Chapter 4

Parenting an Anxious Child

Your Current Strategies

There are many different ways of handling a child’s anxiety. Some of the more common strategies include reassuring a child (for example, repeatedly telling the child that “everything will be all right”), telling a child exactly how to handle the situation, empathizing with a child’s anxiety by discussing in detail what makes you anxious and afraid, being tough with a child and not letting him or her avoid the situation, removing a child from the feared situation, allowing a child to avoid the situation, prompting a child to independently decide how to cope constructively with his or her anxiety, ignoring a child’s anxiety, and becoming impatient with a child. You probably find that you use several of these strategies at different times with differing rates of success. As a general rule, some of these strategies are effective in managing child anxiety and some of them are not. Each strategy will be reviewed in more detail.

In case you’re beginning to wonder whether the way in which you parent your child is going to be called into question, rest assured—it’s not! The above list has been generated with the help of other parents who have been involved with this program in the past. It’s not meant to gauge how “good” a parent you are. Rather, it is intended to show that lots of other parents face similar difficulties and often respond to them in similar ways.

Being the parent of an anxious child can be really tough, and no doubt there are times when you feel that you just don’t know what to do or say in response to your child’s anxiety. There are probably many times when you feel that nothing that you do or say seems to work. When a person is really caught up in a situation or problem, it’s very difficult for that person to view the situation objectively.

There is no right or wrong way of handling a child, and each child and each family is different. However, there are some things that parents can do to reduce the anxiety that their child will experience in the long run, while on the other hand, sometimes parents and children slip into a pattern that isn’t very helpful for addressing a child’s anxiety. Hopefully, this chapter will help you gain some objectivity in thinking about the strategies that you are currently using to handle your child’s anxiety. By carefully considering the advantages and disadvantages associated with each strategy, you will be able to make informed decisions regarding whether or not a certain strategy is likely to be effective in the long term with your child.

Unhelpful Ways of Dealing with Anxiety in Children

While it is true that there are no wrong ways to handle a child, sometimes parents might react to their child’s anxiety in ways that help to keep the anxiety going or even to increase it in the longer term.

Excessively Reassuring Your Child

Based on parents’ reports, this strategy appears to be very commonly used with anxious children. Examples of ways in which parents attempt to reassure their children include physical affection or closeness or telling the child that “everything will be all right” and that “there is nothing to be afraid of.” Within reason, these are all great strategies, and if they feel right for you, you should continue to use them to some degree. It is only when you find yourself constantly having to reassure your child that alarm bells might start ringing. Loving your children and giving them comfort, security, and reassurance when they are hurt is an important part of parenting. We would never say that you should not reassure your child. In fact, too little reassurance can be as bad as too much. Children who never get reassurance or comfort from their parents are likely to feel insecure and alone. But because of their personalities, anxious children are often not able to rely on themselves and will ask for reassurance far more than other children. That’s when you can start to get into a vicious circle.

Reassurance is a natural parental response to a child’s distress. Unfortunately, to an anxious child, reassurance is like water off a duck’s back: it has very little effect. More importantly, even if reassurance might help to relieve your child’s anxiety a little in the short run, in the long run, the more reassurance you give as a parent, the more reassurance your child will demand.

What is really important is to think about when you give your child lots of attention and reassurance. Obviously, when a child is really hurt or has gotten a fright from a potentially serious situation, then you cannot give too much love and attention. Let’s say your child was crossing the road and a car screeched to a stop only inches from your child’s terrified face. There is no way that you could give too many hugs and kisses in a situation like this. But when your child begins to get scared at times when the fear is excessive, then your hugs and kisses simply give your child the message that there really is something awful there to worry about. Let’s say your child starts to cry when you want to go out for the evening and a sitter arrives. Leaping in and showering your child with hugs and kisses only gives the message, “This really is an awful situation.”

Reassurance is a form of positive attention for your child. This means that every time your child gets anxious and you reassure him or her, you are actually rewarding your child’s anxiety. In some cases, this might make the anxiety seem almost worthwhile for the child. At the very least, it can help to teach children that they cannot cope by themselves and that they need you to handle difficult situations. For this reason, you may find that for your anxious child, you will actually need to hold off your reassurance even more than you would for a nonanxious child simply so that your anxious child is forced to learn that he or she can do things for him- or herself.

So what do you do when your child does seek help or reassurance? The best strategy is to help teach children how they can come up with answers themselves rather than always expecting you to do it for them. There are two common ways of doing this. One way is described in detail later in this chapter (see “Helpful Ways of Dealing with Anxiety in Children”). Another, is to prompt your child to use detective thinking. In other words, rather than simply giving your child reassurance (e.g., “Don’t worry; it will be all right”), it would be much better to get your child to apply his or her own detective thinking to the worry.

When you are dealing with a child who has become used to asking for reassurance a great deal, you may need to begin gradually to give less and less help over time. For example, if you decide to encourage your child to use his or her own detective thinking rather than coming to you for reassurance, you may need to spend a little time with your child going through detective thinking the first few times. After a short while, you can gradually expect your child to do more and more of the detective thinking independently. Eventually, if your child comes to you seeking reassurance, you should be able simply to tell him or her to do his or her own detective thinking about the problem.

If you are going to make a change from always helping your child as much as he or she wants, to withdrawing a little, it is very important that you let your child know. A sudden change without ­explanation might leave your child feeling hurt, unloved, and afraid. No matter how young your child is, you should explain clearly what the changes are going to be and why you are making them. It’s also a very good idea to introduce rewards (and of course lots of praise) when your child successfully solves a problem by him- or herself. Finally, it is absolutely essential that you and other adults in your child’s life are consistent. No matter how hard it is, it is important not to give in to your child’s requests for reassurance (within reason). Don’t enter into extended arguments with children. Rather, inform them clearly and calmly that you are confident that they know the answer and you are not going to discuss it any more. Then ignore any further requests for reassurance. Don’t forget to reward and praise your child for ­successful self-reliance (i.e., for not seeking reassurance).

