Using_Caseys

Chapter 1:
A Glob of Caterpillars

IN THIS FIRST CHAPTER, Casey explains the difference between being familiar with worry and understanding worry, and how she and her mom decided to approach her worry as a puzzle they need to solve. Anxious kids certainly know what it feels like to worry. But here your child learns how worry serves an important purpose. That understanding makes the whole process less mysterious. Casey explains how worry and fear protect us from danger, and uses both the instincts and clever maneuvers of animals to illustrate the fight-or-flight response (like zebras, that have stripes so that when they zigzag through the savannah, they create an optical illusion that confuses predators).

Problems mentioned in this chapter include being afraid of going to school, falling off your bike, vomiting before a recital, and feeling frightened of aggressive dogs.

Reviewing Chapter 1 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What happened to Casey that made her determined to learn about worry and how to handle it?

2. What’s the difference between being familiar with something and understanding it? What did Casey give as examples?

3. Can you think of something that you’re familiar with, but don’t really understand? (Grown-ups can give examples, too.)

4. What are some ways that Casey’s mom helped Casey avoid? Which ones seemed to make worry bigger?

5. How did Boo’s body respond when he ran into the dog? How did Casey’s body respond when she was scared and sensed danger? Why do bodies do that? Why do they do it so quickly? Do we get to pick and choose when our bodies react to a scary situation?

6. In what ways can worry help us? Can you think of a situation in which listening to worry is a smart idea?

7. What are some of the interesting ways that animals protect themselves? What does a zebra do? A skunk? A beaver? What do your pets do?

Chapter 1 Activities with Your Child

1. Talk with your child about what made you both decide to take charge of worry at this time. Why not three months ago? Why not wait until next year? Your reasons may not be the same, and each of you may cite different past or future events that motivate you. Of course, your child may not have decided to change yet. If she is unsure, can you discuss how this might be a good time?

2. Search out information about a few more animals that cleverly protect themselves. (Check out the “mimic octopus”!)

3. Divide a piece of paper in half by drawing a line down the middle, from top to bottom. On one side, write down four or five situations where worry was helpful. On the other side, list other situations where worry was a problem and got in the way. Like this:

After completing that list, discuss how we don’t have to get rid of worry (it shows up automatically when it thinks we need help; everybody has worries), and it’s okay to ignore worried thoughts when they aren’t useful. We only need to pay attention to worry when it’s helpful in that specific situation.

Chapter 2:
Don’t Climb That Tree!

Casey talks about how the combination of genetics and parenting may influence whether kids become anxious and worried. Genes can affect how much a child struggles with worry, but parenting style has a big impact as well. Parents might be worriers themselves, and they often want to keep their kids comfortable and safe. She introduces a key paradoxical concept: when parents and kids work hard to stay comfortable and to avoid worry or uncertainty, then worry gets bigger.

Stories that illustrate this chapter include how physical traits in the O’Donnell family are different from those in Casey’s family, the shy qualities of her friend Lizzie, and how her mom can sometimes act in an overprotective manner.

Reviewing Chapter 2 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What are genes? Name some traits that seem to be passed down in your family through genes (examples: eye color, height, baldness).

2. Name some tendencies or characteristics that were passed down in your family, but might have been taught and not inherited. (A recipe? A holiday tradition? A favorite team?)

3. What did Casey’s mom learn about anxiety and parents? Why was that hard for her to hear?

4. Casey tells us some ways that her mom made worry stronger for her and for Elliot. What were some things she did? (If they can’t remember, turn back through the pages together and look for the illustration.)

5. How does avoiding make you feel better? And how does it make worry stronger?

6. What are some of the activities that Casey avoided?

7. Is there anything you don’t like about avoiding? Any activity you miss out on that you’d eventually like to do?

Chapter 2 Activities with Your Child

1. Make a list with your child and other family members of any ways worry might control the family. What routines or rituals support avoidance in your family? (Having Mom drive the kids to school to avoid the school bus, going to the movies late to avoid the loud previews, always going to the same restaurant to avoid unfamiliar menus, making grandparents babysit to avoid babysitters.)

