Speaker 1one in six children currently has probable mental health challenge what if i get the answer wrong what if she doesn't want to sit with me because this is the fight or flight response the problem is that it was designed for tigers not for year six acts the child themselves begins to say i can't do that because i have anxiety tummy aches headaches nausea the way to feel safe is to avoid the thing and so the thing becomes scarier and the world gets smaller there is something else going on entirely and once you understand it everything changes is this your child does this sound familiar the 10 year old who physically cannot open their homework without it ending in tears and a slam door the seven-year-old who asks you what if questions on repeat on the way to school at bedtime in the middle of dinner and no answer you give ever seems to be enough the five-year-old who gets tummy aches every monday morning that mysteriously disappear by the weekend the teenager who has quietly stopped trying things sport drama new friendships because somewhere along the way the risk of getting it wrong became too much to bear or maybe your child doesn't look anxious in the way you might expect maybe they look irritable or withdrawn or they've gone very quiet maybe they're holding everything together brilliantly at school and falling apart at home maybe the anxiety is showing up as anger or clinginess or a physical complaint that has no medical explanation and you've tried you've reassured yourself that you're reassured them you've talked them through it logically you've tried distraction and bribery and gentle encouragement and sometimes outright insistence and none of it sticks because the worry always come back whatever it looks like in your house this is the episode i'd send every parent of an anxious child to first i'm going to walk you through what childhood anxiety actually is and crucially what it isn't why telling anxious children it'll be fine doesn't work and what to do instead the skills gap model i talk about a lot and why it changes everything about how we approach anxiety and the first practical things that you can do tonight and what you'll come away with is a clear framework for understanding your child's anxiety and the first concrete steps to take 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 so let's start with where we are one in six children currently has what would be classified as a probable mental health challenge one in six so if you think about the children in your child's class that's four or five just in that one room who are struggling in a meaningful way and of all the mental health challenges our children face anxiety is by far the most common it's also in my experience the one that parents feel the most confused about most helpless in the face of and often most guilty about so this episode is for every parent who has watched their child shrink from things they should feel exciting for every parent who has spent hours on the sofa talking their child down from a worry spiral for every parent who has googled how to help an anxious child at midnight and come away probably more overwhelmed than when they started you are exactly in the right place and i want you to know something before we go any further you haven't caused this and it isn't a character flaw in your child there is something else going on entirely and once you understand it everything changes so what anxiety actually is now let me explain what's really happening when your child is anxious now i want you to picture a seesaw and on one side of that seesaw i want you to imagine all of the demands on your child the things that are important to you and the things that are important to you and the things that are pressing down on them that might be school friendships a test coming up a big performance a change in routine it might be things that seem enormous to them even if they seem small to us now on the other side of that seesaw are your child's resources the tools and capabilities they have to meet those demands their resilience their coping skills the support around them their confidence their well-being their emotional regulation now here's the crucial thing about the seesaw when the resources side is on the up the demand side is on the down your child is managing they're in their happy place they're in their confident capable space they're coping they feel capable but when demands start to outweigh the resources that's when anxiety kicks in that's when the system activates and i want you to notice something important about this model and it's something that i've talked about often the seesaw is in time to activate the system and it's in time to activate the system and it's in time to activate it's entirely hinged whether that's the demands or whether that's the resources around perception not what is objectively hard not as objectively happening or in front of your child in that moment but about whether they feel not about whether the thing that they're worried about is actually dangerous but how it feels to your child in that moment how they assess that particular situation because that's the most important thing to understand about anxiety it is not irrational it makes complete sense from the inside your child's nervous system has looked at the demands looked at the resources and decided that the gap is too wide and it has responded accordingly now here's where the body comes in now i want you to think about the smoke alarm you have in your home the job of a smoke alarm is incredibly important it's there to protect you it doesn't know the difference between a piece of burnt toast and an actual fire and let's say we've all experienced that it just knows that it's detected something that might be a threat and it sounds the alarm it's doing