 year old to counseling because they want the 7 year old to start sleeping alone, the 7 year old probably doesn’t agree that this needs to happen. So they’re not even interested in the goal of their treatment plan. 

Instead the counselor needs to work in a round about way to discover more about how the child’s functioning not just at bedtime but at other times, and figure out what skills are lacking. The counselor needs to understand child development in general and this child’s development in particular. This might mean a lot of ruling out. What else is going on for the child? What’s the family’s sleep hygiene like? What’s the child’s physical health like? 

At the same time, the counselor is trying different metaphors to help the child learn skills that the child may not be interested in. The younger the child is, the more likely this is going to be done through play. Therapeutic play is sometimes directive, in which the therapist is doing an activity with the child with a specific intent to pass on skills or information. Or it may be non-directive where the child is choosing and managing the play and the therapist is either observing or joining in to better understand the child and to connect and build rapport. There are benefits to both kinds of play and different scenarios and relationships require different interventions.

Very often the issue will not be with the child, it will be with the parent because the child isn’t the one making the decisions. For example, perhaps the bedtime routine is inconsistent or disruptive. Well, the person who’s going to need to change that is not the kid; it’s the parents. So the therapist needs to also get the parents’ buy in.

Now this isn’t the same thing as blaming parents. This is not about blaming parents. This is about recognizing that in the family system the parent who is bringing their child to counseling has demonstrated that they want things to change and so they are really the ones who are going to have to change. When the parents change, the child will be required to change.

Let’s go back to that 7 year old. Let’s say the child is very sensitive to light and the parents leave the blinds open. I’m deliberately choosing something very obvious and clear to make this point. The 7 year old is not going to be able to go to Target and get black out curtains and then install them. That’s up to the parents. If the parents don’t do that then the light-sensitive 7 year old is likely to continue struggling no matter how often they go to the therapist.

This is how anxiety treatment works, too. In lots of ways parents act like training wheels on a bike. They are there to support their child while their child builds new skills. Eventually the parents need to remove their support and let their child learn to ride on their own. 

Anxious children will not necessarily want the parent to stop being training wheels and yet the parent needs to stop anyway. This is often the point where the parent will bring the child into counseling, which is wonderful, but they will continue acting like training wheels. What they want — and I understand this — is for the therapist to talk their child into wanting to change. The parents are waiting for the child to say, “Please stop being my training wheels.” 

This may not ever happen. There is a large body of research that says that when we do it this way — waiting for the child to ask for the training wheels to come off — that we’re doing it backwards. 

And if the parent doesn’t understand that things work this way, they may continue to be training wheels even when the child HAS asked them to stop because the parent doesn’t realize that’s what they’re doing. 

It’s common in families with anxious children for the parents to have anxiety, too. And as the child begins to grow and stretch and confront their anxiety, this might trigger the parents anxiety. Then we have a child who is ready to go without training wheels and a parent inadvertently getting in their way by checking in repeatedly. “Are you sure?” “Are you sure you’re ready?” “Do you have a plan if you fail?” “Do you want to go over the plan again?”

This is another reason why parents must understand how anxiety works and be a part of the intervention even if the child is the one asking for change.

So in a nutshell what parents get wrong about child anxiety counseling is believing that it’s up to and the responsibility of the child to do the learning and do the changing. No, it’s a family affair. 

Parents need to understand anxiety — how it works, how it’s perpetuated, the different ways it shows up

Parents need to identify their own anxiety — knowing when they are projecting, knowing when their worry is interfering with the intervention, and learn how to care for it. Child anxiety treatment is for the whole family.

And this ultimately is why I built Child Anxiety Support. Because even if the child is in counseling, the parents need to do their own work. As a counselor, I would only see a child once a week or once every two weeks but parents, of course, are with their children every day and so the parent can effect real change in the family and in the child’s functioning. As studies show, empowering parents to support their children is what makes a real different in anxiety treatment. Child Anxiety Support is my effort to make that more accessible, less expensive, and more convenient. I hope you’ll check it out.

What do parents get wrong about child anxiety counseling? Read More »

Does reassuring my anxious child help?

Podcast

“Does reassuring my anxious child help?”

The answer to that is no, not in the long term and rarely in the short term.

But this is actually a longer question so I’m going to share the whole version now and of course the much longer answer, too. Here we go: “My son has severe anxiety that manifests in needing constant reassurance that his every ache or stitch is not life threatening. My question is am I making it worse by reassuring him or would it be better to not feed into the OCDness of his questions?”

[Have your own question? Go here to submit it to the podcast!]

First of all, let me say my heart goes out to you and your son because I know how challenging and heart breaking and frustrating this can be. Thank you for asking it and I hope my answer will be helpful.

Reassurance is a great example of how parenting an anxious child is different than parenting a child who is not prone to anxiety.

In a non-anxious child — or rather a child who has a typical level of anxiety — reassurance can be helpful. They come to us and say, “My leg hurts, do you think I’m ok?” And we can answer, “Yup, that sounds like growing pains” and they will feel reassured and be able to move on. End of story.

But a child who has more functional impairment, which is to say, whose anxiety gets in the way of their ability to do things, will get stuck. That reassurance only helps for a minute but the anxiety comes back, the distressed feeling continues and so they return for that quick hit of relief that your reassurance offers. 