2. Have you heard of swearing jars, where a quarter must be deposited whenever someone uses a bad word? Create a “safety chatter” jar. Tell your children that they get to fine you a quarter every time your worry jumps in to parent them. The nonanxious adults in the house get to fine you, too. They can be very helpful once given permission to point out the anxious role modeling. List the kind of messages that deserve a fine. (“Be careful with that knife! You could cut your finger off!” “Remember there are bees outside, and you could get stung!” “I’m not going to leave you home alone, because someone could steal you!”)

Chapter 3:
Stop the World, I Want to Get Off

Casey continues to explain why kids worry. Three ingredients—stress, an amazing imagination, and being too rigid—can each make worry stronger by sending a signal to stop. The busyness of life has a way of overwhelming kids. Thinking about and imagining the possibility of bad events happening can also generate worries. When children believe that they should be perfect or that there is only one right way to do an activity, then they become as rigid as an uncooked spaghetti noodle. That’s the opposite of the flexibility (a cooked noodle) that helps kids cope. Casey offers several common examples of how children learn by trial and error. She helps children see the power of their imaginations and how they might harness that power in more positive ways. In fact, she explains how most of what we learn as children involves trying and failing and trying again.

Problems in this chapter include being overwhelmed by stimuli, fear of spending the night away from home, and Casey’s perfectionistic tendencies during her fourth-grade owl project.

Reviewing Chapter 3 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What did Casey look like after her stressful afternoon at her friend’s house?

2. What situations make Casey and her mom (and lots of other people) feel stressed out?

3. How can an active imagination make anxiety stronger?

4. How did Elliot’s comic book help Casey learn about her imagination and her worry?

5. Why does Casey think worried kids are like uncooked spaghetti?

6. How did Casey’s need to be “perfect” get in the way of her learning?

7. Why are mistakes important for kids?

Chapter 3 Activities with Your Child

The activities here will help you and your child identify areas where anxious rigidity might be in charge and guide you as you practice more flexibility in the family.

1. Each day for a week, change an activity that is routine (or even rigid) in your house. (Change the seating arrangements at the dinner table. Make the beds with the pillow at the opposite end. Serve ice cream for dinner.)

2. Make a list of times when being rigid with a rule is necessary (wearing a helmet when riding a bike, fastening your seat belt in the car) and times when flexibility about rules is okay (a later bedtime when cousins are visiting, skipping homework when you’re battling a tough cold).

3. Ask three or four adults to describe their “perfect” vacation and “perfect” dessert.

4. Talk with your child about ways that your imaginations have affected your bodies. When does your heart beat a little faster? When might you blush? What makes your stomach feel funny? What can you think about that makes you feel energetic? Tired? Hungry?

5. Using the examples below, talk about when you might want to push harder to get better and when being “less than perfect” is good enough, perhaps even preferred.

a. Handwriting

b. Measuring

c. Walking

d. Singing

e. Trying something difficult for the very first time

6. Create a Wall of Flexibility. Choose a section of visible wall somewhere in the house (a door works well, too). Get a bunch of fun sticky notes. Every time someone in the family demonstrates flexibility (managing a change in routine, compromising with a sibling, trying a new activity), write down a few descriptive words on the sticky and put it up on the wall for all to see. Agree as a family how many stickies must be on the wall to earn a fun activity. With smaller children, we like to start with ten; older kids can go for twenty.

Chapter 4:
Great Expectations

Casey reviews the reasons that kids worry:

• Worry helps them slow down when it’s smart to take their time, back away from activities when it’s smart to avoid, and run away or fight when the danger is real.

• Some kids are more likely to worry because of their biological makeup.

• Parents may unknowingly teach worrying by the ways they act.

• The world can be a fast and stressful place, and sometimes kids take on too much.

• Kids can imagine all kinds of scary problems.

• Some kids think that they need all events to work out perfectly. When they’re not sure how an activity will turn out, their need for everything to turn out “just right” causes them to worry.

Casey then moves into the plan for handling anxiety with the first piece of the puzzle: Expect to Worry. Kids should assume they will worry in certain situations, like when doing a new activity or when performing in front of people. They then gain a better sense of control by expecting worry to show up rather than being surprised by it. Worry always believes it is being helpful and protective, even when it’s not. Kids can learn the right times to stop and pay attention to their worries. They can also learn when to ignore those normal, expected worried thoughts and move on with life.

Reviewing Chapter 4 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What are the five reasons that kids might worry?

