The Parent Book.
Therapist-written support for parents
Urgent help

An example, for schools. This is the page a parent opens when a member of staff sends them the anxiety pack from the teachers’ shelf. A real link carries your school’s name, and the parent’s first name and a line from the member of staff if they add them. Nothing here has been sent. Sign in with your school address to see the rest of the shelf; signing in commits the school to nothing.

The Parent Book.
Therapist-written support for parents
What helps
Anxiety

Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the most common things parents bring to us in therapy, and it looks different at each age: the toddler who won’t be put down, the seven-year-old who can’t sleep, the teenager who has stopped going to school. These pages are for parents at any of those stages, because what helps changes as a child grows.

What the library says about this, on one page. It is also online at theparentbook.com/help/anxiety

What to do first

Anxiety is one of the most treatable things children bring to us. It’s the body deciding something is dangerous before the thinking part of the brain has had a say, and it isn’t a flaw in your child’s character, or in yours.

  1. Tonight, don’t argue with the worry. Name it: “Your body has decided that’s dangerous, and I can see how hard that is.” Naming it does more than reasoning with it.
  2. This week, notice what she’s avoiding, and pick the smallest possible version of it to do together. Avoidance is what keeps anxiety going, and avoiding slightly less is all you’re aiming for.
  3. Tell the school: a form tutor who knows will handle a Monday morning differently, and you’ll no longer be the only adult dealing with it.

What helps

  • Stay calm first, talk later. Sit close and slow your own breathing. Being next to a calm adult helps a child’s body settle, and that does more than anything clever you could say. Save the words for when the worst has passed.
  • Name the feeling out loud. Try “That sounds really hard” or “You look really worried.” Naming the feeling makes it seem less strange, and it shifts brain activity from the alarm centre towards the language centre.
  • Praise effort, behaviour and process, never just results. Say “You kept going when that was hard”, not “You’re so clever”. The first tells her what worked; the second adds pressure.
  • Admit your own mistakes out loud. Do it often: “I burnt the dinner.” “I forgot the appointment.” “I read the email wrong.” Your child copies how you deal with your own mistakes far more than anything you tell them.

Some tips to try

Short pieces from the library, and the part of each you can act on tonight.

  • When the Worry Will Not Settle. An anxious child rarely tells you she’s worried; it comes out as stomach aches, refusals and repeated questions.
    • Name what her body is doing, briefly, in plain language.
    • Find one place this week where she could have more say.
    • Hold back from reassuring her; offer structure and choices instead.
  • The Child Who Looks Fine. A teenager with good grades and teachers who say she’s fine can still be anxious and exhausted.
    • Take the tiredness and irritability seriously alongside the good marks.
    • Ask while you’re side by side: “How are you, apart from how your work is going?”
    • Don’t ask her to perform less; ask her openly how she is.
  • The Party She Cannot Walk Into. Her stomach ache is real, and pushing her through party after party makes the next one harder.
    • Arrive ten minutes early, before the room fills up.
    • Agree the exit sentence with her before you go.
    • Offer to stay for the first twenty minutes.

Something to do together

A way back to the room. A short noticing game, and for younger children a slow breath traced with a finger. Practise them together on calm days, so she already knows them on a hard one.

  • Choose a calm day and tell her what it is: “This is something people do when a worry gets loud. Let’s try it now, while nothing’s wrong.”
  • Together, out loud, name five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell and one you can taste. She can skip any sense she likes.
  • With a younger child, slowly trace a figure of eight lying on its side, breathing in along one loop and out along the other. Keep the breaths normal, just slower and no deeper, and stop if she feels dizzy.
  • Practise a few times over a fortnight, then leave it, so it feels like something she knows without becoming a drill.

Safety. After something frightening, let her choose her senses, and do not ask her to close her eyes.

When to get help. This is practice, not a treatment. Talk to your GP about recurring panic, worry that stops her going to school, sleeping or eating, frightening intrusive thoughts, or several weeks of waking in fear. If she tells you that someone is hurting her, that she is hurting herself, or that she does not want to be alive, stay calm, thank her for telling you, do not promise to keep it secret, and act that day, using the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page.

If you want to read further

Worth your time

Who else can help

For almost everything, the NHS is the right first move, and it costs nothing.

  • YoungMinds. The UK’s young people’s mental health charity, with a free Parents Helpline, webchat and email, and a plain A to Z of the things parents worry about. When you want to talk through a worry about your child with someone who has heard it before, or read a clear first explanation of a named concern. Not a crisis line. Parents Helpline 0808 802 5544 · Mon, Thu, Fri 9.30am-4pm; Tue, Wed 9.30am-6pm · Webchat Mon-Fri 9.30am-4pm; email parents@youngminds.org.uk · Outside those hours the parents line is closed. The urgent routes on this page are open when it is not. www.youngminds.org.uk/parent/parents-helpline
  • NHS: mental health advice for parents and carers. The NHS’s pages for parents, in one place: anxiety, low mood, anger, bereavement, arguments with teenagers, exam stress, and how to talk about feelings. When you want the NHS’s own account before anyone else’s. www.nhs.uk/mental-health/children-and-young-adults/advice-for-parents
  • Place2Be. Parenting Smart, written by the child mental health specialists who work in primary schools: short, practical articles and films on friendships, behaviour, worries and routines. For a child of five to eleven, when you want something you can read in ten minutes and try tonight. Place2Be’s counselling itself is only through partner schools. parentingsmart.place2be.org.uk

The full list for anxiety, with what each organisation does and when it is the right call, is at theparentbook.com/help/anxiety/services

A Kensington Square Therapy publication.