Empowering Young Minds: Navigating Childhood Anxiety with Practical Tools and Resilience | Ep20 | Special Parent Podcast

Can you imagine a world where your child views anxiety not as a debilitating foe, but as a manageable part of life? That's exactly what I aim to achieve in this episode of the Special Parent Podcast. Drawing from personal experiences and expert insights, we're going to demystify anxiety, normalizing it while empowering you and your children to face it head-on. In this episode, I'm sharing practical strategies and heartwarming stories, including my own son's panic attack at a festival, illustrating the importance of resilience and strategic planning in real-life situations. This conversation is a treasure trove of advice for parents who are eager to support their children through anxious moments without sheltering them from life's inevitable stressors.

Join us as we explore the powerful impact of building confidence in children to face their fears. Dr. Iverson shares how to validate emotions without letting them rule decisions, using tools like role-playing and strategic approaches to foster logical and thoughtful responses. She emphasizes celebrating small victories and the value of empathy, offering insights on how to reframe thoughts to manage anxiety better. This episode is a must-listen for parents who aspire to raise resilient, confident children, equipped with the life skills they need to navigate anxiety successfully. Prepare to walk away with actionable tips and a renewed sense of hope for managing childhood anxiety.

Chapters

• 0:00 Empowering Children to Manage Anxiety
• 10:24 Building Confidence in Facing Fears
• 15:08 Navigating Childhood Anxiety With Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Special Parent Podcast. I'm Dr Deanna Iverson. Do you or your child ever experience anxiety? I know that there have definitely been times in my life where I do and as a counselor, I feel it's really important that for our children to learn to tackle anxiety, we have to partner along with them along this road. I do have a specific episode on medical anxiety, which was episode number five. It's called turning fear into fortitude at the doctor's office. The tips given there are relevant here too, but they are a little different because it specifically relates to doctor's appointments. So go to specialparentorg and check that episode out, especially for doctor's appointments and medical appointments. I tagged in some physicians and advice from them that I had too. So helping children with anxiety is actually going to be a four-part episode. This is part number one.

Speaker 1: 0:54

I love this quote from Lisa DeMoore and she said we must normalize distress as a part of life. We make sure to allow ourselves and our children to understand that it is essential to feel distress. It is essential to help us grow, learn, guide us and give us feedback. You should have times where you feel sad, anxious and stressed. That is the right response for some situations, so I think we should talk about normalizing anxiety, because anxiety is a normal thing that happens to everybody. It's just how it feels to. Everyone may not be the same, so let's empower ourselves through it. Let's learn to empower our children through it.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Psychology Today had some great advice. Anxiety is like a monster that does not sleep. It's always hungry and never gives up. We can unknowingly feed the monster of anxiety, and that's the key thing is we don't want to accidentally be feeding anxiety, because that creates anxiety to be worse. When kids are anxious, it's natural to want to help them feel better, but trying to protect kids from the things that upset them, you can actually make anxiety worse.

Speaker 1: 2:13

The best way to help kids overcome anxiety is to teach them to deal with anxiety as it comes up. With practice, they will learn to be less anxious, again with practice. What does that mean? That means that the first several times you try to help them push through and you try some of these strategies, they're going to push back real hard because anxiety is in the driver's seat. Fear is driving their brain at that moment. So we have to take them out of their middle brain. We have to help them learn to put themselves in the driver's seat of that prefrontal cortex and that system that's going to think through rather than react to situations. All right, so as you can see, I've pulled some resources, so let's jump in here. The goal is management of anxiety, not elimination. Step number one there is to realize we're not trying to pretend that anxiety goes away. What we're learning is how we get through anxiety.

Speaker 1: 3:12

The best way to help a child learn to overcome anxiety or fear is to help them learn to function even when they are anxious. So they might be anxious because there's a test that's normal. How do we function through that anxiety? They might be anxious because it's a new experience that's normal. How do we function through that new experience? Don't remove the stressor or trigger. When children learn to overcome, the anxiety or fear decreases over time. Functioning through anxiety is a life skill that will empower them as they grow as adults. It's that fight, flight or freeze response. If they're afraid of the haircut place, maybe it's sensory. There's nothing wrong with that. That can create anxiety situations for our children. That's normal, and some people don't like flavors, textures. It's just with especially with our autistic kids, it's a heightened sense of that. Even so, it's normal. But that doesn't mean that it can't get better, so we can help them power and improve through it.