2. What did Casey worry about at the water park? Did her worries ruin her fun?

3. What is the first puzzle piece that Casey teaches?

4. Casey came up with five times when any of us tend to worry.

• What are they?

• Name two topics that Casey worried about and two topics that Elliot worried about.

• For each of the five times that we tend to worry, name something that makes you worry, too.

5. Casey tells us that worry will show up, but we don’t have to let it “run the show.” When kids let worry run the show, what might they do differently? What might they miss out on?

Chapter 4 Activities with Your Child

1. Talk about examples when someone should listen to a worry message, as well as other times when a worry message might show up but can be ignored. Talk generally about lots of different scenarios, and don’t limit your examples to typical real-life situations. Use your creative imaginations, and let your silliness come out. (“When you are going down a hill on your bike and your worry tells you to use your brakes and slow down, you should listen to that worry.” But . . . “When you go to bed and worry tells you that squirrels are going to steal your swing set during the night, you should ignore that worry.”)

2. Come up with examples when kids are surprised by an event that they should expect. (“Joey was surprised when our teacher gave us homework, even though we’re in fifth grade now!” Or “Tyler was surprised when Aunt Lucille gave him pajamas for his birthday, even though she always gives us pajamas for our birthdays!”)

3. Together, ask other adults and family members about situations where worried thoughts show up for them. Create a blank worksheet like this one to help categorize the worries, like Casey and Elliot did.

Where Do Worried Thoughts Show Up?

Chapter 5:
Chatting with the Squirrel

Worry is a normal part of life. When it shows up, you need a variety of flexible responses, not one rigid reaction. After identifying and expecting worry, Casey now teaches kids how to externalize and Talk to Their Worry, the next piece of the puzzle.

Casey used to believe that all her thoughts and fears were important . . . until she met another girl who had far less patience for bothersome worry and showed Casey how to talk back to it when it gets too bossy. You can choose how you talk to worry; sometimes you can act annoyed and other times sympathetic. Casey illustrates how she put this strategy to work when she was studying for her recent math test, how Elliot used it to get back in the swing of baseball, and how friend Kate applied it to handling her bedtime anxieties.

Reviewing Chapter 5 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What is the second puzzle piece?

2. What animal did the girl in the doctor’s office use for her worry? What animal did Casey use for hers?

3. How does Casey’s friend Kate handle her bedtime worry?

4. How does worry bother Elliot? What does he do to externalize his worry and talk back to it?

5. What are the different ways that kids can talk to worry?

6. Casey tells us that we can’t “banish” worry. What does Casey mean by that?

7. If we can’t get rid of worry, what do we need to do instead?

Chapter 5 Activities with Your Child

1. You can help your child create a name for her worry. After reading Casey’s chapter, she may have some ideas of her own or might choose to borrow Casey’s squirrel or the mouse from the girl in the doctor’s office. Some kids like to have a tangible object. Drawing a picture, using clay, buying a toy figure, or simply giving it a name is great. If your child gets stuck, come up with a name for your own worry. You can even ask your child if she’d like to borrow yours for a bit until she comes up with her own.

2. Practice the different ways of talking to worry. Use several generic examples of worries that are not issues for your child, so that the content of the example doesn’t trigger anxiety or avoidance. In other words, use something easy so he’ll learn the skill and stay engaged with Casey’s ideas and the puzzle pieces. If you have a family dog, for example, and your child has no fear of dogs, then that would be good practice content. Use the table below as a guide and fill in the empty boxes. We use dogs and going to camp as “practice content” examples.

Talking Back to Worry

3. Look over the list of phrases below. Working together, circle the phrases kids might say that would make worry weaker, and put an X through the phrases that would make worry grow stronger.

“I hear you talking, worry, but I’m going to ignore you right now.”

“Thanks for checking in, worry, but I can handle this without you.”

“You’re right, worry, I think it’s better if I don’t even try that.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, worry, so let’s just stop now.”

“Worry, you say the same things all the time, and it’s getting boring!”

“If I put you in charge of me, worry, I won’t learn how to do this.”

“Worry always helps me, so I have to listen to it.”

4. Role-play with your child. Learn how worry might talk and how one could respond to it.

First, you start off playing the role of worry and let your child talk to you.

Need an idea? Pretend that worry doesn’t want your child to [insert favorite family activity here].

Then switch roles. Let your child be worry, and use the same activity again.