exactly what it was designed to do and your child's nervous system works in exactly the same way when it perceives a threat and remember perception is everything here it sounds the alarm it floods the body with adrenaline and cortisol it redirects blood away from the digestive system which is hugely encompassing and towards the large muscle groups which is why anxious children get tummy aches it quickens the breathing and raises the heart rate it sharpens the senses ready because this is the fight or flight response and it's ancient and it's brilliant and it is designed to help us survive the problem is that it was designed for tigers not for year six acts not for friendship fallouts not for the feeling of walking into a party where you don't know anyone but the nervous system can't and doesn't distinguish between the tiger and the test the tiger and the friendship fallout the tiger and walking into the party alone it responds to all perceived threats in exactly the same way so when your child says my tummy hurts before school they're not making it up when they say their heart is racing they're not being dramatic the physical are completely real their body is doing exactly what it was designed to do it's just that the alarm has become very sensitive so when does anxiety become a problem now here's where i want to make an important distinction because i think it matters enormously anxiety itself is not the problem anxiety is normal healthy adaptive it's a human emotion we want our children to feel anxiety it helps them feel better it helps them feel better it helps them feel better it helps them feel better it helps them perform it motivates them it keeps them safe the child who feels absolutely no anxiety before an exam probably hasn't revised enough a little anxiety in new social situations is completely appropriate the question is never does my child feel anxious the question is how frequent is it how intense is it how long does it last and most importantly is it getting in the way of daily life because when anxiety is happening so often or so intensely or for such extended periods that your child is starting to avoid things stopping going to school refusing social situations no longer trying anything that might they might fail at that's when we're moving into territory that needs more deliberate attention and i want to say this gently but clearly there is no bright future for our children i want to say that we need to make sure that our children have a better future and i want to say that we need to make sure that our children have a better future for their future this is for all of you. But what I want to do is what anxiety isn't and the debate that we need to have, because I think we need to talk about something I get asked about a lot, because there's a real conversation happening at the moment in schools, in consulting rooms, in parenting circles, about whether we're overusing the word anxiety, whether by labelling our children's experiences, we're maybe somehow making things worse, whether we're medicalising normal childhood emotions. And I think this is a genuinely important question. So as you know, I have some thoughts on this. So let me share my thinking. Now, on the one hand, I have seen in the 20 years or so that I've been working with children and young people, that naming what a child experienced can be profoundly liberating. When a 12 year old who has spent three years thinking that there's something fundamentally wrong with them, discovers that what they're experiencing has a name and that other people experience it, that it isn't a sign that they're weird or weak or broken, that can be transformative. The label when used well, reduces shame. And shame is one of the biggest barriers to getting help. On the other hand, I have also seen the risk, the risk that the label becomes the identity, that a child stops being a child who sometimes feels anxious and starts becoming an anxious child in a way that closes doors rather than opens them. That well-meaning adults begin to treat them as fragile, that the child themselves begins to say, I can't do that because I have anxiety, rather than that's hard for me and I'm going to have to build the skills to do it. So my view, and this matters for how we approach everything that follows in this episode, is that anxiety is a description of an experience. It is not a destiny. And what anxiety is not is this. It's not a weakness. It's not attention seeking. It's not a sign that you have failed as a parent. In fact, anxious children are often the most emotionally intelligent, the most empathetic, the most perceptive children in the room. They feel things deeply and they haven't yet been given the skills to manage that depth of feeling. So how do we recognize anxiety in our children? So one of the things that catches parents out is that anxiety doesn't always look like worry. Your child might not present it in an obvious way. And especially in younger children, and especially in children who have learned, consciously or not, to mask how they're feeling. So let me walk you through what anxiety can look like at different ages and stages. So in younger children, typically the under sevens, separation anxiety is absolutely normal in the five or six year old is still in tears every morning at school drop off is needing to be peeled off you week after week. It's worth paying attention to look out for physical complaints that don't have a medical explanation. Tummy aches, headaches, nausea. Notice if these are worse on Sunday evenings and Monday mornings, and they just seem to mysteriously be better at the weekends. Notice regression, which is basically a child going back to behaviors that they've grown out of. Notice extreme clinginess or separation distress. These are all the body's way