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5 Questions to Ask Your Worried Child Tonight

14m 37s

5 Questions to Ask Your Worried Child Tonight

In this companion episode to the main Thursday episode on childhood worrying, Dr. Mary Hanlon offers parents five practical questions to help their anxious children. She begins by explaining the bucket analogy, describing how anxious children's emotional buckets fill faster and overflow more easily because their nervous systems are more sensitive, hypervigilant, and slower to recover. By bedtime, the bucket is often overflowing, which manifests as meltdowns, shutdowns, or tears. The five questions are designed to shift children from overwhelm to curiosity, since curiosity and anxiety cannot coexist. Question one asks where the child feels the worry in their body, moving attention away from the worry's content toward physical awareness. Question two asks what animal the worry would be, externalizing it so the child can observe it from a distance. Question three asks what the worry is telling them will happen, gently examining the prediction without correcting it. Question four asks what they would say to a best friend feeling this way, helping build an inner cheerleader against the inner critic. Question five asks for one tiny thing that might help right now, giving the child agency. Dr. Hanlon emphasizes two cautions: use these questions when the child is steadier, not at peak anxiety, and simply receive their answers without fixing or reassuring. A free one-page guide is available on her website.

Transcription

2401 Words, 12761 Characters

English
Speaker 1is this you you've just listened to the main episode this week or maybe you haven't yet but you know your child is anxious you can see it you can feel the worry coming off them and you desperately want to say something helpful but every time you open your mouth you either end up reassuring them which we know doesn't work or trying to logic them out of it which we know doesn't work or worse still you say something well-meaning that ends up being entirely the wrong thing and they shut down completely you're not looking for a master class tonight you're looking for something you can actually use at bedtime something simple something that doesn't require you to have a psychology degree or a perfectly calm child who's ready to talk you just need to know what to say so in today's bucket emptying episode i'm going to give you five specific questions to ask your worried child tonight and i'll explain why each one works so what you'll come away with by the end of this episode is the five questions in your back pocket that you can use tonight and every night after that questions that shift your child from overwhelm to curiosity and that work at every age from 5 to 17 i'm dr mary hann psychologist and parenting expert this is the how not to screw up your kids podcast so pour yourself a cuppa find a comfy seat and let's do this today's episode is the companion to the thursday main episode when your child won't stop worrying and i'd always encourage you to listen to that one too because it gives you the full picture of what's going on for your child and i'll see you in the next episode and why these questions that we're going to cover do what they do but if you're here tonight because you need something to say right now i have totally got you so let's talk about the bucket if you've been listening for a while you'll know the bucket analogy well every one of us and our children too has a metaphorical bucket throughout any given day things fill that bucket up worries frustrations social pressures the low-level hum of anxiety that never quite switches off and when the bucket gets too full it overflows and that overflow is what we see as the meltdown the shutdown the tears at bedtime the i can't do this now here's the thing about anxious children's buckets is that they tend to fill up faster than other children's buckets their nervous system is more sensitive it's detecting more threats because it's hypervigilant it's responding more intensely and it's more sensitive because it's more sensitive because it's more sensitive and recovering much more slowly so by the time you're sitting with them at the end of the day the bucket isn't just a little full it's often right to the brim and overflowing so the five questions i'm going to give you tonight won't empty the bucket on their own but they will do something equally important they will help your child relate differently to what's in it and over time this is how the bucket starts to empty so let me give you all of the questions in one go and then i'm going to go through each of them in turn so the question one is where do you feel it in your body question two if this worry was an animal what would it be question three what's the worry telling you is going to happen question four what would you say to your best friend if they were feeling this way and question five what's one tiny thing that might help me right now now before we go through them one by one i want to explain the principle behind all five because understanding why they work means you can adapt them to your child and your moment so when a child is in the middle of a worry spiral they are not thinking they are feeling so the part of their brain that does logical rational processing has essentially taken a back seat and the emotional reactive part is running the train of thought so when a child is in the middle of a worry spiral show so anything we say that comes from a logical place like that probably won't happen let's think about this rationally that's going to fall flat not because our children aren't intelligent but because the brain simply cannot process logic when it's flooded with anxiety now what these five questions do instead is that they use curiosity and curiosity is one of the most powerful antidotes to anxiety because you can't be simultaneously anxious and genuinely curious at the same time curiosity requires you to be present it requires openness and a degree of safety so these questions are designed to create exactly that and they also give your child that sense of agency because anxious children often feel completely at the mercy of their worries like the worry is happening to them not something that they feel like it's going to happen to them so they're not going to influence at all so these questions shift that relationship they invite your child to observe their own experience from a slight distance rather than being swallowed up by it so now let's go through each of those questions one by one and how to use them but so first question where do you feel it in your body not what are you worried about because that sends us straight into the content of the worry yeah so where do you feel it in your body is it in your body or is it in your body and what are you worried about because that sends us straight into the content of the worry yeah so where do you feel it in your body is a feelings question rather than what are you worried about which is a thinking question and if we ask them what you're worried about that sends them down that rabbit hole that