Then practice with other favorite family activities. Only use examples of activities that your child currently has no problems with.

5. Work on the skill of differentiating “sensible worry” from “bossy worry.” (You may choose to use different terms.) Together, come up with examples of each. Here are a few to get you started:

Chapter 6:
Becoming Unglued

When kids attempt to stay comfortable and certain, they cannot grow stronger. When parents continually provide certainty and offer crutches for security, they strengthen anxiety’s grip on families. Trust us: We know that instructing anxious kids to seek out discomfort flies in the face of how they currently negotiate through life. In this chapter we do our best to persuade your child to adopt this new stance: when you are willing to tolerate discomfort and to not know exactly what’s going to happen next, you step into new territory and learn.

Casey illustrates the value of accepting doubt and discomfort through stories of daring Mount Everest ascents and the persistent inventors of Post-it Notes. She tells of people who understand that “not knowing” is an integral part of learning how to move forward. If they always played it safe, they would never make amazing discoveries or accomplish great feats. When kids tolerate not knowing, they get the chance to discover the fun of a sleepover or accomplish the feat of hitting a Little League pitch.

Reviewing Chapter 6 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What is the “bizarre” suggestion that Casey makes in the first part of this chapter? Why does she suggest you do such a thing?

2. What are some of the ways we might feel when we are experimenting with new challenges or unfamiliar situations?

3. What did Arthur Fry do with Spencer Silver’s not-so-sticky adhesive?

4. What did Erik Weihenmayer achieve? What are some of the discomforts he experienced?

5. In order to move into new territory and take control of worry, what does Casey want you to say? (Hint: It starts with “I’m willing . . . ”)

6. What’s the formula for courage?

7. What made each of the kids—Casey, Elliot, and Kate—feel uncertain and uncomfortable? How did each of them handle their worries?

Chapter 6 Activities with Your Child

1. With your child, search history or current events or your own family for stories of people who moved into uncertainty, took risks, or tolerated discomfort in order to achieve something. As you talk about these stories, imagine together what each person had to say to himself or herself in order to keep going.

2. Create a poster, banner, kitchen magnet, index card, or other item with this formula for courage and post it visibly in your home. Perhaps your child might want to write it down and carry it to school. On a regular basis (at dinner, during car rides, at bedtime), talk together about activities you participated in each day that followed this formula.

Chapter 7:
Taking Your Brain for a Walk

Few children (and not too many adults) have ever been given an explanation of how anxiety is triggered in the brain and how the body then responds. This chapter helps your child understand why stepping toward discomfort and uncertainty is necessary, and how to implement a series of different, more courageous strategies that will retrain the brain. She introduces the third piece of the puzzle: BE UNSURE AND UNCOMFORTABLE ON PURPOSE.

Casey uses a dog named Butch as an example of how to practice these skills. He barks too much at other dogs when he goes for walks. To retrain Butch, you must take him for lots of walks. In the same way, if a child feels nervous walking into the cafeteria at school, he has to walk in anyway, bringing his amygdala with him, and talking to it in a different way. Over and over again. Change requires persistence and action.

Reviewing Chapter 7 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child:

1. What is the third puzzle piece?

2. What shape is your amygdala? What does it do?

3. How do you retrain your amygdala? Why is this like taking Butch for a walk?

4. What might kids say or think that will turn on their alarm centers (their amygdalae)?

5. What are the three messages Casey wants you to try out so that you can handle new challenges without pressing the danger button?

a. I’m willing to _____________________________________.

b. I’m willing to _____________________________________.

c. I’m willing to _____________________________________.

6. Why does Casey want you to participate in activities that make you feel uncomfortable and uncertain?

Chapter 7 Activities with Your Child

Together, come up with four examples of events where kids or adults might feel anxiety or fear. List them below and then complete the two other columns of the form. (Stay away from activities that are anxiety-provoking for your child.)

Events Where We Might Become Afraid

Here is how one example might look:

Chapter 8:
I Say Uncomfortable, You Say Vomit

As Casey pushes herself into new and challenging situations, she discovers that at times her alarm system threatens to go off. Through a variety of experiences—on a roller coaster, at a running race, with a pencil—she learns that she can reset and gain control with a quick focus on her breathing and her muscles. This increases her confidence and supports her clear thinking. She teaches the reader two specific skills for brief relaxation within this fourth puzzle piece: Breathe! The extra bonus of these skills? It’s impossible to be freaked out and relaxed at the same time!

