More frustrating than having anxiety myself is watching my kids struggle with it, recognizing what is and not being able to help them. It’s absolutely brutal to recognize that my kid is having an anxiety attack and not always knowing what caused it. Without knowing what caused the attack I can’t help them calm down and move forward. I can vocalize what I need when I’m anxious, my kids can’t.
I never realized how much it bothered me to hear comments like “just get over it” or “ignore the behavior and it will go away.” I wholeheartedly agree with walking away from a child having a tantrum because they didn’t get the toy they wanted. On the other hand, having your kid voice a fear is something you need to hear, accept and try to help them overcome. Rather than simply telling them that’s irrational and you need to get over it.
As an adult, I can tell you when something is causing me anxiety and even identify when a fear I have is irrational. Does that make the fear go away? Not a chance. Anxiety is hard and can be paralyzing for adults. So tell me why people seem to have such a hard time wrapping their head around it being equally hard if not harder for kids.
I get it, it’s easy to judge something you don’t understand. If you don’t have anxiety you are going to look at me or my kids and simply see us having a giant melt down over what you have determined to be nothing and decide we just need to get over it. Maybe it is nothing in reality but you telling us that it is nothing will in fact make the anxiety that much worse. It makes us feel crazy and alone.
So what can I do to help my kids? I read a lot. The article below has good ideas and things for me to try to remember.
The truth though is that in the middle of one of my kids’ anxiety attacks that in most cases causes my anxiety to kick in it’s hard to remember what is right to do. I’m still learning. They are learning to try to deal with these things hopefully to get over their anxiety instead of having it get worse with age.
Next time you see a parent and their kid melting down stop judging and for just a second try to put yourself in their shoes. Chances are the parents heart is breaking because they can’t fix the fear and the kid just wants to be normal.