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How Can I Help My Worried Child?
3.8k Plays2 days ago
In this episode, Jess and Scott discuss how to support anxious or worried kids. Jess, a psychotherapist, shares the "Mind Table" concept - a powerful tool for helping children manage anxiety and difficult emotions. She shares the story of her own daughter's fears and explains how visualizing different emotions as characters sitting around a table can help kids externalize and cope with their worries.
Jess and Scott explore why this approach works so well for children and how it differs from simply suppressing emotions. They also include practical tips for parents supporting anxious kids.
Listeners will learn about key signs of childhood anxiety, the importance of maintaining strong parent-child relationships when addressing fears, and why gradually exposing children to challenges (rather than total avoidance) helps build resilience.
With practical, real-life examples and Jess’ clinical expertise, this episode provides valuable strategies for parents who want to help their children develop emotional awareness and healthy coping skills.
Check out the post Jess reads at the beginning of the episode here.
Click here to learn more about The Worry Toolkit Jess and the Nurtured First team created to help parents support their anxious children.
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
Learn more about The Body Safety Toolkit here!
We’d love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: podcast@robotunicorn.net.
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Transcript
Introduction to Robot Unicorn
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Robot Unicorn. We are so glad that you are here.
Childhood Fears and Coping Strategies
00:00:15
Speaker
My four-year-old watched Moana. She became terrified of shiny the crab. One night, she came down to the kitchen crying. With sleepy eyes and her PJs on, she crumbled into my arms and said, mom, all I can think about is shiny crab coming into our house at night. What if he gets me? We've been helping her with this fear for some time, but nothing was helping. So on this night, I said to her, I think you're ready to learn about your mind table.
00:00:39
Speaker
Imagine in your mind there is a big table. In one seat there is someone named Worry and the other seats are disgust, joy, surprise, sleepy and sad. At the head of the table sits someone tall and strong. It's you. You are the boss of your mind table.
00:00:53
Speaker
Sometimes Worry tries to take over and be the boss of your table. Worry gets really pushy. She tells you things like, think of shiny crab. Think about how scary he is. But here's what you need to remember. Worry isn't the boss of your mind. You are. Worry helps you. She keeps you safe. She's important. But sometimes Worry needs to sit back down at the table. What do you think Worry needs to hear right now?
00:01:16
Speaker
Worry, sit back down. Stop telling me about shiny crabs. My daughter smiled as she imagined it telling worry to sit down. Then we drew a picture of her mind table. We drew herself being the boss and telling worry to sit back down. Understanding her mind table was the first step in helping her cope with her worries. She put this picture by her bed to remind her that she's the boss of her mind and she can tell worry to sit down. That was over three years ago. For months, she'd take her worry table picture everywhere she went with her. She liked it as a reminder that she was safe. Today, I found a picture of her worry table under her bed. It had fallen there and we forgot to grab it. Over time with coping tools and the safety of her relationship with us, the big worries went away. Worry stopped being the boss of her mind table. It can feel really hard to know how to help your worried kids. You want them to know they are safe and you also don't want to dismiss their feelings. The mind table is one way to help your kids know that they are the boss of their mind, not worry. That's a good post. When was that posted? October 29, 2024. Oh, that was this year. that was Yeah, that was pretty recent. Does she still have that in her room? No, she, when we moved, she didn't need the worry table anymore, but she legit had that. And even at my parents, when she'd sleep at grandma and papa's, she would bring the worry table with her there. And I remember her having that at the old house, but then, yeah, we just moved what month and a half ago. Yeah. And I asked her and she said, you didn't need it. Well, truthfully, I feel like she's not the same in that way. Like worry doesn't control her mind anymore, which is kind of cool. Yeah. It was cool because when we did the worry table with her, like I would actually hear her like at night sometimes say, worry, sit down. I don't need you. You know, I could hear her saying it. So the mind table for her worked really, really well. And then the whole worry toolkit that we have, like all the different exercises in there really seemed to help her learn how to kind of navigate her own anxiety. Honestly, she's very confident now than she was when she was little. Like she'd be worried about being around other people and now she likes being in the school play and being up front in front of everyone and... It's not the same level of like, that she used to have. Yeah. And even watching shows and everything, like she'll get scared of certain parts, but it's not like it's going to stop her necessarily from watching. She can differentiate. Maybe it's because she's older too, but she can differentiate between movies and what's real, I guess.
Origins and Inspiration of the Mind Table Concept
00:03:31
Speaker
So my initial instinct, and I, I did read this and then looked at some of the comments and everything. So my first question to you is, did you copy Inside Out?
00:03:41
Speaker
i laughed at the i know the answer to that I laughed at the comments like, this is just the movie inside out because I mean, obviously the movie inside out is based off of something, right? Some psychological research. yeah And if you look at who helped produce the movie inside out, there was a lot of psychologists and I think there was two clinical psychologists that helped them and they had different clinics that would, that helped them kind of create the concept. They're referenced at the end of the movie. I can't remember who anyway.