As you will see in the following example, for Kurt and his mother, this process does require that parents keep to their decision despite their child asking the questions. Children learn that persistence often pays off, so as a parent, you will need to outlast their persistence and stick to your plans.

Kurt’s Example

Whenever they’re going on a family outing, Kurt bugs his parents with repeated questions about what will happen, who will be there, what they should take, what he should wear, and so on. In the past, Kurt’s parents have tried everything to get him to relax and ask fewer questions. Usually, however, they end up answering his questions for a while, eventually losing patience and yelling at him. Finally, Kurt’s mother decided that it was time to tackle this problem in a different way (his father was not very interested in the program).

To begin, Kurt’s mother sat down with him at a calm time to discuss the issue. She told him that she loved his usual questions and his curiosity but that when he was worried about things, he would often begin to ask too many nagging questions. She explained that she knew he was very smart and that he was now old enough to answer many of his own questions. She said that the next time he began to worry and ask too many questions, she would help him to do his detective thinking to try to come up with his own answers. After that, Kurt’s mother explained that she and his father would ignore any further “worry questions.” They would be very pleased with him if he could do his own detective thinking and not ask them any worry questions.

A week later, Kurt’s family was invited to a friend’s house for lunch. As the time approached, Kurt began with some questions. He was particularly worried about whether he would know anyone and about the possibility that the other kids might not like him. As soon as he began to ask questions, his mother sat down with him and went through his detective thinking with him. She encouraged him to think about how many times he had previously been to visit family friends and had known people, whether other kids usually found him likeable, what he was likely to think (based on previous experience) of the other children there, and so on. After Kurt had been through the evidence, his mother praised him and went about her work. The next time that Kurt asked a question about the visit, she said to him, “You know that we have already talked about this and done the detective thinking. You know that you have the answers and that you don’t need me to tell you. If you ask again, I am not going to answer you, but I am very happy to talk about anything else you would like to discuss.” When Kurt asked again, his mother simply ignored the question. When he did not ask any questions for ten minutes, she said, “Kurt, do you realize that you haven’t asked me anything about our outing today for the last ten minutes? I’m really proud of how brave you are being. Keep up the good work.” Kurt asked no more questions about the visit that day. After the visit, Kurt’s parents let him stay up a little later to watch a movie he had been excited about.

Being Too Involved and Directive

When a child is extremely anxious, some parents will try to take over and direct their child. In other words, they will tell the child exactly what to do, how to behave, and what to say in the anxiety-provoking situation or they will do things on behalf of their child.

George’s Example

Take George’s parents for instance. George becomes very anxious when in social situations with other children. On one particular occasion, George and his father went to the birthday party of a younger cousin. George spent most of the time sitting beside his father and not mixing with the other children. At one point, a clown arrived and began handing out candy. George’s father could see that George would have loved to have some candy but that he was not going to step forward and ask for any because he was too shy. So his father leapt up and went to the clown to get some candy for George. George blushed from ear to ear but was very pleased with the candy.

The manner in which parents sometimes take over for their anxious children is an excellent example of what we call a vicious circle. Usually, parents only adopt this strategy after the repeated experience of watching their child feel helpless with anxiety. Most parents don’t tell their kids what to do in anxiety-provoking situations out of natural bossiness. Rather, parents behave in this way because they feel so much for their child when they see the child become gripped by fear. In the short term, this strategy of stepping in helps to reduce the children’s fear and gets them what they want. However, if you think about it, this reliance on parental direction is actually a form of avoidance. In the above example, George has learned that he is unable to handle the feared situation himself and that he can only do it with his father’s help. In the long term, this helps to further reduce his self-confidence and to keep his anxiety going.

Even though it can be very painful, it is vitally important that you do not do too much for your child. The bottom line is that children often learn best by being allowed to make their own mistakes. Also, children can only learn that situations are not dangerous, and that they can cope, if they are forced to experience the situation. We will discuss this principle in much more detail in the coming chapters. For now, it’s important for you simply to think about whether you sometimes become too involved with your child’s activities or take things over for him or her.

So how much involvement is “too much”? Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer to this question. There is no way to quantify how involved to be, and, of course, every parent and child and situation will be different. What you need to ask yourself is whether you think that you help your child more than other parents do and whether your child relies on him- or herself less than other children his or her age. You may need to think about concrete examples of times when your child has appeared helpless and you felt you had to step in. Talk to other parents and ask what they or their child would do in such situations. And above all, ask yourself, “Did I really need to step in? What would have been the worst thing to happen, if I hadn’t?” As we said earlier, with an anxious child, it’s possible that you might need to help even less often than you would with a less-anxious child.

Permitting Avoidance

Anxious children try to avoid lots of activities. As a parent, it is hard to continually push your child to face fears, so sometimes, you might give in and let your child avoid them. If this happens occasionally, it’s understandable. Obviously, in the short run, your child’s anxiety and distress will drop, and you will also make yourself very popular by allowing your child to get out of doing things that he or she does not want to do. However, if it becomes a common habit, the long-term consequences of permitting avoidance in your child are very serious. As long as children continue to avoid, they will not overcome their anxiety. At this point, you don’t need to do anything about avoidance, aside from be aware of it. We will discuss how to deal with avoidance in chapter 5.

Jess’s Example

Jess’s worries get much worse whenever there is a new or rare activity that she is meant to participate in. Jess’s parents know that events like the school athletics day or family outings with her cousins will cause several sleepless nights and a lot of tears. It has been this way for a very long time. When there is no other choice, Jess is made to go to these events, but her parents often let her stay home or they decline the invitations themselves whenever possible as it is all too hard. Jess has not gone to athletics days for the last two years, and last Christmas, Jess, her siblings, and parents did not attend the family Christmas party because it was being held at her aunt’s place rather than her grandparents’ house where it had been in previous years. Sometimes Jess’s parents try to get around this problem by not telling her about events until they are in the car and on their way; for example, they might use this strategy when visiting the dentist. This often backfires; Jess becomes panicky, and they have to turn back anyway.

