We are living in anxious times right now. Some children may be stressed, frazzled and overwhelmed by what is happening and the importance of looking after their mental health is paramount. Telling someone who is feeling anxious not to worry or to forget about it is not an effective solution. What we can do instead is focus on strategies that explicitly strive to reduce anxiety and strategies that are more implicit.
If you have a child who feels anxious, I would suggest you use your judgement based on their personality and interests and select either explicit and direct strategies aimed at promoting well-being or more subtle strategies that will help them settle without even realising it.
Explicit Strategies
Option 1: Breathing/Meditation
Getting your child to try focussing on their breath and striving to be in the moment are great ways to explicitly reduce anxiety. The benefits of these strategies are well known and there is so much content out there to facilitate these kinds of strategies. You might want to choose a physical object like a breathing ball or perhaps you want a youtube video for young children. Older children might enjoy learning about how to do 4-7-8 breathing or engaging in a full-on 5 minute guided meditation aimed at children. There are also apps like Headspace and Calm that provide a certain amount of free content to test out.
Option 2: Journalling
Journalling has a body of evidence to prove it has to power to promote feelings of well-being and happiness making it a great explicit strategy for children feeling anxious who are old enough to write (if your child is young and might enjoy this, they could draw).
Three concrete ways to journal to promote happiness are:
- Write seven things you are excited for every morning when you wake up.
- Write three things you are grateful for every night before bed.
- Write for two minutes about something nice that happened in the past 24 hours.
Some children might like to do all three, some might like to do just one. I would emphasise the key to getting the benefits of this exercise is consistency over a period of two weeks or more for the child to feel the benefits.
For a more detailed explanation of journaling, click here.
Option 3: Yoga
Yoga’s benefits for increasing contentment and reducing anxiety are also well known as the poses, philosophy and breathwork involved all can have a significant impact on a child’s overall sense of well-being. They might like to choose from the wealth of resources at Cosmic Kids Yoga or, perhaps, your child would like to try one of Yoga With Adrienne’s videos for dealing with uncertain times. It’s all about finding something that your child likes and will consistently do.
Implicit Strategies
In some cases, talking about stress and anxiety can amplify it instead of reducing it and giving constant reassurance can actually serve to remind an anxious person that there is, in fact, something to worry about. If this sounds like something that resonates with your child, try more implicit and subtle strategies.
Option 1: Exercise
Getting out and getting active has so many benefits that they go beyond the scope of this article but getting your child out and running, playing playground games, practising a sport, cycling or anything that raises their heart rate will help release those feel-good endorphins that are proven to increase well-being. There is no need to says it’s for their anxiety as the act of doing will be enough to feel the benefits. Actually talking about it might reduce its effects as it may just remind the child how they are feeling. Children should aim for 60 minutes a day and if you have a child who is feeling anxious, getting this hour completed can be doubly important.
Option 2: Immersive activities
The title of this sounds far fancier than it is. An immersive activity is anything that takes focus or concentration to complete. Engaging in an immersive activity can reduce, prevent or stop thinking about past troubles or future worries as they begin to focus on the task at hand. The joy of this is that most hobbies are immersive. Reading, helping an adult bake, garden work, knitting or sowing, building with lego, painting, playing video games and many other activities require your child to get out of their head an into the task at hand.
Option 3: Reducing the White Noise
We all know social media and the internet has huge benefits but it also has its downsides. Constantly being connected to the world can lead your child to take the world’s worries onto their shoulders. A subtle way to combat this is to ensure that a constant stream of news is not being streamed through the television, radio, tablets and phones in the house. Try to create some space for your child to just exist in their current environment. Avoid constantly talking about world events around your child to prevent unknowingly contributing to their feeling of anxiety through the attention we give a topic.
These six options are a menu. They may seem obvious and you may know their benefits already but remember the difference between knowing and doing. If you are worried about your child and their anxiety levels, experiment with some of these and find what is the formula for success for your child.
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18 replies on “6 Ways to Help Anxious Children during Coronavirus”
Great resource Barry, many, many anxious children around at the moment.
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Thanks so much. Yeah I agree, children will pick up in the heightened tensions at home and around the world. We need to take care of them.
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Hello, I think you have offered very useful strategies for helping children.
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Thanks so much. Hopefully somebody finds value in them.
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[…] Continue reading at Behaviour 101 […]
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Thank you very much, Barry! Great tipps! I will spread the word. Hope you are well, and stay save. Best wishes, Michael
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Thanks Michael, I’m hoping it might help someone so very grateful.
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I am sure, it will, Barry. Its so important not leaving children alone, in these times. Horrible enough the elder ones are shocked. Thank you, and stay well. Michael
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[…] than ever, we need to look out for our children’s mental health. I have written about 6 different ways to prevent or manage your child’s anxiety during this time with a suggestion of journaling as one of the options. I want to dig into the […]
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This is a useful post, Barry. My older son is OCD and is besides himself with anxiety right now.
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I’m so sorry to hear that Roberta. Hopefully, there’s something here that might help or even better, the current situation we’re in passes us by and we can all return to normal.
Take care of yourself and your son ♥️
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Thank you.
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Excellent ideas Barry! Thank you!
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[…] is feeling anxious, this needs to be addressed as soon as possible and I have written about potential solutions for anxiety along with a more extensive explanation of how to use journaling for this purpose […]
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[…] self-care a priority. Nothing will be achieved if you burn yourself out with anxiety and stress and I suggest six ways to do this here. Journalling is a personal favourite. Exercise is also paramount for me. I like one strategy for […]
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[…] simple strategies for anxiety are readily available even in the confines of our own home. I provide 6 ways to ease anxiety here along with a more fleshed out explanation of how to implement journaling with your child […]
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