There are three main sources of excess childhood anxiety. I should know, because I grew up with all three:
- A reactive temperament, which starts with an intense reaction to anything that is new or unfamiliar. About 15 percent of babies are born with this temperament, and some develop into children who withdraw from new people or new situations. (This used to be called shyness, but we shy people prefer “slow to warm up.”) This temperament sometimes develops further into social anxiety or other types of fears.
- Anxious parents. No surprise here. Anxious parents pass on their tendency to fear and worry through genetics, role modeling, and overprotectiveness. I wish I had a contribution to my children’s college fund for every time a parent has told me, “I don’t pressure my child!” I try to keep a neutral tone of voice as I wonder aloud why their sixth grader is panicked over a 98 percent on a math test.
- Trauma. When children experience things that are beyond their capacity to handle, as I did with attacks by older boys who lived next door, they become highly sensitized to danger and have a hard time relaxing. It’s like having a smoke alarm that goes off night and day for no apparent reason, and that is hard to turn off once it starts blaring.
Lately I have seen a sharp rise in childhood anxiety. I think this is because parents today are more anxious about life’s dangers and about the state of the economy, and also because our constantly wired world keeps us well informed but not very relaxed. Indeed, “well informed” is not exactly accurate, since the media selectively choose tragedies and horrors from the universe of possible stories and then repeat them in a shrill and never-ending loop. In times of disaster, Mr. Rogers counseled parents to help children focus on the rescuers and on human kindness, but the media aren’t much help to us with that goal. An increased awareness of danger has brought us many good things -for example, seat belts and safer cars - but has also skyrocketed our collective anxiety level.
We can’t change a child’s temperament or genes, but there is still a great deal we can do to help children when they are anxious. I call it embracing the opposite of worry. For a jittery child, the opposite of worry might be relaxation. Of course, a child in the grip of anxiety doesn’t want to relax. But we can help. For instance, instead of reprimanding your child by saying, “You need to calm down,” you can encourage him or her to relax by saying, “Let’s take some deep breaths,” and then relax together. It also helps to validate the child’s feelings first rather than dismissing them - say, “I can see you’re really scared” instead of “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
For a child frozen in terror, the opposite may be stepping toward the scary thing instead of avoiding it. I call this the “gentle push.” Avoiding (no push) just makes anxiety worse over time, but a shove (no gentleness) erodes the trust your child needs to have in adults and in the overall safety of the world.
When children are anxious, they are prone to “what if” thinking. “What if” thinking is impervious to logic. But if you have an anxious child, you already know that?- and yet, in such situations, most of us keep trying to use more and more logic. The real opposite of “what if” is to focus on “what is,” the reality of the here-and-now moment - especially the here and now of the child’s sensory and physical experience: “What are you noticing in your body right now? Can you look around and see if you can find any signs of safety?”
What is the opposite of worry for parents? I don’t think the answer is calm serenity. I haven’t met too many parents with much of that. For us, the opposite of worry is trust. Trust in the power of development; trust in the power of friendship; trust in the power of attachment and connection. We can’t control our children, much as we would like to. But if we can increase our trust level, focus on connecting with our children, and tackle our own anxieties, then we can help our children feel secure and confident.