of saying the demands of that situation are outweighing the resources that I have. So that's younger children. In primary age children, so we're talking roughly sort of seven to 11. This is the age where you start to hear the what ifs. What if I get the answer wrong? What if she doesn't want to sit with me? What if something happens to you when I'm at school? The catastrophizing starts to become verbal, and you might also see perfectionism. The child who would rather not try than risk not being good enough. School avoidance is common in this age group, and it often starts gradually. Sleep difficulties are common. This is often the first moment of the day that's quiet enough for the brain to hear its own thoughts and look out for a narrowing of their world. Gradually doing fewer things, going to fewer places, seeing fewer people. In teenagers, now anxiety in teenagers is one of the things I see most frequently in my work, and it's also one of the most frequently missed because it doesn't always look like worry. It can look like irritability. It can look like withdrawal, and I know that this can be challenging because these are the things that we would naturally expect our teenage children to be doing. It can look like the teenager who has simply gone quiet. It can look like what I would expect a high-functioning, anxious teenager. The one who is performing brilliantly at school, who is holding everything together on the outside, but who is exhausted from the effort of managing their internal world. And social anxiety is very common in this age group because, of course, that desire to have that sense of belonging from their peers is really important. And performance anxiety, the one who has given up sport, drama, or singing, not because they don't love it, but because their stakes feel too high. The common thread across all of the ages when we're looking at what anxiety looks like is avoidance. When a child starts to organize their life around avoiding the things that make them anxious, that's the signal that we need to step in. So what are we doing that isn't working, and why it isn't our fault? Now, I want to talk about what happens when parents try to help, because in my experience, the vast majority of parents who come to see me are already trying incredibly hard. They love their children deeply. They can see their child is suffering, and they're doing everything they can think of to make it better. And so much of what they're doing, while completely well-intentioned, is inadvertently making the anxiety worse. And there is research evidence to support this. So let me explain why. When your child comes to you with a worry, the most natural thing in the world is to reassure them. It's going to be fine. That's not going to happen. I promise you, you'll be okay. Yeah, it feels kind. And in the moment, it works. You see your child relax. But here's the problem. Every time we reassure an anxious child, we are inadvertently sending a message to them that thing was actually worth worrying about. And we have also taught them that the way to feel better is to come to us for reassurance. So the reassurance seeking escalates. The worries come faster, and our child has not learned a single thing about how to manage their own anxiety, because we've been managing it for them. Now, I suspect many of you have also tried the logical approach. But statistically, planes are incredibly, you know, plane crashes are incredibly rare. But your teacher said you're doing really well, or something like that. And I suspect many of you have had the experience of a child staring at you saying, I know, but I still feel worried. Because here's the thing, when your child is in the middle of an anxiety response, the part of the brain that does logical rational processing, the prefrontal cortex, the bit that is behind our forehead, essentially goes offline. You can't think your way out of a physiological response. Logic arrives too late to the party. And when your child is anxious about something, the path of least resistance is to help them avoid it. And every single time we do this, we give them short-term relief, their anxiety goes down immediately, and we teach their nervous system something deeply unhelpful, that the way to feel safe is to avoid the thing. And so the thing becomes scarier, and the world gets smaller. So let's look at the reframe now that will change everything. I want to give you the reframe that, for me, completely changes how we approach this. Anxiety is a skills gap, not a flaw. I'll just say that again. Anxiety is a skill gap, not a flaw. So what do I mean by that? I mean that the reason your child is struggling with anxiety is not because there is something wrong with them. It's not a character weakness. It's a sign that they have not yet developed the specific skills that are needed to manage the level of emotional and physiological activation that they are experiencing. And the reason that this reframe matters so much is because of what it implies about the solution. So if we think about it, if your child, if we view anxiety as a flaw, so if your child's anxiety is a flaw, if they are just a worrier, if anxiety is just who they are, then there really isn't very much that can be done about it. Yeah? You're managing a condition. But if your child's anxiety is a skills gap, then the whole game changes, because skills can be taught. Skills can be practiced. Skills can become second nature. And what are the skills that anxious children are typically missing? Or they're not necessarily missing them, but they need further development on them. There's four. The first is physiological regulation, the ability to bring the nervous system down from fight or flight back to that sense of calm. And I've got a whole bucket episode on my take 10 