Here are some pointers that might help you respond to your child’s worries:
• Be aware of your own feelings – what do you do when you’re anxious? What are your coping strategies? Think about what messages you are giving to your child.
• Manage your own emotions – minimise sharing worries with your child/teen.
• Be mindful of the content they watch or read. Put parental controls on their electronic devices – age appropriate ratings for content.
• Acceptance is crucial to Emotion Coaching – avoid minimising your child’s fears – show respect for their feelings. Fears may well be irrational or imagined, but to your child they are very real. Dismissing their fears will lead to think their emotions are not valid or recognised.
• Sit with a child’s emotions of worry and fear, don’t try to problem solve, distract or move them on too quickly or they will feel unheard and this can often lead to escalating behaviours from your child or teenager.
• Listen with empathy – try to ‘walk in their shoes’.
• Normalise fears by acknowledging that some situations REAL or IMAGINED, would lead people to feel worried.
• Avoid saying “don’t worry” or “don’t think about it”.
• Avoid criticism by saying they’re being silly or are too old to be scared of certain things.
• Don’t jump straight to reassurance. But talk about the emotions, before moving on to problem solving.
Worry can make it hard to problem solve and think logically and the physiological impact of anxiety can make the emotion feel very real.Start with calming strategies (“breathing exercises/visualisations/music/physical exercise etc) and convey empathy. When the emotions taper and they’ve “surfed the wave of emotions”, only then you can move to engage the child’s left brain thinking of being practical and looking for viable solutions.