Reviewing Chapter 8 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What is the fourth puzzle piece?

2. When Casey rode the roller coaster, she didn’t turn on her alarm system. How did she keep it turned off? What did she notice about her friend Lindsay?

3. Casey learned a trick with a pencil. What was the purpose of the trick? (Try this with your child.)

4. Why does Casey want kids to practice the skills when they’re not anxious?

5. How does Casey’s friend Bridget handle herself at the cross-country meet?

6. What does Casey do differently at the cross-country meet?

Chapter 8 Activities with Your Child

Keep in mind that the breathing skills described below can be practiced simply and quickly and that repetition is important. A few Calming Breaths multiple times throughout the day will take a total of less than five minutes.

1. Make a list of the different feelings possible in the body when someone is nervous (sweaty palms, increased heart rate, etc.). Interview other adults or family members about how their bodies feel when they’re nervous.

2. Practice the Calming Breath and Calming Counts with your child. (They were first described in Chapter 8 of this book.) Younger children need to learn through modeling, so practice these skills together at first. Older children and teens will be able to manage on their own rather quickly. Teach the skills in a quiet setting without interruption. After you both have practiced several times over several days, incorporate the skills into your everyday routine. Set a goal of practicing these simple breathing “resets” at least three times a day. Moments of transition are good opportunities: at a stoplight, in the car, at the beginning of a meal, at the dinner table, before diving into homework, or even between math problems. You can post little helpful reminders around the house or in the car.

It’s important that they begin practice during times when they aren’t feeling anxious. The skills should be well-rehearsed, ready to go when needed. We can predict that if your child is not familiar with these skills through her repeated practice, then when you suggest she use them as she becomes anxious or panicky, she won’t find them helpful or she’ll refuse to try them at all.

3. To give your child the experience of controlling her physical reactions, you can play games with increasing and decreasing pulse rates.

• First, take your child’s pulse; for older children, show them how to do it on their own. If you’ve never done it before, here are some simple instructions: Place the index and middle finger on the inside of the wrist. Your fingers should be right below the wrist crease and near the thumb. You can also use the carotid artery at the neck. This is located below the ear,
on the side of the neck directly below the jaw.

• As soon as you feel a pulse, count the pulse beats for fifteen seconds (you’ll need a watch).

• Multiply the number you get by 4. This gives you the individual’s heartbeats per minute, or pulse rate.

• Take a starting pulse.

• Then have your child do a physical activity for a minute or two, like jumping jacks, skipping, or running up and down a flight of stairs.

• When they stop, take the pulse again. (It should be much higher!)

• Then, practice three Calming Breaths in a row with about ten to fifteen seconds’ break between each one. Or try Calming Counts.

• Take the pulse rate again. (It should be much lower.) Continue playing with the breathing skills until the heart rate is back to (or very close to) the original rate.

• Suggest that whenever worry scares them unnecessarily, their hearts will probably beat faster, too. It’s supposed to. Practicing the breathing skills can help decrease their heart rates as long as they don’t keep turning on their alarm systems with more worries.

Chapter 9:
Wrestling with Asparagus

The next piece of the puzzle is Know What You Want. Casey meets Benjamin, who tells his own story of overcoming worry. She realizes that it’s a lot easier to overcome a difficult step if you choose an exciting or important goal. Casey illustrates how to identify each of the steps toward a desired goal. The message is consistent: move forward into the challenge, equipped with the new tools you are developing, a goal you’re interested in, and the “I can handle this” voice.

Examples within this chapter are spending time at a friend’s house, jumping from a Coast Guard helicopter, and eating an asparagus-dog with cheese.

Reviewing Chapter 9 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. Do you remember what Benjamin’s goal was?

2. When he thought about going over to someone else’s house, what were some of the events he was afraid of?

3. What was Uncle Steve’s goal? And what was he afraid of?

4. Uncle Steve sounded like he was pretty scared. If he was so afraid, why did he keep pushing?

5. What did Uncle Steve decide to do with his worry? Did he leave it behind or take it with him? What did he say to it?

6. What was the vegetable that Casey was having trouble with? Why did she have to eat it? How’d she get herself to eat it? (Consider going step-by-step through the text regarding how Casey got to the neighborhood meeting.)