Jess knows she does not have to do activities that worry her a lot and will now just say to her parents, “I just don’t think I can do that.” Consequently she is missing out on many enjoyable activities, as well as ones that are necessary for her education and health.

Becoming Impatient with Your Child

Unfortunately, as many parents tell us, it’s all too easy to become impatient and frustrated with an anxious child. Nothing you do or say seems to help. At times, it can feel as though children are deliberately clinging to their anxiety. Often it feels like, “They could do it if only they would try harder.” While it’s understandable that you might sometimes lose your patience, obviously becoming angry with your child will only serve to make him or her more frightened and dependent. If you feel yourself losing patience, it is helpful to ask another person (such as your partner) to help, or to leave the situation for a short while to gather your thoughts. It can sometimes be useful to try and remind yourself what you are asking your child to do. Imagine having to confront something really terrifying (like walking into a biker’s party and asking them to turn the music down) and you might be able to understand the difficulty that your child has to face.

Lashi’s Example

Lashi’s dad came to pick her up on Friday afternoon for an overnight visit. Lashi’s mom had plans to go out with her best friend to a movie while Lashi was away; she hadn’t been to a movie in eighteen months and was really looking forward to it. Lashi had been worried about visiting her dad all week. She thought that her mom would have a terrible accident while she was not there and that her mom would die because no one would be able to call for help. She had discussed this with her mom at length, and they had made an agreement that after the movie, Lashi’s mom would call her to say goodnight.

Before school on Friday, Lashi dragged her feet a lot and would not help to get her bag ready to take for the night. Her mom didn’t want to rock the boat, so, although she yelled several times in frustration, she sent Lashi to school and got the bag ready herself. When the afternoon came and Lashi’s dad arrived, Lashi became distraught. She clung to her mother and was shouting and screaming in the front yard. Lashi’s mom lost her temper, smacked Lashi twice, and put her into the car so her dad could quickly drive off.

Lashi’s mom felt awful. She knew Lashi was scared but she had just had enough. She didn’t end up enjoying the movie, and when she called Lashi afterward, even though she had settled pretty well, Lashi’s mom offered to pick her up and bring her home. Lashi jumped at the chance and came home, and her mom then spent extra time with her to make up for losing her temper.

Helpful Ways of Dealing with Anxiety in Children

While there is no single way to handle a child’s fears, and everyone will have their own ways of doing things, there are ways that parents can act that will help their child to learn that “Nothing bad will happen” and “I can handle it.”

Rewarding Brave, Nonanxious Behavior

All children, no matter how anxious, will at certain times do things that are frightening for them. As a parent, you should look out for any examples of this type of bravery, no matter how small, and reward your child for them. This will make it more likely that the bravery will happen again. Think of it as fanning the small embers of a fire to get it to grow. At first, you need to look for any example of bravery and make a big fuss over it. Later, as your child becomes less anxious, you can reward only the more obvious examples. Make sure you don’t set your expectations too high. Remember, what may seem like a small thing to you may be extremely difficult for a nervous child. You will need to make sure you look for behaviors that are brave based on your child’s personality, not on anyone else’s standards. By pointing to and focusing on successes, you will help your child to build self-confidence as well as help your child realize what he or she is capable of.

In addition to looking for naturally occurring bravery, at times you may want to encourage your child to do things that are a little challenging for him or her. Again, this needs to be rewarded. We will discuss this strategy in more detail later in the program.

Rewards can fall into two broad types—material and nonmaterial. Material rewards are the ones most of us think of immediately. These might include money, food, stickers, or toys. The child is given the reward, say, a small toy, after the brave action is noticed. Nonmaterial rewards include praise, attention, and interest from the parent. Parental attention is an extremely powerful reward. Most children, especially younger ones, will do almost anything for the approval and praise of their parents. Spending extra time with children (e.g., playing a game or going for a bike ride) is a great way to reward them for brave, nonanxious behavior. Whenever possible, we suggest you use nonmaterial rewards because they have the added benefit of giving your child a sense of security and self-esteem.

It is also important to keep your rewards varied. If your child keeps getting the same reward over and over, that reward will very quickly lose its impact. There are several points to remember when using rewards:

• In order to be effective, rewards must be meaningful to the child. There is no point in rewarding a child with something he or she doesn’t like. The easiest way to make sure that the child will work for a reward is to discuss it. Find out what he or she wants most at this moment.
• Discuss clearly with your child exactly what he or she needs to do to get rewards. There is no point showering rewards on children if they think the rewards came for no reason. It is important that the child knows exactly why he or she is getting the reward and how it could be gotten again. Praise should be clear and specific. You want your child to know exactly what he or she has just done that you liked and want him or her to repeat in the future. For example, saying, “David, you were able to go by yourself with Mrs. Jones into class this morning instead of needing me to come in with you. I was really proud of you” is much more useful than saying, “You were a good boy today, David.”
• The rewards must be in keeping with the activity, and you need to make sure that you give the child a reward that is the right size for the difficulty of the activity. For example, if your child is terrified of dogs and has just spent the last half hour with the neighbor’s dog, which he or she has never approached before, it is not fair to give only a small token or two minutes of your time. On the other hand, if your child has done something that was only slightly difficult, you are leaving yourself with nowhere to go if you reward him or her with a new television.
• Most importantly, rewards must be given as soon as possible after the brave action has occurred and they must be delivered if promised. Consistency is essential for effective parenting. Children will learn very quickly to stop trusting a parent’s word if they find that promises are not delivered. If you promise your child a reward, it must be delivered. Similarly, rewards lose their effectiveness the greater the time between the event and the reward. If your child does something brave on Monday and you give a small reward the following Saturday, the whole impact will have been lost. For maximum impact, the reward should be delivered immediately. That is why your own time and attention can be so much better than buying a gift. Of course, there will be times when delivering an immediate reward is just not practical. For example, you may decide to reward your child by going skiing together. Obviously, this can’t be done immediately and may need to wait until the weekend. In this case, it is useful to give some sort of interim reward. For example, you may make up a small voucher that clearly says the reason for earning the voucher on it, and your child can exchange it during the weekend for the ski trip. At the very least, if the reward is delayed, you need to make an immediate fuss and give attention to the brave act and make it very clear that the later reward and the brave act are connected.
• If you have other children, you may find that they become resentful of the extra attention and rewards that your anxious child is getting. One way around this might be to introduce a reward system for all children in the family. You can introduce a chart where each child can earn rewards, although the rewards might be earned by different behaviors for each child. In this way, you can build bravery in all your children if needed, or you could use the rewards for your other children to increase helpful habits such as obedience, brushing teeth, tidying their rooms, and so on. If they are older (mature) siblings, explain to them that their little brother or sister is doing some extra hard work to overcome his or her fears and that this is something that they would not normally be expected to do, so it deserves extra rewards. If they want to earn rewards too, they have to work on something equally as difficult or unusual (like doing an extra half-hour of music practice each day or learning how to touch-type).

