Easy Child Anxiety Hacks to Calm Your Kid

Everyone feels nervous and anxious from time to time, and as adults it’s very easy to dismiss the anxiety our children feel because we tend to look at their situations from the lens of adulthood. Too many times, we tend to see our children encounter stress and think, for example, “Why should my daughter worry so much about what a classmate said about her clothes today? Doesn’t she understand that in the grand scheme of things, this really doesn’t matter at all?” The answer to these thoughts is that no, your child does not understand the big picture, because her “picture” of life is much smaller than those of us who have lived a few decades longer. 

Therefore, it’s up to us as parents to recognize the signs of anxiety and to attempt to handle them as soon as they arise. Doing so could help prevent small, daily problems that many children face from developing into serious situations that will ultimately require professional intervention. Quick Results Counseling has been working with children suffering from different forms of anxiety for years, and below we’d like to present some easy and straightforward child anxiety hacks designed to calm your child and help your little one process this stress in as healthy a way as possible.

Signs of Childhood Anxiety
The first step we should take before getting into examples of child anxiety hacks is to examine some of the common warning signs that a child is suffering from this problem in the first place. There is a difference between “ordinary” daily stresses and full-blown or even developing anxiety. A few examples of childhood anxiety include:

• Losing sleep
• Having regular bad dreams
• Not wanting to go to school
• Loss of appetite
• Irritability
• Regular anger
• Constant worry
• Large number of trips to the bathroom
• Refusing to talk about certain topics

Every child is different, but the examples above are common examples of a young person who is experiencing anxiety. The “good” news in this regard is that no one knows your child as well as you, so if your parental instinct tells you that something is wrong in this regard, chances are that you’re correct. If this is the case, you need to take additional steps to help put this problem in the past.

Breathing Exercises
One of the most basic child anxiety hacks is also the most basic human function: breathing. When a child encounters a situation that prompts anxiety, he or she is going to react like many adults in that the child’s breathing will become rapid and shallow. Think about the last time you were extremely nervous – you probably found yourself gasping for breath and feeling your heart pound in your chest. Someone with anxiety experiences this problem often, especially when faced with a triggering event.

If you start to notice this shortness of breath or rapid breathing, take your child aside and speak to him or her in a soothing voice. Ask your child to breathe slowly, counting to three while inhaling and counting to three while exhaling. You could also teach your child to inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. This exercise could help slow your child’s heart rate and help calm the nerves that are firing that are leading to this problem in the first place. 

Tell the Story
We are taught from an early age to face our fears, and for the most part that’s a good strategy. It’s also one of the potential child anxiety hacks that you can use if your child is struggling before dealing with a certain situation. If you see this occurring, ask your child to tell the story of what’s happening inside of his or her mind. Ask your child to describe what he or she is feeling, what he or she is seeing and what is causing the fear that he or she is feeling. Once again, it’s important to be as reassuring as possible. 

When you hear the story, discuss it calmly and rationally, and don’t make too big a deal out of it. However, be careful not to be dismissive with your tone, either, as that could make the child feel belittled and lead to a bottling up of those emotions and thoughts. If possible, as your child opens up about those fears, make little jokes that prompt laughter in the face of that description, as that will help your child realize that there’s a lighter side to almost anything.

Analyze Together Afterward
Finally, one of the most important child anxiety hacks is to make sure that you take some time to analyze what occurred after your child encounters an anxious situation. Whether your child navigated things successfully or not, discussing the process afterward can help him or her process things and put it all into context. Once again, describing the fears encountered and what specifically led to the internal problems is helpful, and the more this is done the better off things could turn out.

To repeat, though, you need to be careful not to either take too serious or too dismissive a tone, as that could lead to something other than the desired effect. Encourage your child to tell you everything. Congratulate your child if he or she managed to overcome this anxiety and handle the situation, but reassure the child if he or she could not get through things without running from them. 
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As far as things are concerned for parents, you too should give yourself one of the common child anxiety hacks that’s otherwise known as knowledge. For instance, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the CDC, approximately 4.4 million children between the ages of 3 and 17 have diagnosed anxiety. That doesn’t even take into account those who have not been diagnosed. In other words, this is a common problem and something that can and often is overcome successfully.

If your child is persistently struggling with anxiety, you should seek professional intervention. You can always feel free to contact Quick Results Counseling for the help you need, and in the meantime we wish you the best with your child anxiety hacks.