March/April 2025 HAWAII PARENT 75 have an anxious child? Here are six ideas to help you out. Helping Your Child Recognize and Express Their Feelings With young kids, helping them figure out what they’re feeling is a good place to start. Encourage them to talk about their feelings, and help them find labels for them. Being able to say that they’re worried is a lot easier for the whole family than trying to figure out whether that stomachache is stress or food poisoning. Consider teaching children to do a “body scan” to figure out how they experience anxiety. Anxiety and stress often show up as headaches, stomachaches, tense muscles, or even panic attacks. A body scan meditation can help your child figure out what stress feels like, which lets them recognize it earlier – and sometimes avert it. If you’re not sure how to do a body scan, parenting author Mark Bertin offers a guided body scan for kids online: http://www.mindful.org/mindfulness-meditation-guided-practices/#kids. Try it out when your child isn’t anxious to get him used to the idea. Make a “Stress Checklist” Another way to give your child more control over her anxiety is to help her create a stress checklist. This is a list of things for to try to help her calm down when she gets worried. Because every child is different, the things that you and your child put on a stress checklist will be different from another kid’s list. Some ideas to start with include: • Taking a long, slow breath • Making a fist and relaxing it • Asking for a hug • Counting to ten • Asking themselves what they see, hear, and smell right now • Asking themselves if their worry is really true • Reminding themselves that a little stress is okay Talk to Your Child about Why People Get Anxious Teens and tweens especially are prone to worrying about the fact that they’re worrying, which adds another level of stress to their lives. It can help these kids to understand what worry is. Worry and anxiety help to keep us alive. They alert us about possible dangers. Neanderthals who worried were more likely to notice poisonous berries or wild animals, which helped to keep them alive. Your anxious tween would have been a great hunter in the cavemen days!
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