Teaching Your Child About Rewards

In the same way that we emphasize rewards as an important part of parenting management, we believe it is also important for children to learn what rewards are and about self-rewarding. Although most children have no trouble telling you what things they would like to receive as rewards, they generally only think of rewards as big and small material items, not as the wide range of items that are actually possible. There are two purposes here: first, to get an idea of what rewards your child would like to earn throughout the program (remember rewards must be meaningful to your child, not you) and second, to get your child to begin to reward him- or herself for the efforts made. In this chapter’s activities, your child will be learning to identify rewards and to self-reward.

Ignoring Behaviors That You Don’t Want

This is really the flip side of the previous strategy. It involves removing your attention from your child’s anxious behavior and attending again (and praising) when the anxious behavior has stopped. The idea is that when you notice a behavior that you are not happy with (for example, your child repeatedly complaining about feeling sick before school), you need to stop any interaction with your child as long as he or she is doing that behavior (complaining). Of course, it is essential that your child understand exactly why you are ignoring him or her and exactly what he or she needs to do in order to regain your attention. Using this strategy should be immediately followed by specific praise for something good that the child is doing (e.g., complaining stops for one minute). Ignoring is a particularly useful strategy for dealing with reassurance seeking (as we discussed above in the section “Excessively Reassuring Your Child”). This strategy must always be used carefully and only in relation to a specific behavior. It’s important that your child understands that it is the particular behavior in which he or she is engaging that is unacceptable to you and not his or her general character. In addition, as we discussed earlier, it is important to remove your attention from your child’s reassurance seeking in a gradual and systematic way and to encourage children to use a strategy where they can do it themselves (such as their detective thinking).

Kurt’s Example

All the way to school each day, Kurt used to ask his dad whether he had fed the dog, put her outside, and filled up her water bowl, even though he had never forgotten to do these things before. His dad made an agreement with Kurt that he would no longer answer these questions but would instead start singing along with the radio. He reminded Kurt that he was perfectly capable of remembering, himself, whether those things had been done and also reminded Kurt of the evidence that he had never forgotten these things before. The next day when Kurt asked the questions, his dad said, “I don’t answer those questions anymore—try and think of the evidence yourself”; he then turned on the radio and started singing. Kurt looked annoyed, even got mad one morning, but after a week, he no longer asked the questions and soon stopped worrying about these things.

Prompting Your Child to Cope Constructively

When you are talking with your child about the things that make him or her anxious, it’s important that you express your empathy and understanding in a calm and relaxed manner. Children need to feel listened to, understood, and supported, but it is equally important that they are encouraged to constructively solve the problem of their anxiety rather than focusing on how bad they feel. A stepped problem-solving approach will be introduced later in the chapter as a way of handling anxious moments.

Parents who use this strategy typically prompt their children to think for themselves about how to constructively handle an anxiety-provoking situation. This is quite different from parents who tell their children exactly what to do in the anxiety-provoking situation.

George’s Example

George is highly anxious about a debate that he has to take part in at school. He is very upset and imagines the worst possible outcome. George is sure that he will make a mess of his speech and look like a complete idiot. He complains that he has a headache and that his stomach hurts.

George’s mom comes and sits down with him. She says to him, “George, I can understand that you feel worried about the debate. But the fact is that you have to do it for class, and at the moment, you’re just not helping yourself. You’re saying a lot of negative things about how things are going to go, and that must be making you feel worse. Plus, you’re talking yourself into feeling sick. What you’re doing right now isn’t making you feel any better, is it?” George agrees with his mother. She then goes on, “Okay, so what can you do that might help? What can you do that would make you feel better?” George answers this by saying that staying away from school on the day of his team’s debate would help him feel better. His mom points out that George’s teacher would probably just postpone his team’s debate until he came back to school and she also says that George will have to do more public speaking tasks now that he is in high school; if he puts it off now, the next time will be even harder. George can see the logic of this, especially the first point. He suggests that maybe if he practiced the speech with his mom, he might feel better about it. She praises him for coming up with a constructive way of dealing with his anxiety and agrees to practice with him.

In this example, George’s mom is prompting George to come up with his own solutions. She is not encouraging him to rely on her because she is not directly intervening. Instead, she is encouraging him to take responsibility for managing his own anxiety in a constructive manner. At the same time, she is firmly not allowing him to avoid the debate.

Encouraging your child to use the detective approach to evaluate the realistic probability of his or her negative, worrying thoughts being true is an important component of this strategy. Prompting your child to independently decide how to cope constructively with anxiety is a good long-term strategy, because it involves showing faith in your child’s abilities. You would be surprised at how often children are able to rise to meet their parents’ expectations. If you believe that your child possesses the ability to overcome challenges and to solve problems, he or she is more likely to believe this too.

