How we unknowingly make anxiety worse for our kids

By Gabby Goodier; Co-Founder of Same Page Co + Clinical Psychologist

3 minute read

It’s the most natural thing in the world to want to protect your kids, to make them feel better and to make uncomfortable feelings go away. But what if I told you that this protective instinct to ‘fix it’ and pull your child out of those anxious feelings actually just makes it worse… let me explain.

Anxiety, at the core, is a state of being uncomfortable; being uncomfortable in your body.  It’s a feeling of NOT being at home with yourself in the moment and wanting to be anywhere else than with that feeling.  

So really, when you think about it, anxiety is a fear of a feeling.

Here’s the thing we have feelings and we have relationships with our feelings.  Most of us, even as adults, put our time and energy into trying to change the feelings. Here’s an inconvenient truth: You cannot change the feelings.  You can, however, do a LOT of work to change your relationship with the feelings (yay!).  

Why is this the case?  Well, because once a feeling has happened, it’s there.  It would be like you dropped your phone and the screen shattered – trying to unshatter the screen isn’t going to work. There’s no magic spell to make it whole again. And yet what you do next is going to determine how hopeful you feel or how bad you feel about yourself. We all know that the desperation that you feel to fix that shattered screen doesn’t get you anywhere. It just makes it worse.  It fuels that feeling.

What matters with kids and what they are going to remember, actually has nothing to do with anxiety, but everything about what happens next.

The most important things that they will take away and carry them are:

• What did my key people surround my feeling of anxiety with?
• How did they respond to me?  
• Did they add elements that increased my anxiety?  
• Or, did they add elements that increased safety?

The problem 

For most of us, when our kid is anxious, worried or hesitant, our natural instinct is to try to lessen that feeling OR accommodate it.  Accommodating a feeling refers to any action that parents engage in, or purposefully do not engage in, with the purpose of helping their child avoid anxiety or stress.  

What can happen when kids are allowed to avoid developmentally appropriate activities and situations that would be healthy for them to face, is that we rob them of their opportunity to learn to cope with it.  Unsurprisingly, research actually shows that the majority of parents of young people with anxiety disorders (i.e., 97 percent of mothers and 88 percent of fathers) report engaging in accommodating behaviours at least once per day. 

So what can this look like?  Think letting your child choose whether or not to engage in any activities or sports outside of the home, speaking for your children in public when they’re afraid to speak for themselves or perhaps excessively reassuring your child or responding to repeated questions about whatever their worry is.  Or, maybe, if they become frustrated, you remove the stressor or provide the desired item or activity in order to extinguish the feelings.

All of these strategies maintain the anxiety.

While it makes sense, when you’re trying to deal with challenging child behaviour, that you’d resort to these strategies, it’s also creating long term issues.  Essentially what happens is that you are trading your child’s long-term confidence and coping skills for short-term comfort and calm. In the long term,  avoidance can keep you and your anxious child stuck in a frustrating cycle, in which fear gains power and control over your child, your family and your home.   

So instead think about getting uncomfortable and allowing your child to do so too because the truth of it is, either you are prepared to manage a feeling when you’re older or you’re not.  The feelings aren’t going anywhere;  they are part of being human.  And your role with your kids is to help them prepare – to practice how to manage these uncomfortable feelings.

You C.A.N.™️ do this

One of our favourite strategies here at Same Page Co is C.A.N.™️  A simple, impactful strategy to help you and your child learn to be with your feelings because feelings start to regulate when you learn to respect them with this three step process.

1. CONNECT to the feeling by naming it - “I am feeling [name the feeling].  I can feel this in my shoulders”
2. ACCEPT the feeling by validating it - “I’m struggling to figure this puzzle out.  It makes sense that I’m frustrated right now”
3. NURTURE the feeling by giving it permission to exist - “I give myself full permission to feel [said feeling]”.

I’d encourage you to start by practicing this OUTSIDE of moments when you might need it.  Set an alarm for three times per day.  Hold yourself accountable to practicing this and then model and teach this invaluable skill to your kid.  Remember, you C.A.N.™️ do this!