we don't want them to go because there's no end to it so instead we start with the body and that does several things at once it acknowledges that the anxiety is real and that it is physical not just in their head it shifts their attention away from the story the worry is telling them to what is actually happening in the present moment and it starts to build body awareness which is the foundation of all physiological regulation skills which i covered in the previous longer episode so they might say my tummy feels tight my chest feels heavy i feel shaky just receive that you don't need to fix it so i can see that thank you for telling me where else and then just keep listening question number two if this worry was an animal what would it be now i know it might sound a little unconventional but stay with me this question gives the worry a form and when something has a form it becomes something that you can relate to rather than something that is everywhere and everything all at once it externalizes the worry and it takes it out of your child and their mind and puts it out there where you can both we can both look at it together so i've done this with children for years and the answers are always really quite wonderful it could be a dog a wasp it would be a very loud parrot that never stops talking and once that worry has a form in whichever form it has for your child you can ask and what does that animal want from you is it friendly animal or is it a scary one see the questions that we're asking evoke curiosity we're not solving the worry but we're helping our child relate to the worry differently and objectively and at a distance so that's question two question three what's the worry telling you is going to happen now this is a question where we gently gently look at the content of the worry but we do it in a way that keeps that distance that we keep creating that distance because notice the phrasing is what's the worry telling you is going to happen not what are you worried about yeah what's the worry telling you implies that the worry is a thing with an opinion and that its opinion might not be the whole story so you want to let your child tell you what the worry is predicting and listen carefully don't interrupt to correct or reassure and then and only then you can ask and has that thing happened before if the answer is no let them discover it themselves so rather than jumping in see it's not happened before so why do you think it's going to happen instead we might just be curious so what the worry has predicted a few times hasn't happened yet interesting if the answer is yes acknowledge it yeah so that sounds really hard and you got through it what helped you then so can you see that we're doing that curiosity rather than trying to rush straight it we're doing a gentle bit of logic here rather than a deep bit of logic so that was number three question four what would you say to your best friend if they were feeling this way and this is one of my absolute favorites anxious children particularly perfectionist anxious children have an inner critic that is brutal they would never ever speak to their best friend the way that they speak to themselves and this question makes that gap visible gently without making them feel bad about it and listen to what comes back because almost always what comes out is extraordinarily wise yeah i tell them it's to be okay I tell them everyone feels nervous sometimes and then you can say very quietly rather than why why can't you do that why can't you speak to yourself the way that you speak to your best friend instead say can you try saying something like that to yourself you're beginning to build what I call that inner cheerleader the kind supportive internal voice that is the antidote to the inner critic it starts here in this moment in the safety of your relationship with them so that's question four and finally question five what's one thing that might help right now notice the language not what would make this better that's too big one tiny thing right now this question gives your child agency in the moment they might say a hug can we do take 10 together can I have a drink of water can you sit with me for a bit whatever they say within reason try to give it to them because what you're also doing here is teaching your child that it's okay to know what you need and to ask for it because that's a life skill that will serve them for decades now there are two things that I just want you to watch out I want to flag these two quickly because these could undermine this practice if you're not too careful the first is timing these questions work best when your child is not at peak anxiety if they are in the middle of a full meltdown or a panic response the priority is physiological regulation first get their nervous system calmer take 10 a hug a glass of cold water some movement and then once they're a bit steadier bring in the questions they don't have to be calm but they're just a bit steadier then bring in the questions you cannot access curiosity when the the one thing I'd flag the second thing I would flag is about receiving the answers and I say this because it's something that I have to remind myself regularly even with my adult children when your child shares something with you through those questions resist every urge to immediately fix reassure compare or improve on it just receive it full stop so now let's pull this all together so here they are your five questions for tonight where do you feel it in your body start with the physical and get them present second if this worry was an animal what would it be give them a form move it outside number three what's the worry telling you is going to happen gently examine the story while still creating distance number four what would you say to your best friend if they were feeling this way find the inner cheerleader let them be kind to themselves and number five what's one thing that might help right now give them agency let them lead you don't need all five every time pick the one that feels right for the moment for the age for the child in front of you and if none of them quite land tonight that's okay too you showed up you sat with them you didn't try to logic them out or to tell them that it would be fine that in the end it's okay to be kind to them and number five what's one thing that might help in itself is exactly right so my give this week is a one page first steps with anxiety guide the most important things to do and not to do which will cover these five questions so that you have got them you can pin them on your fridge they're real great crib sheet put them in your diary put them wherever you need them so that you can come back to them and tweak them in your own language if you find that they sound too much like me so to go ahead and grab them head over to my free resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library pop in your email address and you'll get access not only to this week's resource but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes and if you found today's episode useful please do share it with another parent who needs it so until next time you

