Kisses can’t make it all ok

parenting kids with anxiety

A new piece of research is bouncing around that I want to talk about.

Here’s an NPR piece about it. “For Kids With Anxiety, Parents Learn To Let Them Face Their Fears”

Here’s the whole study- Parent-Based Treatment as Efficacious as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Childhood Anxiety

Let me walk you through how anxiety gets fed. Remember the 35W bridge collapse? Before that bridges seemed really safe. Then one day a bridge fell down and we were all hyper alert about bridges. No one wanted to drive over bridges. We all knew it was pretty unlikely that another bridge would fall… lightning striking twice and all. But anxiety doesn’t really care about logic. There were two options available to all of us. Go over bridges terrified and breathe and get over it or stop driving over bridges and feel safe. We live in a city intersected with tons of bridges. Perhaps if we lived somewhere else Plan B would have been more appealing but we cannot not drive over bridges. There are still a few in town that make me remember, that still need to swallow my anxiety to drive over but most of them went back to being “safe”.

The problem with avoiding bridges is that we feed the anxiety- it gets to be right. “See? Nothing bad happened.” You feel so much better not driving on bridges. Since you didn’t push through and find out that your heart will not stop, you never proved to yourself that you can in fact drive over very scary bridges. One day you get invited to something wonderful- right across the bridge and find out that your life has become so much smaller by avoiding bridges.

Let’s see how this works with our kids and anxiety.  We see them be afraid. We want to honor their fear and be there with it but… so many things get in the way of really being ok with them being afraid. Sometimes we’re busy and need to get out the door. Sometimes we have our own shit going on. Sometimes we just want them to be happy or we are afraid of their afraid. But whatever happens, as parents sometimes when our kids are scared we make accommodations. Accommodations- according to that research I sited are things like telling them there is nothing to worry about, telling them we are sure it is going to be ok, changing our behavior or expectations or time frame due to their feelings, do things that make no sense to help them feel better, do things to avoid their fears, rescuing them from hard decisions, making excuses or lying about our kids behavior, put up with our own discomfort or lower standards for them. Accommodations seem a lot like parenting, right? Of course we are doing these things, a lot! But here’s the thing

Here’s the quote from that article- Accommodation was highly prevalent across all anxiety disorders and particularly associated with separation anxiety. Most parents reported participation in symptoms and modification of family routines as well as distress resulting from accommodation and undesirable consequences of not accommodating.

And the research is clear- accommodation Is counterproductive. It feeds the fears.

Remember. Accommodating isn’t wrong but it can make things worse.

If you see yourself in this, here is what you can do to change your behavior. Focus on your own skills, language and tolerance.

Focus on teaching breathing, relaxation skills. Your’s first. It is natural to get caught up in the intensity of their big feelings. Work on staying centered and calm no matter what happens. As long as you are breathing, you can make decisions about how to respond rather than just reacting. Simple…and oh so hard.

Empathize with the fear. Hold space. Be ok with scared. Encourage brave. Have faith in their abilities rather than be seduced by their fears.

Instead of “I am here” say “I know you’ve got this.”  Instead of “there is nothing to be afraid of” try “I know how scary this can be”. Instead of “here let me fix this” try “what do you think will help?”

Teach your kids that their thoughts control their feelings. Telling yourself distortions or exaggerations scares us in the same way scary movies trick us. Help your kids question their thoughts not their feelings. Feelings are valid and usually line up directly to the thoughts we are feeding them. Challenge the thoughts.

Make lots of mistakes. Help create a family that is comfortable with messes and mistakes and apologies and recovery.

Increase “distress tolerance”. Wherever your kid is right now, work on adding a minute. Leave them with their fear or discomfort for one more minute. Go to the bathroom. Throw in a load of laundry. Go put things in the car. Leave them with the mess…for one more minute than you usually do. Then tomorrow when you both know that they will not die or blow up, leave them for 2 more minutes.

It is hard but less solving, more sitting with. Less making things easy and more teaching how to do hard. Lots of acceptance of feelings, less acceptance of unhelpful behaviors and thoughts.

I hope that helps. This is really a therapy thing. If you have an anxious kid and know you are struggling, please consider therapy for both you and them. Kids are great at this stuff. They aren’t nearly as locked into believing that they are supposed to have all the answers. They easily consider looking at things differently, if only they are offered good options.