Modeling Brave, Nonanxious Behavior

Children learn how to behave by observing others, and most significantly, their parents, especially when children are younger. Thus, as a parent, everything that you do or say has added significance because you are serving as a model for your child. And who do you think your child is likely to most closely relate to with respect to his or her anxiety—the calm, relaxed one in the family or the slightly nervous, worried one? Naturally, when it comes to their fears and worries, anxious children will most strongly relate to a parent who, like them, might also seem to have a few fears of his or her own. So if one or both parents can think of a few of their own fears and worries, then parents have the power to really help their child cope with anxiety.

The very best type of model is a coping model, that is, a model who can show that he or she experiences fears and worries and also can show how to cope constructively with these difficulties. This type of model is much more effective than one who never seems to have any difficulties. So if you fit the bill, it is really important that you don’t try and hide your fears from your child or pretend that you never get scared. All this does is show your child that it is embarrassing or “weird” to be scared. Instead, you need to see managing your fears and worries as a shared activity—something you and your child can work on together.

Once you start talking openly with your child about your own fears, you can begin to use yourself as a model or practice example for your child. For example, you can ask your child to help you with your detective thinking. Children will love this, and it will help them to really understand how they can think more realistically. Later, when we start to work on building stepladders (see chapter 5), you and your child can each have your own stepladders and can use this to make anxiety management more fun. For example, your child can help you work on your stepladder and approach your fears, which will help him or her understand more about overcoming fears. Or you could set up a challenge where you see who can work his or her way up a stepladder first.

Of course for some parents of anxious children, the parent’s own anxiety can actually be a serious problem. If you believe that you have a problem with anxiety and are having trouble handling it yourself, it is important for you to see a mental health professional so that you can begin to model more effective coping for your child.

Talia’s Example

Talia was beginning to prepare to face her fear of water. One day when her grandma was over, Talia found out that her grandma was also scared of water and that she had never learned to swim. They talked for a while about the things that her grandma had missed out on because she didn’t know how to swim. Together they decided they could both face their fear of water and learn how to swim. They booked swimming lessons for each other and made a pact to have learned to swim twenty-five meters by Christmas when they would go swimming together. Even though Talia didn’t live near her grandma, they kept each other up to date on their progress by phone. Talia felt confident that if her grandma could do it, so could she.

Important Principles to Remember When Dealing with Children

There are a number of common difficulties for parents in successfully managing their child’s behavior. Although some of these principles may seem obvious, they are easy to forget.

Being Consistent

It is important that you try to reward (or punish) your child consistently. Children need to learn that certain behaviors lead to desirable consequences and that others lead to undesirable consequences. In this way you can encourage your child to behave appropriately. You need to discuss this with your partner and decide on a joint strategy. Similarly, your parenting will work best if everyone who is involved with raising that child is also on board, including step-parents, grandparents, and so on. Naturally this will not always be possible, and this is when things might start to get difficult. But the more you can have consistent rules and consequences for your child, the better your child will be at learning to manage his or her behavior.

Keeping Your Emotions in Check

At times, all children can be very frustrating and worrying! This is especially true for anxious children. What could be more frustrating than running late to get out the door when your child is refusing to get dressed because he or she is scared to go into the other room alone? As understandable as it is to get mad, you need to remember that you become far less effective as a coach when you are very emotional (e.g., angry or anxious) because at such times it is harder to be consistent. Plan ahead for ways in which you can give yourself a “time-out” from interactions with your child when those interactions provoke strong emotional responses in you. When you take time away, tell your child what you are doing and let him or her know that you will come back a little later. Similarly when you work on your child’s anxiety program, it is important to do so at a pre-planned time when you are both calm and relaxed. You should not be trying to teach your child new lessons on the run when he or she is crying with fear at going out the door. Finally, when you do find yourselves escalating, try to get away and gather your thoughts. Try to get a partner, friend, or older sibling to stay with your child and try to explain that you need to get away to calm down. Then go into another room and try to get your thoughts together. You’ll be able to deal with your child’s anxiety far more effectively when you are keeping your cool.

Distinguishing Between Anxious and Naughty Behavior

One of the most common difficulties parents have is drawing a line between a child’s anxious behaviors and times when a child is just being naughty. Parents are also often getting a mixture of advice from well-meaning others who believe that all of the child’s behaviors are pure naughtiness and should therefore be punished. Unfortunately the two behaviors can look very similar, but the anxious ones don’t deserve to be punished, making it difficult for parents to know what to do. Another difficulty can be that some anxious children would much rather get in trouble than face a feared situation (the type of trouble a child will get in is usually pretty predictable and therefore quite safe), so they will deliberately mess up to get out of it.

There are three principles that can help you to distinguish between anxious behaviors and naughty behavior:

1. Even if a child is anxious at the time, any form of verbal or physical aggression is not acceptable. That means that swearing, calling people names, hitting, and throwing things should all lead to immediate consequences. In the real world, these behaviors are not excused just because someone is feeling bad, therefore allowing children to act like this without consequences will in the long run disadvantage them. They need to learn to deal with their emotions appropriately, even when these feelings are really strong.
2. You need to look at the situation in detail to see if there is a reason why your child might be avoiding a task. For example, if you have asked your child to go and brush his or her teeth and this hasn’t happened, stand back and look at the situation. Suppose that you know that your child is scared of the dark and the bathroom is at the end of the hallway and at the moment there are no lights on. In that case, it is quite possible that your child is avoiding the task rather than being disobedient. However, if there are no such limitations and your child is just glued to the television, then it is probably disobedience and turning off the television immediately for ten minutes would be an appropriate response.
3. You can also look at how consistently your child seems to avoid a situation. For example, if your child says he or she is too scared to go into his or her room every time there is homework to do but seems quite happy to sit in there for hours at the computer, then you may assume that your child is exaggerating his or her fears.

Children who get out of activities by complaining that they are afraid, often do look quite happy when they succeed, that is, do not have to do the task. This can fool people into thinking that this is just manipulative behavior. However, it is important to look at what you know of your child’s fears and worries and see if this behavior makes sense from that point of view. If you worried about that thing, would you be willing to do the task? If the answer is no, it points to an area where you need to apply anxiety management skills. If the task is not associated with a known fear, then it is probably safe to insist that your child complete the task without working on the anxiety.

