Dealing with Anxiety in Children.

I have noticed a recent increase of traffic on my posts regarding Paige's anxiety problems - a background check here and here - and, remembering how difficult it was to find any resources when we were in the pit of this problem ourselves, I thought it'd be helpful to put together some of the old tips and tricks we tried.

I'd like to point out a couple of things first. Obviously, if your child is suffering badly then please consider professional psychological help. Paige was at the stage where she was having panic attacks and not eating, and changing schools was just the first option - if the problems continued, we would then move on to a child psychologist because we knew that the problem was her, not the school. On to my second point though - it turns out it WAS the school. She is still a child who worries and over analyses things, and we will always keep an eye out for triggering situations and signs that she is beginning to obsess just that bit too much, but since moving schools we do not face the same problems we did previously. We have been very lucky. So these techniques are not things that we use today, but they are things we have tried in the past and had relative (but not complete) success with. Remember, these are coping techniques and not solutions. Also I am not a professional. These things worked for my family, they might not work for yours.

The worry story.

We used to have Paige tell us two stories. First, she would tell us the worry story. An example of hers would be: "I will get to school. I will find out there was homework I didn't know I had. I will have to tell the teacher I didn't do it. I will be in trouble and be humiliated." ... We would then say "Okay, that was the worry story. Now let's decide what the true story will be". In that situation the true story would be "I will get to school. The teacher won't have set secret homework and not told me about it, so there will be nothing to get in trouble for. I will have a good day filled with playing with my friends and no reason to be humiliated".

Educate your child on anxiety.

We felt like it was really important that Paige understood what anxiety was (in terms she could understand - she was 7 back then), because we didn't want her to feel afraid of her body. We explained that all humans have a fight or flight instinct, and that when we have anxiety our bodies are trying to run away to safety. We explained that it wasn't a negative: it was about her body looking after itself. We explained that it happens to grown ups too, including me, and that her worries all came from 'what if' thoughts, not physical things which could hurt her. It was so important that she knew that we understood and that we didn't think there was anything wrong with her. Her body was already out of her control, and she didn't need to be worrying about what we thought of her too.

Personify their anxiety.

This was a technique we read about, which Paige didn't actually find useful - I thought I'd share it here for parents of children who it may help. The theory was to make their anxiety a character. Give it a name, draw a picture etc. It would make it less 'unknown' and scary, and also they could say "Clive is talking to me again" (if they decide their anxiety is called Clive. Not that I'm sure why they would). Paige didn't really 'get' this one, because I think it was too hard for her to believe that it was a person, but I can totally see why this technique could help a lot of children.

Write it down.

Honestly I'm not sure if this is a good one or not. Our problem was this: Paige would get home from school crying. She wouldn't eat. She would be screaming on her bedroom floor until 10/11pm when she finally passed out. She wouldn't eat breakfast. She would cry on the drive to school and then physically be pushed through the door while the teacher pulled. So, for us, just getting her to do normal things like eat, sleep and go to school were our priority. For this reason, we had her write things down. I understand that this can be another obsessive trait so it's obviously one to be careful with, but we had her write pros and cons for her day, as well as list the things she needed for school the next day and the things she was worried about vs the things that would actually happen (using the Worry Story listed above).

Face your fears.

This was the hardest one, but the one we had to keep doing and doing no matter how much she told us it hurt her. There were mornings Paige would make herself vomit so she could ask to stay home, and she would say hurtful things when we forced her to go in. We had to remember that avoiding her problems would be more damaging, and we had to remind her repeatedly that we were sending her to school because we loved her, not because we hated her.

Have your child involved in change.

We realised that things wouldn't change without a huge lifestyle change in our case. Paige was being bullied, the teachers were very unsympathetic and kept telling her to just get on with it; this was clearly not the place for her. So we talked about how to change it, decided to find a new school for her and had her involved every step of the way. We de-registered her from her old school and had her home educate for a month while we visited local schools, bringing her with us each time. As luck would have it she fell in love with the first school she saw, which was walking distance from our house, but we made her view others just in case. This way, although she was very nervous on her first day and went back to crying and worrying, she knew in the build-up it was a school she loved and by her third day there were no tears whatsoever. We found a school with emotional mentors for the children which has been fantastic. Your child is feeling out of control and it's so important to give them as much power in managing their own anxiety as you can.

To finish, I'd just like to say that although I have titled this post 'Dealing with Anxiety in Children', there's no reason that you can't try these techniques on yourself. Best of luck!