Supporting a child with anxiety

Guidance for parents and carers

If your child is experiencing high levels of anxiety, it can be worrying for you as a parent or carer.

This booklet looks at anxiety, its impact while offering practical ideas for your child – and you – to deal with this common but distressing experience.

If you would find it helpful to have this information in a booklet, you can download it as a pdf or order a hard copy.

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Understanding anxiety

What does anxiety look and feel like?

Anxiety can have many physical and psychological signs, for example:

Orange clouds with lightning icon

Behavioural

Being irritable, angry, tearful, avoidant, oppositional or withdrawn.

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Physical

Dry mouth, loss of appetite, going to the loo more, headaches, sweating, difficulty breathing, tight chest, problems getting to sleep or staying asleep.

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Cognitive

Being forgetful, disorganised, confused, loss of concentration.

Pink man cartoon with blue spirals on head

Psychological

Feeling on edge, wanting to escape, feeling out of control, everything speeding up, feeling people are looking at you.

What’s happening in our body when we’re anxious?

  • When we experience anxiety, our bodies are often producing higher levels of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.
  • These are chemicals in our body which are normally released to help us react quickly to something or get away from something dangerous – for our ancestors this might have been a wild animal, a bear perhaps.
  • This is often called the ‘fight or flight’ response.
  • When something causes us to feel anxious these chemicals build up in our body, but don’t necessarily get used up (because there aren’t many bears about these days).
  • This build-up of chemicals can result in unpredictable and sometimes explosive reactions.
Mother with arm around daughter

What can be the impact of anxiety?

Anxiety can get in the way of what we think are normal day to day actions.

It can impact the parts of the brain which help us with things like memory, understanding language and other communication, and what we call ‘executive functioning’.

This means things like planning ahead, doing tasks in the right order and making reasoned decisions can become much harder.

A child’s reaction to anxiety can sometimes be mistaken for poor or disruptive behaviour, which can mean we miss the emotional response behind the behaviours.

Parents and carers often find it hard to understand the logic of their children’s behaviour and the choices they make, especially during adolescence.

In these years, the brain is geared more towards emotional and social responses – for example getting approval from their friends and peers – than ‘logical’ responses. So don’t feel you need to understand the logic; be more prepared to ask ‘how can I help?’.

Practical ideas for your child

Helping your child recognise physical cues can be useful for identifying when anxiety levels may be rising and you may need some coping strategies. At a calm moment ask them what it feels like for them.

Helping your child recognise physical cues can be useful for identifying when anxiety levels may be rising, and you may need some coping strategies. At a calm moment ask them what it feels like for them. For young children you could use a teddy or ask them to draw how they are feeling, for older ones you could ask them to write about their feelings. This may be particularly helpful for those who are not sure what they are feeling or find it hard to describe.

Anxious children and young people are likely to seek a great deal of reassurance. It may sound strange, but we can sometimes over-reassure our children. This can mean they come to rely on that reassurance to feel better rather than learning to master their own fears and worries. Instead, look to reassure them that you are there for them and at the same time you believe they are able to manage their emotions themselves rather than always relying on you. Show you are confident they can cope: “I think you know the answer to this”; “I believe you can do it.” Notice and validate when they overcome a fear themselves, or with your support. “It was great that you were able to calm your anxiety using that breathing technique" or “Going for a walk with a friend really seems to help when you are getting anxious.”

Sometimes just being in a quiet, shared space with your anxious child can be the best approach. If your child doesn’t want to talk about what’s creating the anxiety, just sitting with them, saying very little, can be the best thing to do.

When we know something is approaching which might cause us to feel anxious, we can plan for it, break it down into smaller steps, and prepare to manage it better. This is useful for both young people and adults.

When your child does overcome a fear, ask what helped them to do it; this can reinforce their positive behaviour. Asking ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions helps this, while avoiding questions that be answered with a simple yes or no.

Even when we don’t understand our child’s behaviour or emotional response, it’s important to acknowledge how they are feeling, as that is their reality: “I can understand why you might be feeling worried. When I feel like that I try to…”.

Practical ideas for you

Remember, as well as ideas to support your child you should also think about how you can support yourself.

It is very common for parents and carers to feel ‘stuck’ in their situation, which can lead to disappointment that things might not be feeling any better. This can understandably mean you feel frustrated and miss out on recognising any positive things, however small. In this situation, it can be totally normal to feel frustrated, so again it is important not to criticise yourself or feel you are ‘getting it wrong'. Actually, feeling stuck can also mean that things are not getting worse, and this is important. Here it is more about waiting for your child to feel able to move forward, meaning patience is a really key thing to display. It is important to reinforce positive things and experiences, in particular those things which help you as parents and carers to look after yourselves.

It can feel really tough to stay supportive when you or your family is ‘in the moment’. Some things which parents find useful are:

  • Try to stay calm and focused on your child’s needs
  • Keep your emotions in check as much as you can
  • Avoid asking ‘why’? Instead look to acknowledge and validate their feelings where you can
  • Listen!
  • Let them know that what they are feeling will pass, a bit like a wave. Ask ‘what can we do to distract you?’ You can also give them choices to help them feel in control more.