Speaker 1: 4:18

So an example my older son we were and this was years and years ago as a family we went to the Italian festival. Oh my gosh, we were. And this was years and years ago. As a family, we went to the Italian festival. Oh my gosh, we were so excited. Right, lovely, great food, great music. It was wonderful.

Speaker 1: 4:33

We arrive at the Italian festival and, as you can imagine, it's loud, there's a lot of people. It's a festival. It's not real organized. There's people moving all over, there's booths, it's a lot of stimulation. And we get our tickets and we walk in and as soon as we kind of hit the crowd and everything, my son starts freaking out and he starts panicking. And he had to get away. He had to get away and I said OK, let's move over here. I didn had to get away, he had to get away, and I said okay, let's, let's move over here.

Speaker 1: 5:08

I didn't leave the festival, but what I did was I walked between two booths or vendors. They had like a I don't know what you would really call it, but it had an enclosed area, and so I walked him behind it. So we were behind the booth and there was a sheet in a sense that was enclosing the booth and for him that took away. The people Still hear the noises. But they were now buffered a little bit by this and I did have the vendors stick their head around and go hey, you can't go back there. And I simply said I'm sorry, my son is having a panic attack, I just need a minute. And the person was kind oh okay, they kind of kept their eye on us because they're like what are you doing behind the booth? They kind of kept their eye on us but they weren't judgmental, they were really understanding and I think if we give people an opportunity to be understanding, they really will be. And my son calmed down. I said, okay, we're going to just, this is what we're going to do. And we created a game plan. We had a plan and we walked through it.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Now did he enjoy the whole rest of the festival like it was fine? No, we were able to enjoy the festival in a different way. We had to take breaks. There were times he had to leave an area because it was a sensory overload of sound or voice or just general noise. We had to shorten our day a little bit, but he worked through that experience, rather than rescuing him from it completely and everybody leaving. We worked through it. We created a plan, we took breaks when we needed to, we re-evaluated our plan. Was it exhausting? Of course it was, but was it because that's what my son needed and it taught him something so strong and valuable? Absolutely, we cannot always avoid anxiety creating situations.

Speaker 1: 6:59

I was at Phoenix Children's Hospital the other day and they had a fire alarm go off. Now, it was just a drill, but I was thinking to myself, oh, this is not going to be good. Well, my son went ahead and took his little earbuds, plugged them in his ears and put music on his phone and he was okay. We're walking down the stairs and there was a mom and her son and her son is just having the hardest time in there, actually in the stairwell, because it was quieter than not in the stairwell, which I was kind of surprised, but it was, and that's why we took the stairwell and he was just really having a really hard time. But she was working with him through it. You're going to be okay. I could hear her telling him you're going to be okay, you're going to get through this Plug yours. And she was singing to him almost and that was calming to him and I noticed she was kind of rubbing and for some kids you can, for some kids it's a squeeze. She was getting him through it and that was so. I was just so proud of her and as I walked by I was like good job, mom. Just kind of under my breath a little bit, because we all need that little bit of encouragement. All right, so dive into the anxiety rather than run away from it. Well, it's kind of what I was talking to Find some strategies.

Speaker 1: 8:13

When we help children avoid anxiety, we actually reinforce anxiety. We say you're right, that was something to be afraid of, aren't you glad you got away? So what we want to do is a child starts to feel, let's say, uncomfortable and they start to cry and the parent whists them away. That's not what we want to do. Is a child starts to feel, let's say, uncomfortable and they start to cry and the parent whisks them away. That's not what we want to do. So in fact, it was a great one. It talked about how it was. Like, lady, you're embarrassed because you're in a situation and your child is having a freak out moment and it is embarrassing. So sometimes we whisk them away because we don't know what else to do. We have a little bit of embarrassment, panicking happening in our brain and so we do that. So it's like okay if we can stay engaged.

Speaker 1: 8:56

This experience is teaching children that running away from uncomfortable things is a way to cope with uncomfortable things and it's not a healthy way to cope with them. So we want to teach them to break this cycle. We want to teach our children that it's critical to overcome anxiety by sitting through anxiety. So, like I said, my son I took him behind an area but I didn't remove him from the festival. We created a plan. So when you have a child that's anxious, do your best not to whisk them away, whether that's for yourself or for them, and stick through it and just talk them through it. Find something that's comforting. Maybe it's they need a blankie that you can care with them. Maybe it's a certain toy. Maybe it's they need to chew on gums or some kids, it's a sensory issue with their mouth. Maybe that pressure therapy you can learn to pull on joints just gently, like this for some kids is very calming and relaxing. I had an OT teach me that with my son and it made an amazing difference in our ability to get him to stay calm. Let them know things are going to be okay, let them know their anxiety is normal and let them know that the anxiety will come, the anxiety will go. But this is a situation where, even though you're having that anxiety and it's okay you can also reduce that anxiety and that it's even better for you to reduce the anxiety.