Chapter 9 Activities with Your Child

1. Review together Casey’s tips for creating and using the want-to attitude. Converse easily about this topic; let your child talk about it freely, even expressing doubt. Be open to her opinion. Encourage (and model) the ability to ponder questions and problem solve. We recommend that you apply this concept to activities that are not directly related to your child’s major fears.

2. Each of you choose a chore that you don’t much like but do anyway (emptying the dishwasher, putting away the laundry, cleaning out the car, doing math homework, etc.).

a. What could you say to yourself that would make the job harder to complete?

b. What could you say to yourself, or what could you do, that would make the chore easier, quicker, or more enjoyable?

3. The next time you or your child begin a not-so-exciting chore, talk to each other about how you could approach the task to make it feel harder. Then follow Casey’s strategy of approaching the task in a way that makes it more interesting, easier, or quicker. Casey gave the example of cleaning up her bedroom by turning it into a game.

Here’s an example of how it might sound:

4. Together with your child, ask others for examples that demonstrate the logic of wanting (and doing) something unpleasant in order to reach a goal. How do they turn an unpleasant event into a tolerable one? How do they get around to accomplishing the task when they don’t feel like it? Find at least three different examples. In addition to hearing a range of interesting illustrations, there is an important added benefit here. As your child interviews others, she first has to explain the principle of the puzzle piece. That helps her incorporate it into her logical reasoning.

5. Generate a few routine, everyday examples of how each of you makes a common (but not very exciting or pleasant) task more manageable in your own lives. How do you get tasks done? What do you say to yourself when it’s time to clean the cat litter? How do you willingly go to the dentist regularly? If you find examples where you don’t say or do anything to tolerate the project, what could you say or do?

6. Create a hypothetical goal for you, your child, or even a character in a book. It can be silly, outrageous, or fun. (For now, resist tackling an event that is closely connected to your child’s specific worries. At this point, we’re teaching the skills in a nonthreatening way.)

• What steps must you take to get to that goal?

• How can you talk to yourself if you want to make that goal seem harder? What might you say that would make you want to give up?

• What could you say and do that would make you excited to tackle the goal? What could you do that would make you want to get started? Here’s how it might sound:

Chapter 10:
Chutes and Learners

Worry makes you forget. That’s why a worried kid can get on the bus for sixty-five school days in a row, do fine sixty-five times, and still be afraid on day sixty-six. In this chapter, Casey explains another piece of the puzzle: Bridge Back to Your Successes, which explains the importance of learning from experience. Telling her own story of unrelenting worry about schoolwork, Casey shows how to remember and reference positive experiences from the past and how to make those experiences count toward the “I can handle this” attitude.

Stories include perfectionism at school, Casey’s mom coping with the stresses of new motherhood, handling the fear of bees and the fear of flying, and trying out for the school musical.

Reviewing Chapter 10 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What do you imagine Erik Weihenmayer learned that helped him climb some challenging mountains? If you were a mountain climber, what mistakes might you make as a beginner? What would you do differently the next time?

2. Casey’s mom and Mrs. O’Shea kept telling Casey that she was a great student and learner, but Casey stayed frustrated. Why didn’t their words help?

3. What are some of the bridges that Casey’s mom built? How did they help?

4. Casey and Lindsay both have the same thought when they see a bee: “I hope I don’t get stung!” But after that, their thoughts move in different directions. What does Lindsay think about bees? And what do those thoughts make her do? How does Casey handle her bee thoughts? What does she do to handle the bees?

Chapter 10 Activities with Your Child

1. Find examples when you have each used a mental bridge back to your past successes as a way to encourage yourself to move into an uncomfortable new situation. Help your child ask other adults as well. Use this form to write down the events:

Examples of Bridging Back to Success

2. As we near the end of the puzzle pieces, conduct a little review of situations that tend to provoke worry. Using the worry triggers listed below, come up with examples that fit each of the situations. Ask other adults and siblings, or think about favorite characters in books. Or make stuff up! (Remember to avoid bringing up your child’s emotionally loaded, worry-provoking topics . . . but if your child brings them up, you can talk about how you both might handle such situations.)

Here’s the list of times when worry tends to show up (from Chapter 4 of Casey’s Guide):

• You’re doing some new or different activity.

• You’re unsure about your plans.

