Anxiety and depression in children and teens have been on the rise since 2012. The impact reaches across all demographics. 10-20% of school-aged children experience anxiety symptoms and an even greater percentage experience significant stress that does not qualify as a disorder.
Excessive stress at any age has a negative impact on a person’s mental and physical well being. During the formative years of childhood, the impacts can be even greater. Below are some tips in how parents can support their child’s wellness and reduce their symptoms of anxiety.
Encourage your child to face his/her fears, not run away from them. Let go of ‘mental health days’, ‘sleep with mom nights’ or ‘skip days’. Avoidance briefly relieves discomfort but in the long term, it makes the anxiety stick more firmly.
Respect and validate your child’s feelings. Ask your child “Tell me what you are thinking?”. This will help to reveal scary thoughts and themes that build up in your child’s mind. Remind your child that all feelings will pass. Encourage him to use his words to express his feelings and needs. ex: “I feel… I need…”
Encourage good sleep hygiene. Have a set bedtime and a 30-45 minute bedtime routine that’s done every night. This helps your child to transition from the activities of the day to a relaxed state. Avoid electronics an hour before bed and try using tools that can calm the senses before bed such as an aromatherapy pillow spray.
Help your child to problem solve. When faced with anxiety or stress, rather than immediately giving advise or solutions, ask your child “Tell me some things you can do to solve this”. She will feel more empowered and will be encouraged to be able to self-soothe when you are not around.
Filter and place limits on technology. The messages that come through technology can cause disturbing mental images and confuse the brain, making symptoms of anxiety and stress worse. Excessive time on technology is also very isolating, which increases mental health issues in general. I suggest a layered approach to help with time limits and filtering out inappropriate content.
- Through your family conversations and expectations.
- At the level of your home router.
- On your children’s accounts.
- On each device.
- With the help of a monitoring software or app.
Many parents are overwhelmed with monitoring the technology of their kids, but avoiding this is not helpful. Children are naturally curious and can run into big trouble online. There are plenty of helpful videos to walk parents through setting up these parental controls, which you can google search for easily. As a monitoring software, I personally use and suggest the program Bark, which notifies parents of any issues of inappropriate content or mental health concerns while also giving children privacy. It will also give parents suggestion on how to address difficult subjects with your kids.
Practice relaxation exercises with your child. Encourage your child to practice slow, deep belly breathing. It’s a very helpful and portable tool. There are also great mindfulness apps for kids that help with this like “Stop, Breathe, Think” and “Headspace”. These encourage children to practice skills of calming their bodies and minds as difficult feelings pass.
Get social, silly and some sunshine. We are wired to connect as humans. When we isolate, our anxiety and depression generally increases. Spend time around others and encourage your child to socialize. We are also naturally curious, creative and playful beings. All children (and adults) need time to play and have fun. Adding movement and sunshine is also a great natural stress reducer.
Focus on the positives. Stress is a natural part of life and not all stress is bad. Keeping our mind focused on the positives during stressful and non-stressful times is a key to feeling empowered and encouraged to plow through life’s ups and downs. Celebrate the effort and progress your child is making and model a positive mindset for your child. The act of gratitude exercises the muscle of positivism and extinguishing complaint, criticism and unnecessary worry removes a bulk of our stress.
Above all, don’t stress over your child’s stress! We have neurons in our brain that act like ‘mirrors’. Take care of your self and stay healthy and your child will be much more likely to mirror that back to you.
Sometimes kids and families need help moving through difficult times or managing anxiety that feels out of control. Counseling can be really helpful. Play therapy is great tool for helping young children express some of their emotions and cognitive behavioral therapy is often used with more verbal children, teens and adults to help correct some of the unhelpful thinking.
If you would like to learn more about how we can help at Georgetown Child & Family Counseling, you can learn more about us here.
Wishing you great peace and joy!
Jenna
Jenna Fleming, LPC, NCC, is owner and clinician at Georgetown Child & Family Counseling. She specializes in working with children, teens, young adults and those who care for them. She writes and speaks on topics that support parents, educators, and counselors in doing the sacred work they do.