Managing Naughty Behavior

Although this is not a course that will help you deal with deliberate naughtiness or disobedience, we encourage the use of nonphysical punishment when a child’s behavior gets out of hand. Again, these punishments need to be used consistently and with emotions in check.

Time-Out

This is a very useful form of “punishment,” especially for younger children. Before using time-out, the terms need to be carefully discussed, that is, why a time-out is necessary, what behavior will result in a time-out, where the time-out will be (choose a boring place like the bathroom or an entryway), how long your child must stay in time-out (generally five to fifteen minutes for primary school children), how he or she must behave while in time-out (the time doesn’t start until your child is quiet), and what you want to see at the end of a time-out (completion of a task, an apology). You and your child should also agree on what will happen if he or she does not adhere to the time-out agreement (e.g., loss of a privilege until the time-out is completed).

As an example, it may be that you and your child agree to use a time-out when your child starts shouting. If he or she shouts, the time-out is five minutes in the bathroom. The time does not start until your child is quiet. After five minutes of time-out, the child can come back to the conversation and explain (in a reasonable tone) what he or she is upset about. After using time-out, parents should find the next opportunity to praise their child for good behavior—in the example above, the parent would praise the child the next time that the child talks calmly.

Jess’s Example

Jess has recently been aggressive when she becomes highly anxious. She will yell that she hates people and has hit both her mom, Maggie, and her dad, Dan, several times when they have tried to insist that she complete a task. Her parents are at a bit of a loss as to what to do with her when she is like this but have tended to try to comfort her and have never had her do the task that caused the problem. The last straw came when Jess’s little brother hit his mother and got upset when he was sent to his room because Jess has never gotten in trouble for hitting. Maggie and Dan decided to make a house rule that any aggressive behaviors from any of the children would lead to an immediate time-out. They sat the children down and made up a list of aggressive behaviors, which including hitting, throwing objects, and screaming at a person, that would no longer be allowed in the Jones household. They explained to the children that if they did these things, they would have to sit quietly in the bathroom for ten minutes. The ten-minute period wouldn’t start until the child was quiet, and when time was up (which a parent would announce), the child would have to say what he or she would do differently next time.

The first time-out was used three days later when Jess hit Dan when she didn’t want to eat her vegetables. Dan immediately took Jess to the bathroom and told her that she should sit quietly for ten minutes. Jess yelled and hit the door, and each time she came out, Dan or Maggie would take her straight back to the bathroom. It took forty minutes before Jess was quiet and Dan was able to start the ten minutes. At the end of the time, Dan went and opened the door and asked Jess what she would do differently next time. Jess replied, “Not get mad” and she then went back to the table and ate her cold vegetables.

The next time Jess was sent to time-out it only took her five minutes to sit quietly. Over several weeks, the number of times Jess was sent to time-out dropped from five in the first week to once in a two-week period. Maggie and Dan finally felt like they could work on Jess facing her fears without someone getting hurt.

Removal of Privileges

If further punishment is necessary beyond a time-out agreement, then removing a privilege is the next best thing. When a privilege is removed, it needs to have a meaningful and fairly immediate impact. For example, telling a child in October that there won’t be any Christmas presents will not work nearly as well as telling the child that he or she cannot watch a favorite television program in half an hour. Privileges should never be removed for more than a few days as the impact will be lost, and it is likely that it will be too difficult for you to follow through and not give in. As with all our other strategies, communication is essential, and children need to know clearly why they lost the privilege and when they can get it back.

Natural Consequences

Sometimes the things that anxious children do to express their anxieties have a natural consequence. For example, a child who decides to back out of going to a party should be responsible for phoning and saying that he or she cannot attend. If there are natural consequences to an undesirable anxious behavior, then allow your child to experience that consequence; do not protect him or her from it. In Jess’s example above, having to eat her vegetables cold was a natural consequence of her behavior.

Parent Activity: Responding to My Child’s Positive and Negative Behaviors

Having read all of this information on managing your child’s anxiety, you need to start putting in place the ideas that you think are most appropriate for your child and family. There are two different approaches provided.

The first form is useful once you have identified the parenting “traps” that you have fallen into. Record each trap, what you intend to do differently when interacting with your child, and then your daily success in changing your interactions. Consider recording both your comfort in changing your reaction and how your child responded. Do not try to change many things at once; focus on one or two at a time.

The second is a monitoring form that you can use to follow your attempts to respond to your child’s positive and negative behaviors. Over the next week, keep track of which of the helpful and unhelpful strategies you use. This will help you to become aware of where you need to change in your own interactions with your child.

Both of these tasks will help you to increase your awareness of how you can change your responses to your child’s anxiety and, when making those changes, how his or her behavior shifts.

What to Do When Your Child Becomes Frightened

You may be wondering at this point, how do I stop my child from feeling anxious at those times when he or she suddenly becomes very scared and refuses to do something? The simple answer is, “You don’t!” It is not possible to take away all of a child’s anxiety. We all feel anxious at times, and we all need to learn how to deal with it. Even though it’s really hard to see it in our own children, as parents, we sometimes have to accept that our children will feel anxious. When children get really scared for some reason, it is usually important to give them lots of contact, comfort, and security. Also, as we discussed earlier, it is very important for you to stay cool and calm so you don’t add to the problem. Finally, we describe here a very structured way of helping your child to control his or her panic and begin to calm down.

A Problem-Solving Approach

Use of a problem-solving approach in handling children’s anxiety has two advantages. First, it encourages a collaborative approach to solving the problem where both you and your child can influence the outcome. Second, it encourages children’s independence in managing their own anxiety by giving them some of the responsibility. There are six steps to the problem-solving approach.