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Dr. Mary Hanlon, a psychologist and parenting expert, provides five specific questions parents can ask their anxious child to help shift them from overwhelm to curiosity.
  2. The "bucket analogy" explains that anxious children's emotional buckets fill faster and overflow more easily due to a more sensitive and hypervigilant nervous system.
  3. The five questions are
  4. These questions work because curiosity is a powerful antidote to anxiety, as the brain cannot process logic when flooded with anxiety, and they give children a sense of agency over their worries.
  5. Question one shifts focus from the content of the worry to physical body awareness, which is the foundation of physiological regulation skills.
  6. Question two externalizes the worry by giving it a form, allowing the child to relate to it from a distance rather than being consumed by it.
  7. Questions three and four gently examine the worry's predictions and help build an inner cheerleader to counter the harsh inner critic common in anxious children.
  8. Parents should avoid using these questions during peak anxiety and should resist the urge to fix, reassure, or correct their child's answers.

Summary:

In this companion episode to the main Thursday episode on childhood worrying, Dr. Mary Hanlon offers parents five practical questions to help their anxious children. She begins by explaining the bucket analogy, describing how anxious children's emotional buckets fill faster and overflow more easily because their nervous systems are more sensitive, hypervigilant, and slower to recover. By bedtime, the bucket is often overflowing, which manifests as meltdowns, shutdowns, or tears.

The five questions are designed to shift children from overwhelm to curiosity, since curiosity and anxiety cannot coexist. Question one asks where the child feels the worry in their body, moving attention away from the worry's content toward physical awareness. Question two asks what animal the worry would be, externalizing it so the child can observe it from a distance. Question three asks what the worry is telling them will happen, gently examining the prediction without correcting it. Question four asks what they would say to a best friend feeling this way, helping build an inner cheerleader against the inner critic. Question five asks for one tiny thing that might help right now, giving the child agency.

Dr. Hanlon emphasizes two cautions: use these questions when the child is steadier, not at peak anxiety, and simply receive their answers without fixing or reassuring. A free one-page guide is available on her website.

FAQs

1) Where do you feel it in your body? 2) If this worry was an animal, what would it be? 3) What's the worry telling you is going to happen? 4) What would you say to your best friend if they were feeling this way? 5) What's one tiny thing that might help right now?

They use curiosity, which is incompatible with anxiety, and help children observe their worries from a distance rather than being overwhelmed by them.

Use them when your child is not at peak anxiety—after they are a bit steadier, such as after a hug, cold water, or movement—so they can access curiosity.

Just receive them without fixing, reassuring, comparing, or improving. Acknowledge what they share and avoid jumping in to correct or solve.

Prioritize physiological regulation first: try a hug, cold water, movement, or taking 10. Once calmer, then bring in the questions.

No, pick the one that feels right for the moment, age, and child. You don't need all five every time.

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2401 words