technique if you want to start there. But that physiological regulation is that ability to switch that. Calm off. Number two is emotional regulation, the ability to name what they're feeling. feeling to tolerate difficult emotions without being overwhelmed by them. And third is cognitive flexibility. So that's the ability to notice the anxious thought and instead of taking it as fact to question it because it teaches children to ask, is that thought a fact or a feeling? And that can be transformative. And then fourth is about distress tolerance. This is the ability to feel anxious and do the thing anyway, to know that anxiety can't hurt them, to build a track record of evidence that they can tolerate hard things. So these four skill sets form the toolkit that anxious children are missing. And our job as their parent is not to protect them from the situations that expose that gap. It is to help them fill it. Now, what to do first? Tonight, I want you to have a different kind of conversation. Now, there is a bucket emptying episode coming out on Monday. So if you'd like to watch that, please do so. And if you'd like to watch that, please do so. So if you have not yet followed the podcast, I would encourage you to do that so you do not miss it. And in that episode, I will give you five specific questions to ask your worried child, not reassurance questions, not logic questions, but questions that help your child get curious about their own experience rather than overwhelmed by it. It's a short episode, it's practical, and I'd encourage you to listen to it when it comes out on Monday. So make sure you follow the podcast. For this week, what I would like you to do tonight, your takeaway from this episode is to shift away from reassurance and towards validation. Now, the difference is subtle, but it's important. So reassurance says that thing isn't as scary as you think. Yeah, say that again. Reassurance says that thing isn't as scary as you think. Validation says, I can see that feels really scary for you. And that makes complete sense. So reassurance is about the situation. Validation is about your child's experience. And validation, being genuinely heard and understood, is actually what an anxious child is seeking when they come to you with their worry. So try this instead. When your child comes to you, try instead to say, that sounds really hard. Tell me more about what's worrying you. And then just listen. So this is what you can try tonight. And then longer term, start building the toolkit. Everything I've described can be built, not overnight, and not by parents alone, if the anxiety is significantly impacting daily functioning, but it can be built step by step. And in future episodes, I'll be walking you through each of these skill areas in practical detail with something that you can do that night in each episode. Now, before I wrap up and sort of give you the, kind of summary of what we've covered, which will pull everything together, I want to say something clearly about when to seek professional help, because there is a point at which podcasts and strategies and self-help are just not enough. If your child's anxiety is significantly impacting their daily functioning, if they are refusing to attend school, if they are not eating, if they are self-harming, if they are unable to participate in activities that most children their age can manage, then they are not able to participate in activities that most children their age can manage. And I'm talking about the practical day-to-day things that children ought to be doing rather than the things we aspire for them to do. Please do not try to manage this alone. If your child has been struggling for more than a few weeks, despite your very best efforts, if you as a parent are so depleted that you are no longer able to respond in the ways that you know would help, these are all signs that it's time to reach out to your GP, school counsellor, a child psychologist, or a mental health professional. There is no shame in this. We've looked at the numbers. Now, for summary, let me bring this all together so that you've got some real clarity here, and then I'll talk to you about what the give is. So anxiety is your child's nervous system doing its job, detecting a gap between the demands being placed on them and the resources available to them. And because that gap is wide, it's sounding the alarm. The physical symptoms are real. The fear is real. It makes complete sense from the inside. So anxiety is not a flaw. It's not a weakness or a sign that you've done something wrong as a parent. It is, to me, a skills gap, specifically a gap in physiological regulation, emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and distress tolerance. And skill gaps can be filled. Your most important first step, is to shift from reassurance and logic, which don't work, to validation and curiosity. Listen to the bucket emptying episode when it comes out on Monday for five specific questions to start tonight. And if the anxiety is significantly impacting your child's daily life, please do reach out for professional support. You are not helpless here, and your child is not broken. They just need the toolkit. Now, my give this week is a one-page first steps with anxiety guide. The most important things to do and to stop doing in the first week when you recognize anxiety in your child. So to grab it, head over to my free resource library at drmaryhand.com forward slash library, pop in your email address, and you'll get instant access, not only to this week's resource, but all the other free resources across all my other podcast episodes. And if you found today's episode useful, please do share it with another parent who needs it. So until next time. Bye.
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