1. Summarize what your child has said. Check the accuracy of your understanding of the problem—that is, make sure that you know what your child actually means. Don’t try and argue; rather, communicate your empathy with your child in a sympathetic but calm way.
2. Identify what can be changed. Ask your child what he or she can change—the situation, his or her reaction, or both.
3. Ask your child to brainstorm all the possible ways in which his or her anxiety might be reduced. Make sure you don’t just take over the task for children. Rather, help him or her to come up with his or her own suggestions of ways to reduce the anxiety and feel better. Naturally, you will need to do more of the task for younger children and leave more of it up to older children. Also praise children for the ideas that they’ve generated. Even if the ideas are not actually very useful, praise them for their effort. The fact that they’re engaging with you in the process of trying to constructively reduce their anxiety is a very positive and important step. Encourage your child to think of his or her detective character and to use detective thinking as one option.
4. Go through each idea or strategy that your child has come up with, one by one. For each idea, ask the child, “What would happen if you did this?” If the child doesn’t know, gently point possibilities out to him or her (for instance, you might say, “I wonder if ______________________________ would happen if you did ______________________________ to make yourself feel better. What do you think?”). Remember, your overriding goal is to encourage your child to find solutions that involve approaching the situation rather than avoiding it. Praise your child for trying to come up with outcomes for each strategy.
5. Ask your child to choose the strategy that is most likely to get the best result. Remind your child of the evidence from detective thinking. You may find it helpful to have your child score each strategy on a scale of 1 (not at all helpful) to 10 (very helpful) to help him or her choose the strongest strategy.
6. Later, once your child has tried the strongest one of the strategies, evaluate its success. Discuss it with your child and consider what was successful, what was difficult, and what your child learned that could be used next time.

Jess’s Example

Jess’s parents, Maggie and Dan, are going out to dinner to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Jess is extremely worried about the potential of an accident happening while they are out. She is crying and clinging to her parents, begging them not to go.

Step 1: Maggie and Dan sit down with Jess to find out what the problem is.

Maggie: Jess, we can see that you’re very upset about the idea of us going out. Can you tell us exactly what it is that is worrying you?

Jess: I don’t know. I just don’t want you to go.

Dan: Okay, we know that you don’t want us to go. But we need you to tell us why. What is it that you are afraid will happen if we go out?

Jess: You might be in an accident and be hurt.

Maggie summarizes and checks her understanding of what Jess has said.

Maggie: So, you don’t want us to go out because you think that we might be in an accident and get hurt. Is that right Jess? Is that why you’re so upset?

Jess: Yes.

Step 2: Maggie and Dan present Jess with her choices.

Dan: Okay, Jess, your mother and I are going out tonight. And it’s really up to you how you deal with that. You can keep on doing what you’re doing right now, and feel really bad. Or you can try to do something to cope with the bad feelings that you’re having. Mom and I would really like to help you cope with the bad feelings. Are you willing to give that a try?

Jess: I want you to stay with me at home. If you stay, I won’t have any bad feelings.

Maggie: Jess, you’ve heard your dad. We’re not going to stay at home with you tonight. The decision you have to make is what you’re going to do about how you’re feeling right now. How about you work with us and we’ll try and come up with a plan to make you feel better?

Jess: I guess. …

Dan: Good girl.

Step 3: Maggie and Dan prompt Jess to generate some suggestions as to how she might cope with her anxiety (that is, what she might do to make herself feel better). Jess is praised for her effort.

Maggie: Okay, Jess. We need to think of as many things as possible that you could do that might make you feel better. What do you think you could do?

Jess: What do you mean? I don’t understand.

Dan: Well, for instance, you’re worried about us going out because you’re saying to yourself that if we go out, we might have an accident. Maybe instead, you could watch a video and take your mind off your worries. Do you see what I mean?

Jess: I could take your car keys and hide them. Then you wouldn’t be able to go.

Maggie: Well, that’s one idea. At this stage, we’ll write down all the ideas and then we can decide on one later on.

Jess: I could go and watch my video to take my mind off things.

Dan: Great, Jess. What else could you do?

Jess: I could write down that thing about you and Mom being good drivers, so that I can remember it later.

Maggie: You mean your detective thinking—that’s really excellent, Jess. You’re trying really hard and coming up with some good ideas. Can you think of anything else?

Step 4: Maggie and Dan prompt Jess to identify the likely consequences or outcomes of each of the coping strategies she has come up with.

Dan: Right. Now Jess, we’ve got a few different ideas written down here about what you might do to make yourself feel better about us going out. Let’s go through them one at a time and find out what would happen if you actually did each of these things. First of all, there was the idea that you hide the car keys. What do you think would happen if you did that?

Jess: You might stay home?

Dan: You know, Jess, I think that if you did that, it’s probably more likely that we’d send you to your room and call a taxi to take us out to dinner.

Jess: Yeah, I guess.

Dan: How about your idea about watching a video? What would happen if you did that?

Jess: I’d have fun and I wouldn’t be thinking about you and Mom.

Dan: How about your idea of writing down that your mom and I are good drivers? What do you think would happen if you did that?

Jess: It would remind me that you probably wouldn’t have an accident, and I might feel better.

Maggie: Okay, that’s the end of our list. Well done, Jess. You’re doing a really excellent job of helping yourself get over your bad feelings.

Step 5: Maggie and Dan prompt Jess to choose the best solution.

Dan: Okay, now the last thing we need to do is to pick one of these ideas. Have a look at the list and the things that would probably happen if you chose each idea. Which one do you think would be the best for you?

Jess: Well, that’s easy. It would be my idea of watching the video. Plus, I could also write down something about you and Mom being good drivers, to remind myself not to worry.

Maggie: I think that’s an excellent choice. Your dad and I are very proud of you for being able to figure out how to cope with your worry in a helpful way.

Step 6: Assuming that Jess handled her anxiety in a useful way and allowed Dan and Maggie to go out without further difficulty, they would praise her efforts the next morning and evaluate the usefulness of the strategies. They might also organize a special reward to acknowledge her bravery, such as playing a favorite game with them.