• You have a lot of “what if” questions.

• You have to perform.

• Something scary is happening.

Here’s how it might sound:

3. Put the puzzle pieces together. Review with your child what you have learned in previous chapters. The more he explores and discusses the principles, the greater the chance he has of applying them.

• Kids and parents should expect worry to show up when trying and learning new things. (expect to worry) See Chapter 4 for a reminder, if needed.

• Kids and parents can confront worry, rather than listening to it and believing what it says. (talk to worry) See Chapter 5 for a reminder, if needed.

• Moving forward into new activities means you’ll feel uncomfortable and uncertain. That’s normal, and it’s how we learn from the experiences of life. Kids need to get uncomfortable on purpose, because practice and exposure, rather than avoidance, help kids learn how to handle new activities. (get uncomfortable on purpose) See Chapter 7 for a reminder, if needed.

• Knowing how to quiet the brain’s alarm system increases confidence as kids move forward with their practice. (breathe!) See Chapter 8 for a reminder, if needed.

• Focusing on a goal helps you move forward. If you want to grow in life, you need to push into new territory. If you focus on your uncomfortable feelings, you’ll stop. If you focus on getting where you want to go, you’ll still have feelings, of course, and some of them will be unpleasant, but the steps will be easier because they will be a part of your want-to. This way you send your brain one consistent message: “I want this outcome, so I’m willing to take the not-so-easy steps along the way to get it.” (know what you want) See Chapter 9 for a reminder, if needed.

Chapter 11:
Answering the Bell

At last, the plan in action! Elliot arrives home from school one day, refusing to go back because of the scary fire drills. Mom, Casey, and Elliot team up to make a plan and then take action on their plan (the last puzzle piece) that allows Elliot to use his thinking, his breathing, and his past experiences to manage the startling and unpleasant noise. The pieces of the puzzle are assembled now, and with them Elliot steps into the situation and handles the fire drills.

Stories include Elliot managing the school fire drills and Casey’s family coming across a snake on their camping trip.

Reviewing Chapter 11 with Your Child

Questions to Discuss with Your Child

1. What did Elliot want to do about the school fire drills at first? Why did Mom disagree with this plan?

2. What did Elliot, Casey, and Mom do when they first came upon the snake while hiking? What did they do next? How did remembering the snake incident help Elliot with his plan to handle fire drills?

3. How did Casey and Elliot practice for the fire drills?

4. What did Elliot do at school when there was a fire drill? What did he tell himself to get through it?

Chapter 11 Activities with Your Child

Below is “Casey’s Really Clever Guide to Winning over Worries.”

Know what you want to accomplish.

Remember your past successes that can help you.

Expect worry to show up.

Talk to your worries so they can’t run the show.

Step into that new situation.

Be willing to feel unsure and uncomfortable along the way.

Let your breathing skills support you.

These are the seven puzzle pieces, put in a new sequence. Using the puzzle pieces, come up with a fictional goal—even a silly activity, along the lines of building the world’s biggest meatball (from the activities in Chapter 9)—and use the puzzle pieces as your guide to move step by step toward the goal. If the want-to is to build a spaceship, for example, and you’ve never done that before, you can expect worry to show up. What will it say? What will you say to it? Do you have any other successes that you can remember as you build? When might you need to stop and breathe along the way? What makes you feel uncomfortable or uncertain about building a spaceship? What will you do to handle those feelings?

Chapter 12:
The Show Must Go On!

Casey and friend Shannon both want to be involved in the school musical. Then the worries show up, along with second thoughts and doubts. Another chance to work the plan! Again with Mom’s help, the girls use the pieces of the puzzle as a guide to come up with their own plans. By applying the strategies, they let themselves feel uncomfortable, tolerate uncertainty, take plenty of deep breaths, and have a great time reaching their goals.

Reviewing Chapter 12 with Your Child

1. What activity did Casey and Shannon hear about at school?

2. When Casey and Shannon are home from school eating potato chips, what does worry start to say to them?

3. Casey realizes that this is another chance to practice her plan, so her mom prints out some worksheets and they get to work. What is Shannon’s goal? How will Shannon practice her worry-managing skills?

4. What unexpected things happen to Shannon and Casey during rehearsals and the performances?

5. Do you think Casey and Shannon enjoyed the experience of the play? What did they learn about handling worry and trying something new?