Guest Blog Post - Claire Taylor, Founder of Mellownest
/3 powerful ways to support your child with anxiety
Anxiety is a word we’re hearing a lot right now.
The current situation is a double whammy of constant, ongoing threat and removal of one of the top anxiety busters – social support.
With the lack of control over the outcome and a significant reduction in our normal coping strategies it’s no wonder that many adults are struggling, let alone children.
Understanding Anxiety
When we’re stressed our brains respond by activating our internal fight or flight system. This releases a cocktail of stress hormones into our body ready to protect us from the threat.
In the short term and in response to a visible stressor this is a helpful response.
In the face of an ongoing, uncontrollable and invisible threat?
Not so much.
Anxiety in children often looks different than it looks in adults. It might mean an increase in meltdowns, being clingier and whining, or engaging in controlling behaviour.
All your child is telling you is that their world feels a little less safe right now.
So how can you help?
1) Validate their feelings
When our children are upset, we can feel a strong desire to help or we might feel frustrated. These feelings can lead us to try and shut down our children’s feelings. We might tell them not to be silly, or that there isn’t anything to worry about.
While this response might be coming from a place of love, just telling your child that everything is okay actually isn’t very helpful.
When we have uncomfortable feelings, we want to feel heard and validated and children are no different. If your child is able to express their feelings, you can just listen and let them know you understand by saying something like:
“I hear you, it’s hard right now”
You might help to normalise their feelings; “I wish we could see people too.”
And then give them a big hug. Be the safe space where they can feel sad and resist the urge to try and ‘fix’.
Younger children will just respond to a little more patience and lots of physical contact so snuggle away.
2) Connect and play
When children feel upset the most powerful antidote is just our loving attention.
If your child is showing you that they are struggling with their behaviour take a proactive approach.
Spend a little one on one playtime if you can.
I know that’s hard right now, especially if you’re in the challenging position of trying to work at home and provide childcare (basically impossible) but think of it like this: taking 10 minutes a few times a day might prevent you spending hours responding to whining or managing meltdowns.
Children are designed to panic when they don’t have our attention, so they’ll do whatever they need to get it back.
Show your presence by actively listening to them, look into their eyes when they talk, cuddle, tickle or stroke them. All of these signals let your child know that you’re focussed on them.
What you actually do doesn’t matter too much; simply colouring, rolling the cars on the floor or mixing up a mud potion can be enough. You might be surprised to see that your child will happily play for a little while after you give this attention. That’s because they’ve filled up their mum and dad cup (at least for a little bit).
If your child is really struggling to let you go, you can let them know when they’ll have your attention again.
Ways you can do this might be something like setting a timer they can hear, asking them to do 5 questions and then come and find you, setting them up to draw a picture to show you.
*It’s important to keep expectations realistic around this, while all children are different a child aged three or under will need regular doses of attention and is unlikely to play independently for long periods.
3) Get physical
If your child has been having meltdowns or displaying other behaviours that let you know they’re struggling, something else that can help is physical release.
Stress hormones released in the flight or fight response include adrenaline and cortisol. A build-up of these can make us feel jittery and on edge.
The best way to dissipate this nervous energy is movement.
Have a dance party, run around the garden, bounce on the trampoline – it doesn’t really matter what you do.
It’s also a case where laughter really is the best medicine, so get your children to giggle their fears out. A good old game of monster chase round the garden complete with tickles on capture is likely to see a significant shift in your child’s mood.
It’s so tough for all of us right now but hopefully these ideas can help bring a little more calm (and fun!) back into your family.
We are having lots of conversations like this over in our free, private members community on Facebook, Mellownest Mindful Parents.
We’d love to see you in there.
More about Claire:
I’m Claire, a 36-year-old mum of two from Leeds. After spending years working in mental health with families who were finding things tricky, I had my first child - and found it tricky too!
Luckily I had a fair amount of theoretical knowledge to fall back on when I felt lost and Mellownest is all about sharing that knowledge in a way that works in the real world.
I’m passionate about raising emotionally healthy and resilient children who can face all the challenges that life will throw at them. I also want to make the most of being a mum and a gentle and mindful approach helps me do just that.
I honestly believe being a parent is the toughest and most amazing experience most of us will ever have, and one of the core aims we have at Mellownest is to help mothers feel more empowered to be the parent they want to be.
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