As a parent, I’m sure your first priority is to protect your child. You probably want to keep them safe and comforted; however, when a child is anxiety-prone, sometimes, we accidentally feed the anxiety rather than giving them the support they need.
Instead of keeping you guessing here are four things you can do to support your child through their anxiety without accidentally feeding the anxiety.
4 Ways to Support Your Anxious Child Without Feeding the Anxiety:
1. Validate Their Feelings Instead of Trying to Fix Them
Forgive me for sounding too much like a therapist, but validation goes a long way. It is a true hack, especially if you’re prone to reassuring your child. When your child is worried, it's tempting to jump straight into problem-solving. We want to tell them there's nothing to worry about and that everything will be fine, but honestly, we don’t always know that, and it can feel dismissive to a child who is clearly going through it.
Validating loos like acknowledging that the feeling is present without the need or pull to fix or change it. Sometimes your child just needs to know you understand them.
2. Pay Attention to Repeated Reassurance
This is two-fold. If you notice that your child is consistently asking for reassurance about the same thing or situation, this may be a sign that either you’ve reassured your child too much or If your child keeps asking the same question, you might find yourself giving the same answer over and over, but when a child relies on reassurance every time they feel anxious, they can start to believe they need someone else to tell them everything is okay before they can move forward.
Instead of answering the same question for the tenth time, try saying, "I know you're looking for reassurance because you're feeling worried. What do you think you could tell yourself right now?" This might be hard at first, but ultimately it leads your child down a path of developing some true self-trust.
3. Help Your Child Face Their Fears in Small Steps
Like all of us, kids often need to practice doing things to feel confident in the thing they are doing. Children need opportunities to learn that they can do hard things, even when they're nervous.
If your child is anxious about a new activity, think about one small step they could take toward trying it. Maybe you walk in together or help them figure out what to expect beforehand. The goal isn't to push them into something before they're ready. It's to help them build confidence gradually instead of letting anxiety make every decision for them.
I talk about taking small, yet meaningful steps like this a lot inside Anxious Kids 101.
4. Let Them Practice Sitting With Uncertainty
Oftentimes, we have a hard time tolerating our own discomfort. In my professional opinion, this is something many of us struggle with. As a parent, it can feel almost cruel to sit with your child’s uncertainty and discomfort; however, it’s actually really important to learn this skill, especially because anxiety loves certainty.
Kids may want to know exactly what's going to happen, whether something will go wrong, or whether you can promise that everything will be okay. However, we can't always promise that things will go according to plan. Instead, we can help our kids get more comfortable with not knowing.
Try saying, "We can't know exactly how it's going to go, but we can figure it out together," or "You don't have to know everything that's going to happen to give this a try." It's a small shift, but it helps children learn that uncertainty is a part of life, not automatically a sign that something is wrong.
A Note for Parents
If your child seems to worry about everything, I know it can be exhausting to answer every question and constantly try to convince them that everything is going to be okay.
Your child isn’t choosing to make small things feel big. They are experiencing the world without the years of context, perspective and practice that adults sometimes forget we have.
They don’t need you to remove every uncertainty. They need support as they learn that uncomfortable moments pass, plans can change and they can handle more than anxiety tells them they can.
I work with anxious, sensitive and deeply feeling kids and teens to help them understand their emotions, manage worries and feel more secure in their everyday lives.
If you could use more support with this, therapy can be a helpful next step, even if you’re unsure whether your child’s anxiety is “serious enough.”
After you contact me, I’ll email you back with next steps and we’ll figure out together if it feels like the right fit.
You can also learn more about therapy here:
Therapy for kids
Therapy for teens