Maggie: I’m so proud of the way that you handled yourself last night, Jess. Not only did you deal with your worries, but you did the things that we agreed to and got through the night without even calling us.

Jess: Yeah, Sally [the babysitter] and I made some popcorn to watch with the movie. The movie got a bit scary, and we both hid under the pillows!

Maggie: It sounds like you had a great time. What did you learn from what we did?

Jess: That if you find something good to do, eventually the worries don’t bother you so much.

Maggie: What about the detective thinking?

Jess: That helped when I thought about you guys at bedtime. I started to get worried again but I just said to myself, “Dad’s a good driver, and they’re only ten minutes down the road.”

Maggie: Very well done. You even came up with some evidence of your own. Is there anything that you would do differently next time?

Jess: Yeah, I’d get some chocolate to go with the movie!

That evening Dan went bike riding with Jess to reward her for her efforts the night before.

The completed problem-solving worksheet from this situation would look like this:

Parent Activity: Problem Solving

For the situation your child most commonly gets anxious in, jot down some ideas for each step of the procedure outlined in the reading. Try to preempt any problems that you might have at each step.

Once you have a large list, have your child identify rewards that he or she would like to work toward. Ask you child for ideas of fun things to do with the family, things he or she would like to hear (such as praise from Dad), activities to do at home, and material goods to work toward. Let your child identify unrealistic and realistic rewards at this stage; you can negotiate which rewards are used when you work on creating stepladders. Remind your child that rewards can be for success or for big efforts.

Children’s Activity 16: Rewarding Yourself

Talk with children about how they can also give rewards by talking to themselves in a positive way or by doing something that makes them feel good. Use examples to help your child understand, such as saying, “Way to go; that was a great goal!” or by doing a favorite craft activity after spending time practicing a new skill like detective thinking. Ask your child to think of ways to self-reward for recent successes or big efforts. You may first need to practice with examples, such as, “What could you say to yourself if you helped a friend solve a difficult math problem?” or “What could you do to make yourself feel great after you learn how to dive into the swimming pool for the first time?”

Self-rewards are important as a way of helping your child become self-motivated. Once again, make sure that your child understands the point that it is his or her effort as well as the achievement that can be rewarded. We do not succeed all of the time but if we try our best, then we have a sense of accomplishment to take away with us.

Children’s Activity 17: Learning to Solve a Problem

This activity is about learning how to solve a problem using a structured worksheet. You will need to create a worksheet of your own based on the example from earlier in the chapter or use the one provided in the workbook at www.ceh.mq.edu.au/hyac.html. Explain to your child that problem solving can be used when he or she isn’t sure of the best thing to do in a situation. Using Jess’s example described earlier, show your child how it is possible to brainstorm solutions for a problem and then evaluate what would happen if you did each possible solution so that you can choose the best one to try. Have your child think of another solution that Jess might have considered, and work out what the likely consequences would be to that solution.

Explain the steps of problem solving, including the following:

• Write down the problem.
• Work out if you can change your reaction, the situation, or both.
• Brainstorm solutions.
• Work out if each idea would lead to a good or bad outcome.
• Choose the idea that would work best (or a combination of ideas).
• Put the plan in place and afterward evaluate how well the plan worked. If it didn’t work, you go back and try some of the next-best possible solutions.

Using a blank worksheet, choose a problem that has recently been faced by your child or create a hypothetical problem (for example, getting invitations from two friends for the same day and having to resolve how to deal with this while not wanting to hurt either person) and have your child work through the problem-solving steps. To start with, choose a simple problem that is not too closely related to your child’s current anxieties. Be sure not to become critical of your child’s suggested solutions or past behaviors—never use the words, “Well, wouldn’t that have been a better way to behave than bursting into tears yesterday!” Your only response to your child’s ideas should be praise and encouragement for the effort.

Once your child has gotten the idea, you can try to use problem solving as a skill to help manage anxiety in difficult situations.

Children’s Practice Task 3: Rewarding Yourself

The focus of this practice task is on getting your child to monitor the good things that he or she does during the week and to record the self-rewards for doing these things. Use the table in the workbook or create your own chart where your child can record what he or she did, can rate how big or little that achievement was, and what self-reward he or she gave (all of which helps your child understand that big achievements and efforts get big rewards, while small achievements and efforts get small rewards). Your child could self-reward for activities like doing detective thinking, helping Mom with an extra chore, trying extra hard during a difficult school subject, or anything where he or she put in effort.

As situations arise, your child should also practice using detective thinking and problem solving (and you and your child should both reward such efforts).

Chapter Highlights

In this chapter, you learned …

• The unhelpful strategies for parenting anxiety include:
• Giving your child excessive reassurance
• Being too involved or directive when your child attempts activities
• Permitting your child to avoid age-appropriate activities
• Becoming impatient with your child
• The helpful strategies for parenting anxiety include:
• Rewarding brave, nonanxious behavior
• Ignoring anxious behavior
• Prompting your child to cope constructively
• Modeling brave, nonanxious behavior
• There are ways to help distinguish between anxious behaviors and naughty behaviors, and useful ways for responding to naughty behaviors.

In this chapter, you and your child learned …

• Providing clear and consistent rewards for your child can help to support and increase brave behaviors.
• Effort is as important as achievement when facing fears.
• When your child tries hard at something, he or she can self-reward with self-talk or special activities.
• You and your child can use collaborative, structured problem solving as a way of dealing with difficult situations.

Your child will need to do the following:

• Keep a record of all the good things he or she did and the ways in which he or she self-rewarded. Make sure you ask your child about this worksheet from time to time; make extra sure that you go through it with your child at next week’s anxiety management session and that you praise his or her efforts.
• Continue to practice detective thinking and filling out the Detective Thinking worksheets at least once per day. Your child should do this with respect to any situation that makes him or her even a little anxious and should also be encouraged to use the detective thinking technique as much as possible throughout the day whenever he or she notices anxiety increasing.
• Take the opportunity to use collaborative problem solving to find a solution to any problems that arise during the week.