That’s because the issue is NOT the aching leg, it’s the anxiety itself. 

One of the things we know about anxious people is that they have an information processing bias, which means that anxious people more likely to see danger in otherwise neutral situations. This can be a very useful trait under some circumstances. If you’re going on a long camping trip, for example, the person with some anxiety is more likely to pack bug repellant, to check that the tent is still waterproof, and to remember to charge the GPS tracker. Being able to scan for potential dangers or roadblocks or problems helps us prepare for them and that’s great.

When the anxiety causes functional interference, that is to say, it stops us from going camping altogether, it’s a sign that the issue is not the camping trip, it’s the anxiety itself.  

That anxious person —avoiding the camping trip — hasn’t learned to tolerate the discomfort of not being able to control what might happen. We can pack the bug repellant, we can check that the tent is waterproof, we can charge the GPS tracker but we can’t control every little thing that might go wrong. We need to live with a certain level of unknowingness. We have to give up on being able to control and address every possible outcome.

What we’re really talking about here is an existential crisis. How do we tolerate the big endless not knowing of being alive? How do we learn to exist in a world where bad things happen and might happen to us? 

If you’re listening to this, it’s likely you’re a parent so I’m going to share my own experience as a brand new parent and I’m sure that lots of you will be able to relate.

When my son was born I struggled with postpartum anxiety as many, many of us do. I felt undone and overwhelmed by the fact that I was now responsible for this very tiny, very precious being. I had intrusive thoughts — those uninvited, unwelcome thoughts — of harm coming to him and I couldn’t walk into a room without seeing all the potential dangers. I felt like one giant exposed nerve. 

Eventually I learned to live with this reality  — this reality that I had to cede some level of control to the universe — and some of that learning to live has to do with denial. I learned not to harp on the ways my child might get hurt. I learned to let those intrusive thoughts pass without comment or reaction. I learned to ignore the things I couldn’t control. And, as he grew, I learned and relearned to tolerate the discomfort of watching him step out beyond my supervision and care. 

Sometimes this meant literally covering my eyes like at the playground when he would attempt some death defying trick. This kid is now 25, lives in another state where I can’t keep an eye on him, and his hobby is rock climbing. Let me tell you, I still nag him about wearing his helmet but most of the time I just pretend he’s not hanging off of cliffs every weekend. Because that’s what it takes to live my life and to let him live his.

Because I have my own struggles with anxiety, these were skills I needed to learn over and over again in new contexts. But as I learned them in one area of my life I was able to apply them to others.

This is the work that anyone who struggles with anxiety must do.

The anxious child or teen or young adult who is depending on our reassurances is avoiding that existential task of tolerating the unknown.

They ask you to tell them their leg is ok and you do but the question is a cover up for a larger crisis of not knowing. To get deep, and anxiety requires deep work, they are really asking how can I avoid death. How do I live in a world where death and pain and sorrow is unavoidable.

This sounds overdramatic but ultimately an anxiety disorder is learning to live with that reality of death and pain and sorrow.

No wonder it’s so difficult, right?

When we see this big picture, perhaps it will give us permission to stop trying to fix things in the moment. Now I’m not saying to sit your child down and tell them it’s time to face their own mortality. No way. Of course not. Instead we, as parents, can see this big picture struggle so that we are better able to meet the challenges in the moment. 

We must learn to accept that we can’t reassure them out of this. 

What we are meant to do is help them build their tolerance. Life is uncomfortable because it is unpredictable and ultimately out of our control. And yet we must learn to live with that and to be happy in spite of it.

So what do we do instead of reassuring?

We reassure once, “It sounds like growing pains” and then we stop. We tell them, “I’ve answered that question and I’m not going to anymore.” We say it with empathy and compassion and then we hold to it. That’s it. They may beg and plead but remember, you answered the question and it’s not the answer that will fix the anxiety anyway. The child needs to tolerate their distress, which will eventually feel less distressing. They will either acclimate to the feeling of not being sure or it will pass. 

The more we’ve reassured our child, the harder it will be for them to tolerate our unwillingness to answer. This will be hard for us. But I want you to think about how you and your child are having the same experience. They are yearning for you to answer and you are yearning for their calm. Both of you are struggling but both of you can manage this distress. 

You can manage yours by recognizing it as your own. 

You are catching your child’s urgency, for sure, but your feelings belong to you. I know it seems like your child is causing your discomfort but it’s more complicated than that. 

Your feelings are yours — they are your responsibility — and you will need to learn how to manage them. That may be taking your own deep breaths, it may be removing yourself so you can step out of their anxiety loop because again, anxiety is catching. It might be using self-talk — telling yourself it’s ok and that your child will be ok. 

As anxiety is catching, so is calm. As you bring more calm to the family and to the interaction, you’re helping. You’re setting an example. You are showing them that it’s possible to tolerate what feels intolerable.

The work of raising and loving an anxious child is ultimately self-work. But then isn’t that the thing about parenting. As I always say, nothing is more triggering than being a parent but in the context of parenting we have such opportunity to heal ourselves.

Does reassuring my anxious child help? Read More »

94 to 99% of families are stuck in patterns that make their child's anxiety worse.

Are you?

Take the 10 question Parenting Pitfalls quiz and find out! 

Take the quiz

Follow Me

Attachment Parenting International
copyright 2024 | Dawn Friedman MSEd
Scroll to Top