Teaching Coping Skills for Anxiety
Parents often focus on helping their child stop feeling anxious but what is valuable is to teach the coping skills that enable a child to cope and function despite feeling anxious. To read about how you can help your child in other important ways read: Anxiety: How to help your child
Below is a list of skills for you to choose from. Some help in the moment, some are designed to boost mental wellbeing as a whole. Some are more useful for toddlers and some for teens and some for all ages. If you also feel anxious regularly, pick some that you can explore together. Remember you don’t have to be an expert to help your child learn - working together will empower you both.
Deepen emotional intelligence and awareness.
Explain that our bodies are designed to feel all emotions and that emotions don’t harm the body in any way, even if they might feel uncomfortable sometimes. Ask them if they can identify where it is in their body they feel anxiety? Anxiety is often felt in the chest or stomach so talk about using that knowledge to notice anxiety before it becomes overwhelming and using one of the other tools to shift it.
Teach breathing techniques.
Anxiety often generates shallow breathing which reduces oxygen to the thinking part of the brain, breathing techniques help to increase oxygen and calm the nervous system. Teach your child belly breaths, where they take breaths big enough to feel in their belly. Box breathing (deep breath, hold, breath out, hold - all for 4 counts, repeat 4/5 times) is a recognised technique for calming the nervous system. View a video HERE
Use your senses
When your child feels anxiety welling up, focus on each of their senses in turn, ask them to notice 5 things they can see, 4 things they can hear, 3 things they can feel, 2 things they can smell and 1 thing they can taste. Engaging the senses helps to focus their mind on something other than their fear.
Practice a mantra or affirmation.
Use a simple mantra such as ‘This will pass’ or an affirmation such as ‘I am brave’, or ‘I can do this’. It helps to find a mantra or affirmation that is meaningful for your child and to practice it when they are not feeling anxious.
Use metaphors
Wave metaphor: Imagine that emotions rise and fall like a wave. Imagine trying to stop a wave, it takes a lot of energy and isn’t very successful (just like trying to stop your emotions) but if you just watch the wave, you will notice it will naturally ebb just as the emotion will naturally pass.
Bus metaphor: Imagine worrying thoughts are a bus, you can stand at the stop and watch them go by or you can hop on, but you can simply get off at the next stop and let those thoughts head off without you. You don’t have to stay on the bus and engage with those worrying thoughts!
Balloon metaphor: imagine attaching anxious thoughts to balloons and watching them float away taking your worrying thoughts with them and leaving your mind clear to be filled with other more helpful thoughts.
Move!
Children are often very intuitive in the use of their bodies, they may want to curl up when feeling anxious for example or step back or turn away. Help your child by getting them to alternate between their natural inclination and the opposite, repeating stepping back and rocking forward for example, or twisting away and swinging back on repeat. This helps shift the natural avoidance actions created by the anxiety and allows the body to rebalance the chemicals anxiety floods the body with.
Make up songs.
Songs that are catchy and repetitive can act in the same way as mantras. ‘When I feel scared I roar like a lion, roar like a lion, roar like a lion…’ use any old tune from another song that they like and make up the words together. Add actions too if you like.
Make a plan.
If your child has anxiety about certain situations, it can help to formulate a plan and role-play the scenario so they feel more confident. Work through a couple of outcomes so they don’t expect an exact replica of the role play.
Play
Imaginative play or playing with soft toys, dolls or figurines helps them explore their thoughts and work out solutions and options and you may gain insight into some of their worries.
Draw or Journal
For older children, journalling or drawing is a useful way of untangling their thoughts. Younger children may like to draw with you, ask open questions but allow them to lead. A daily gratitude journal can help move thoughts to a more positive place.
Make a worry box
You can find details HERE on the Young Minds website. The idea is to put the worry on paper and post it into the box. You can then revisit the worries and if they aren’t a worry anymore tear them up. It helps children see that worries don’t have to be permanent.
Offload to a toy or doll
Make or buy a WORRY DOLL or encourage your child to talk to a soft toy. Children sometimes don’t want to voice their worries to adults, especially if they think it will make the adult worry or if the adult won’t take their worry seriously, so talking to a toy helps them share their worries and reduce them by doing so.
Create a calm down box
This can be a shoebox or tin that contains items that bring calm, things to include might be headphones and a playlist to remind them to listen to music, crayons and a mindful colouring book, a nice smelling soap or perfume, a tactile toy, stone or piece of cloth, photos, sayings etc. Keep the box in a safe, calm spot - creating a calm down corner with a beanbag or snuggly blanket can help or pop it under their bed.
Exercise
Exercising releases endorphins which trigger a positive feeling in the body. If your child isn’t going to go for a run, get the tunes on and dance, even a couple of unenthusiastic stomps or star jumps will help!
Do things for others.
For older children getting involved in the community through volunteering helps to give a sense of purpose and helps with some of the social anxiety teens can feel.
Read stories together
There are lots of great books that help explain to children what is happening with their emotions or help to put their worries in perspective or show them that their worries are normal. This BLOG has a good selection.
Mindfulness & Meditation.
Books such as Mindfulness for Children by Uz Afzal and apps such as Calm or Headspace help to both explain the benefits of, and to engage children in, mindfulness practice. Focussing on the present moment and bringing full awareness to that moment, takes the focus away from the catastrophic thinking about the future that drives so much of anxiety. This for me has been the single most valuable aid to anxiety reduction!
Wow! I started this blog with about 5 points in my head but the ideas just kept coming, I think I’ve got enough down to get you started!
None of these skills are quick fixes. Some may work for you while others don’t. Suggest to your child that you experiment with the ones that resonate best and practice those first. Reflect often and see what is working and what you think needs to change. If anxiety is affecting your child’s ability to function and live a normal life, you may wish to seek help - the charity Young Minds is an excellent place to begin.
