I have a child with a food anxiety who will not try new things without a LOT of praise and coaching.

I do think quite often that parents place fear in their children.
A friend of mine is scared of heights and scared of all amusement rides. Her daughter was the same but when we took her to Dreamworld to start with she was scared crazy. I told her that she didnt have to go if she didnt want to so she decided not to go on the ride. As she and I sat and waited I asked her what she was scared of and she said that she was scared of dying. I said that sounded reasonable but told her to watch the people as they got of the ride and see how they were reacting. She was quite surprised to see that they were all smiling and laughing and some ran straight around to go on it again. She then decided that when my girls got off the ride that she would go on it with them. She loved it. She wanted a photo to prove she went on the ride and she was so very proud of herself. Her mum couldnt believe it.

Good advice for children with identifiable fears, eg. afraid of the dark, sleep overs or leaving mum etc. However, for those with less ‘rational’ (for want of a better word) anxiety or where no trauma has brought it on….in other words, it’s part of there psyce and God forbid, genes, well for that, there is no quick fix and whilst the ideas here work in theory, it’s a much longer, drawn out process. It takes a LOT of patience and those times where you ask your child to ‘sit’ with the fear for while, might be school days or for mum/dad a work day…it’s hard to be patient then! To those parents, i say, stick with it….and persist. Kids with anxiety need to learn that pushing past the fear teaches them to be strong, and they realise that their fear is usually unfounded. The best piece of advice I ever received-it was only recently, was from my daughter’s psychologist. I felt at at witts end (again, lol), and she told me I neeed to stop worrying so much about what other people thought, I’m not dealing with a normal situation, so the normal rules don’t apply. She assured me I was doing a good job and in the moment’s of my child’s meltdowns, all i needed to think about was her-nobody else, because others don’t understand and nor do they need to! It helped me put things in perspective – for example, if she’s having a bad day and I can’t get her to school till 10am, then that’s actually a good day, because I persisted and she got to school – as opposed to many who would give up and just let their child stay home….so we both moved forward that day, instead of stagnating or worse, going backwards….so that’s a win for a kid with anxiety. And persistence pays off too when maturity and hormones start kicking in, because that can be a time of heightened anxiety and if they haven’t learned that they can survive their fears, then things can escalalate.

Thank you. we are going to be working on fear of the dark. this will help greatly.

Some great advice thanks 🙂

An interesting approach to anxiety. Makes sense too!

Excellent and timely info. thank you so much

thank you, I suffer from anxiety, and will be trying these steps on myself, to try and ease it

so hard when your child suffers from anxiety

This will give my DIL some help with handling her little ones anxiety going to school. Thankyou.

thank you sharing this article good read

Very useful information to reac

thanks for sharing was a great read

maybe this technique could also be used on adults

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  • • ginoula5 replied
    • 24 Aug 2014 , 5:26 pm

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  I would say yes great tips and advice for adults also.

so useful and informative !

Thanks a lot for sharing. I enjoyed reading it. Great ideas

This was very helpful cheers

Enjoyed reading – thanks for sharing.

Great article. Some really good practical tips

I am always trying to be a better role model – sometimes it seems so hard though!