Dealing with Your Child’s Anxiety

To worry about things is quite normal. In fact it is essential for our survival as human beings to live with anxiety at different times. The experience of this anxiety teaches us to handle stressful situations and to successfully react at the spur of the moment.

But for a young child who experiences excessive worrying, fears or stress, this can become quite consuming and overwhelming, impacting their lives and affecting their day to day activities.

“I feel sick.”
“What if I can’t do it?”
“I have a headache in my tummy.”
“I don’t want to go.”

These were a few examples of questions and statements that my son would express all day, every day from a very young age. As a toddler, he would cry a lot, be fearful of new things, his milestones were slowly achieved and his interest in investigating the world seemed to be missing. He would physically be sick sick with worry.

At 5 years of age he was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which was affecting his whole world. He lost his appetite, was unable to sleep and he would turn himself into knots worrying about things he had absolutely no control over. This in turn affected his learning capability, preventing him from learning the important foundations of reading and writing.

As a sufferer of Post-Natal-Depression immediately after his birth, I too experienced severe anxiety and knew only too well what he was feeling. I wasn’t surprised with his early diagnosis, in fact I was actually quite relieved, because I knew at that point I could start helping him manage this anxiety.

I soon learned that there are many different types of anxiety including Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Social Anxiety, Separation Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Phobias. These can present themselves in a variety of ways, and in some cases may be linked to other behavioural influences such as ADHD, Aspergers and Autism.

I also discovered that there were very few children’s books available for children and parents to read to help learn about the feelings that anxiety brings. When I wrote ‘Go Away, Mr Worrythoughts’ for my son, I didn’t anticipate it becoming such a highly successful children’s book, a resource that is recommended by psychologists working with children.

Below are some helpful ideas and suggestion strategies to use with children who worry. These are things that worked for us. Add to them to your own ‘strategy tool box’. Use them, change them and adapt them to suit the needs of your own ‘little worrier’.

Helpful Ideas:

• A Worry Box create a worry box to write/draw worries and then post them in the box. (They are gone from the mind and can be either thrown away or discussed later)
• Stress Balls can help fidgety hands, nail biting, scratching or picking.
• Paper Plane write or draw worries on paper, fold it into a paper plane, then send the worries flying.
• Happy Memory Box fill a box with photos, precious gems or stones to be a reminder of a happy thought or experience. Changing thoughts to change the feelings.
• Visualisation/Meditation especially before bedtime, deep breathing activities and mindfulness visualisation can assist in clearing the mind of worry thoughts.
• Inspirational Messages share inspirational messages, words and pictures on a regular basis. Modelling positive thoughts teaches children to do this habitually for themselves.

I currently have three children’s books published, all aimed at helping children deal with anxiety. The journey of writing and illustrating these books has not only helped my own son, but thousands of families dealing with anxiety in a child.

• Go Away, Mr Worrythoughts!
• Happythoughts are Everywhere…
• Actually, I Can

Other helpful books for kids include:

• Silly Billy Anthony Browne
• The Worry Tree Marianne Musgrove
• Taming Butterflies Sue Whiting
• The Huge Bag of Worries Virginia Ironside
• Stomp out the Ants Sally-Anne McCormack

Anxiety in children is manageable, and by sharing my own story I have been able to give others much needed insight into some successful tools and strategies in dealing with worry thoughts.

www.nickyjohnston.com.au

www.facebook.com/GoAwayMrWorrythoughts