{"id":3069,"date":"2022-04-27T12:50:27","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T12:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/?p=3069"},"modified":"2022-04-27T11:44:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T11:44:54","slug":"what-can-you-do-with-a-4-year-old-who-might-have-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/what-can-you-do-with-a-4-year-old-who-might-have-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"What can you do with a 4-year-old who might have anxiety?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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I love this question because I picture the person who sent it to me kind of throwing their hands up in the air like, \u201cWhat on earth can you do with a 4-year old who might have anxiety?\u201d But I think that they\u2019re asking a couple of things here, which is how can you tell if they have anxiety \u2014 there\u2019s that might there in the question \u2014 and what can you do if they do have anxiety.<\/p>

Now remember on the very first episode we talked about how to tell if a child has anxiety and we talked about looking for behavior that is not developmentally appropriate. That\u2019s a little tougher with a 4-year old because they\u2019re growing out of some toddler\/preschool anxieties like being away from caregivers and being afraid of the dark and growing into some bigger kid anxieties like robbers and fires.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

As an aside, I get a lot of calls about 5-year olds because a 4-year old who struggles to leave a parent doesn\u2019t ring quite the same alarm bells as when that child is 5. I mean, it\u2019s not uncommon to have a kindergartener who has trouble leaving mom in the morning but we start seeing that as more of an issue when they hit that age. Even though 5 is a nervous age, generally speaking. As kids start to become more aware of the great big world beyond them, they do tend to get more anxious. 4 and 5 year olds tend to be deep thought ages, when kids start asking about where babies come from and what happens when we die and other big philosophical questions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Ok but back to how do we know if a 4-year old is anxious and I guess I\u2019d say that we don\u2019t have to know if a child qualifies for a diagnosis to get better at supporting them. Because anxiety doesn\u2019t have to be at clinical levels to deserve our attention, right? Right.<\/p>

So let\u2019s talk about that.<\/p>

This seems like a good time to talk about the slow to warm temperament. Now I have a whole course on temperament in the Child Anxiety Support membership because I think it gives us so much insight not just into our child but into ourselves and the rest of the family. I have a whole activity in there around that and it\u2019s always illuminating. Anyway, back to the slow to warm temperament. This is also called High Withdrawal. Temperament exists on a continuum and this particular continuum goes from High Approach to High Withdrawal.<\/p>

I\u2019m a Slow to Warm person myself and I have a kid who\u2019s Slow to Warm and I can tell you that it can be frustrating for everyone, including the child themselves.<\/p>

The Slow to Warm child is not necessarily anxious; they just need to come to things on their own time. They like to stand back on the sidelines and observe what\u2019s going for awhile before they join in. The more you pressure them, the more resistant they become because they need to do things on their own terms. This can look like anxiety but it isn\u2019t. You can tell the difference because an anxious child will never join in \u2014 even if they want to \u2014 and a slow to warm child will join in eventually if left to themselves. Occasionally I\u2019ll meet with a family who is reporting their child has anxiety but when I sit down to assess the child what I see is a Slow to Warm child in a High Approach family. The family needs to learn how to be more patient, which isn\u2019t easy especially if there are other kids in the family who are raring to go and the slow to warm child is holding everyone up. (This was me in my family and only when I had my own slow to warm kids did I understand why this was frustrating for my parents.)<\/p>

So the anxious 4-year old may be anxious but they also may be slow to warm so what we need to do in both cases, is continues to offer opportunity to face those uncomfortable things and to stay neutral about how quickly or how deeply they are willing to engage with whatever they\u2019re facing.<\/p>

Remember the key to anxiety is confronting the things that make us anxious. That\u2019s true for all ages, not just 4-year olds. As parents that means that we validate their feeling without validating their fears. What I mean is we say, \u201cI understand you are scared\u201d and \u201cbut I know you can do it.\u201d And then we sit with them while they sit with that.<\/p>

We\u2019re teaching kids to be brave and you can\u2019t be brave unless you\u2019re scared. There is no brave without fear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Because we are fans of brave, we need to also give fear respect but not power. That is to say, all feelings are valid but they don\u2019t necessarily get to drive the bus.<\/p>

If you\u2019re concerned that your 4-year old is anxious, first I encourage you to check and see if the Slow to Warm Temperament is at play and if so, try to slow things down. Their anxiety might have more to do with feeling pressured or worried that they\u2019ll get left behind. I remember feeling panicked that I would miss out because I wasn\u2019t quite ready. You know, like I want to do the thing but just not quite yet and so I\u2019d meltdown about it. Like I said, that wasn\u2019t easy for my parents.<\/p>

If it isn\u2019t slow to warm, if it\u2019s a child who is genuinely afraid, that gets more complicated and I\u2019m gonna say maybe check out my membership for the whole spiel and personalized help but generally, find ways to continue to give them opportunity to face those fears with your loving support.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The key to anxiety is confronting the things that make us anxious. That\u2019s true for all ages, not just 4-year olds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/episode-12.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdNXfO-Nv","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-05-08 11:48:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childanxietysupport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}