- Validate Their Feelings: All feelings are ok for your child to feel. Children need to have a safe space to verbalize and process their feelings. Here are a few strategies that you can do to help with this:
- Show them that you are listening: stop what you are doing, make eye contact, and face your body towards them. If you cannot stop with you are doing, it would be helpful to let them know when you can talk to them. For instance, if you are in the middle of work, you could say “I am in the middle of an important meeting. I will be done at 2:30 and will come and find you so that we can have this conversation.”
- Empathize with them and help them name the feeling that they are having: You could say something along the lines of “It seems like you are feeling anxious about ….”
- Ask open-ended questions: Try to stay away from yes/no answers and ask questions like “What is it that most upset you?”
- Validate their emotions: It is important for your child to understand that what they are feeling is ok to feel. You could say something like “It must be tough to feel this anxious.”
- Remember that you do not have to problem-solve every situation that they bring to you. Sometimes children and teens just want you to listen and validate their feelings.
- Avoid minimizing their feelings: Avoid saying things like “Just suck it up. This will pass.” This teaches them that feelings are good/bad or right/wrong. Instead, acknowledge feelings without judgment or labels.
- Encourage and Model Positive Thinking: Positive, rational thinking has been shown to decrease anxiety and increase overall emotional well-being. Here are a few strategies to help your child develop their positive thinking muscle
- Model Positive Thinking: Your children are always watching you, so let them catch you being positive and rational. What you say about your own life and feelings in front of them is just as important as what you say to them.
- Encourage gratitude: By focusing on and acknowledging the things in life that we are thankful for, we shift the focus away from the anxieties and stressors and onto the positives of life. You can help your child with this by modeling gratitude and expressing the things you are thankful for in front of them. You could also encourage them to do the same.
- Incorporate positive affirmations into your life and encourage your child’s positive self-talk. Some positive affirmations for children are: I am strong and brave. I am kind and caring towards others. I am loved and valued just as I am.
- Read positive books: There are a lot of great children’s books about positive thinking. Two of my favorites are: I Can Handle it (by Wright and Santos) and I am Enough (by Byers).
- Celebrate your child’s efforts, not just their results: No one is successful 100% of the time. When children receive praise for their efforts, the focus shifts to what they can do/control and shows that their hard work is important/valued (not just the results).
- Encourage the Use of Healthy Coping Skills: Coping skills are necessary in order to deal with feelings in a healthy way. The earlier your child learns healthy strategies for this, the more resilient they will be. It is important to assist them in identifying these strategies, to praise and acknowledge when you see them using them, and to encourage regular practice of them.
- Do it Scared: Don’t avoid: Avoiding things that make your child anxious will only reinforce that anxiety. I often tell my clients that being brave is feeling scared and doing it anyway. Each time your kiddo does something scared, they will gain confidence in their ability to do that hard thing and their anxiety should decrease.
- Stay Regulated Yourself: Remember the last time you flew. The flight attendant probably told you to put your oxygen mask on first before helping anyone else. This is the same for helping your child. If you are regulated and calm, then this will help them stay regulated and calm. You are role modeling, helping them feel emotionally safe, and helping them return to a calm and regulated state.
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