Speaker 1: 10:24

In the situation that you're in, your fears may not go away. So, for example, I'm anxious what if I fail the test? Okay, well, you could fail it, but let's talk about ways to prevent that and we talk about ways to prevent failing. Now, will those ways prevent the anxiety? Maybe not, but we need to be honest with them. You might fail the test, you might be uncomfortable, your friend might talk behind your back, somebody might give you a dirty look, somebody might laugh at you sneezing during a presentation. Those things happen. If we learn to bounce with them rather than shrink into them, we are going to be stronger. So we have to learn to face our fears. Your confidence in yours you're the parent your confidence in their ability, the child's ability, to overcome and face their fears and function through their fears is the key to them developing their own self-confidence in their ability for the future. So showing confidence in your child and showing them ways to get through it will build that confidence in them, because you're telling them I know you got this All right.

Speaker 1: 11:38

A key part too this will be our last point is having empathy without having agreement. As parents, we can validate and respect our children's feelings without empowering their emotions. Our emotions should not be our decision makers. That should not be the basis by which we decide on our fight, flight or freeze or which we make any other decisions in our life Our social decisions, our family decisions, any other decisions in our life our social decisions, our family decisions, our work decisions should not be emotion-based. That's when we make decisions we regret, and we have to teach our children that we must be careful not to belittle their fears. So we don't want to say you don't need to be afraid of that or that's not something you should be afraid of. What we can say is I understand that you're afraid of that. Not everyone feels the same way you do, so let's see if we can help reduce your fear and get you to be more comfortable, and that's a different thing than saying hey, don't dismiss, don't worry. It's saying no, I get you, but let's figure out a way for you to be stronger rather than you to sit in fear. So here's an example.

Speaker 1: 12:48

A child is terrified of someone laughing at them during their presentation at school. First of all, they might be right, that might happen. Their fear is normal and rational. So what do we do about it? Rather than allowing the fear to paralyze the child, we help them process the situation and come up with a game plan. Everybody, children especially, are more empowered when they have a plan, when they can think through rather than emotion through. Think through what they're going to do next, step by step by step. Maybe they're going to laugh it off, maybe they're going to ignore it. Maybe they're going to shrug. Maybe they're going to smile. Maybe they're going to laugh it off, maybe they're going to ignore it. Maybe they're going to shrug. Maybe they're going to smile. Maybe they're going to be nice back to the other person. You know the old adage kill them with kindness. Maybe they're going to have a friend ready to cheer them up in the background. Maybe they're going to prep with their teacher. There's so many ways that they can overcome something like that. The details of that plan are based on their developmental level, so keep that in mind.

Speaker 1: 13:44

If their fear or their anxiety is because last time they were at their friend's house, their friend stole their toy and they don't want to go back because they're mad at their friend and they're afraid their friend is going to steal the toy again, excuse me, then that is definitely something that we have to work them through developmentally and that's why we want to practice with them. You know we want to say, okay, I'm whole, I you're playing with the toy, I'm going to be the friend to walk over and take it. How? How are you going to respond to me? So we have them practice and role play and that helps us get over anxiety because we have a game plan, we know what to do with it, so it becomes less fearful.

Speaker 1: 14:19

So the key points we've talked about today listen and be empathetic. Help your children understand what their fear is actually about. Encourage them to face their fears. You're scared, that's okay, and I'm here to help you get through it. Remember, our feelings are not our facts. Feelings come and go and feelings are not the same for every person in every situation and our feelings can change based on how we handle a situation. We grow stronger when we can learn to push through our fears and it's okay to say, hey, this isn't something we should really be afraid of. This is something we should learn to be stronger through. This is where we're going to stop here for today and we'll have again.

Speaker 1: 15:08

This is a several part episode on anxiety helping your children work through it, and we're going to pick apart different parts of anxiety in different situations. The keys here manage and walk through, normalize, be empathetic, be strategic. Walk through, normalize, be empathetic, be strategic, but focus on triumphs. Make sure to focus on those wins. I love to always say that there are wins in every situation. Focus on the wins. So join us next week. What we're going to discuss next week is how we can model, distract the benefits of distraction and reframe our thoughts. A lot of anxiety is reframing how we think. Thank you so much. Glad you could join us here today.