00:04:08
Speaker
That being said, the first time I did a post on the mind table was probably three or four years ago. So before the second Inside Out movie ever came out. And the mind table is really based off the work that I have done with anxious kids. yeah And I would teach them the mind table. So that dates back like 10 years. So I would say, no, this is not based on the movie Inside Out, but Inside Out is based on the work that a lot of us do as psychotherapists. yeah So it makes sense that they are aligned.
00:04:36
Speaker
Now I looked into it. It seems to be based on IFS, like a yes type of therapeutic, what do you call it? Modality. Yeah. I don't know if it actually is like, if that's, yeah, I would say purpose behind it. Like they specifically tried to make it seem like that. Not necessarily. I would say when I was in my own IFS therapy many years ago, that's kind of when I started thinking about this idea for kids, because I was doing IFS on myself and finding it really helpful. Yeah.
00:05:02
Speaker
IFS isn't specifically like sitting at the mind table. that's something IFS stands for internal family systems if yeah you're interested in working it up. It's a type of therapy. It's created by someone named Richard Schwartz. It's becoming increasingly popular, which is great because I really enjoy IFS.
00:05:18
Speaker
When I did review it on, like I looked for research that's out there, it seems to be evidence-based. So that's good. Yeah. IFS is great. And a lot of our clinicians that are practice use it too. So this idea of the mind table, that's something that when I was doing my own IFS work and I was working with kids at the same time, I was kind of visualizing like, how can I bring this all together?
00:05:39
Speaker
And I really liked the idea of helping kids draw out their own mind table and like name all the different people around it.
Using Mind Table for Emotional Management
00:05:45
Speaker
So whether it was worry or maybe anger was the boss, right? And and trying to see what all the different people had to say and how they were helping. And then the IFS idea of, but at the head of the table is the self, like the truest version of you.
00:05:59
Speaker
and you can talk to the different parts that sit around it. So that's kind of where the idea came from. And it was really cool to see in therapy what would happen when we would draw out the mind table and kids would be able to talk to all these different parts of themselves. And then when our own daughter started struggling with worry, I waited till she was like three or four to kind of bring this up. And it was really cool to see how much it resonated with her. And then from there we created the worry toolkit and tons of kids have been using it and yeah, I just think that visual really resonates with a lot of children. Yeah. I mean, we did it. You did it in that you did it in the anger tool. I feel like a lot of our toolkits are. Wait, no. Did you include the mind table in the other ones or is it just the mind table was only included in the worry toolkit. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you can use it for all of the different emotions, but you can use it for anything really. like
00:06:49
Speaker
So obviously you found it helpful when you've done therapy with children. Why do you think this concept of like a mind table is so helpful for kids?
00:07:00
Speaker
I think children, I mean, honestly, it's helpful for adults too. You probably saw that. Well, that was going to be my next phase of my questioning. Yeah, but the mind table is really helpful for kids because it's something they can draw out so they can truly visualize it. The other thing, so if you're drawing it out with your kids, you might draw a table, right? And then you might say, let's think about all the different people or different parts that are in your mind, right? And so you might draw out joy. Okay, so what does joy look like? Like happiness?
00:07:29
Speaker
some kids will draw like a big sunshine or just a letter H or like it kind of depends on your kid and you can let them decide what that part looks like, right? Yeah, our daughter just did letters I think. I think she did letters so a big letter H and then maybe you color it yellow or something for happy.
00:07:44
Speaker
And then when we get to the, maybe emotion or the part that your child is struggling most with, you might say, what does worry look like? And I remember when I was doing this with our daughter, one of the things, like, so she drew out worry as shiny the crab. Yeah, right. Right? Oh, she had a few different things though, didn't she? She doesn't like snakes, so she drew out snakes. She drew out a snake, she drew out shiny the crab, and she drew out the Grinch. Oh, yes. The Grinch was the big one too. That was all at the same time. The same era, there was three really big fears.
00:08:14
Speaker
And it was interesting. So everything else is a letter and then worry is the Grinch, the shiny crab and the snake. And what that does is it helps our kids express what's going on in their mind. So now they're not alone with it. It's down on paper and it also helps them externalize it. And what that means is when worry is in our head, it can just feel all consuming. It can feel like we are a worry. Like we can't really separate ourselves from the worry feeling that we have.
00:08:40
Speaker
But when you can draw out what that feeling looks like, you can talk to it as if it's a separate part of you and it's not all of who you are. We'll do that with kids in therapy in all sorts of way, right? Like some therapists say, and I don't love the worry monster thing, but they'll be like, draw out your worry monster. Like what does worry look like? I personally don't like the monster language. I like to teach kids in therapy that worry is there to support you. Just sometimes, worry is trying to support you when you don't actually need worry to support you, right? And that's why we just ask worry to sit back down at the table because sometimes worry is helpful. The worry is not always bad. And externalizing it like that allows us to talk to each of these individual parts as they are because we are not
00:09:22
Speaker
one part, like we are not only happy. We're not only sad. We're not only worried. We are, nor should we, nor should we be one thing, right? We shouldn't be happy all the time. We need all of these different parts to function as our best selves and as adults and as kids, and we can learn to talk and piece these parts out and know that we are not just one. We are all the things. It can help us learn to cope with our emotions in a much better way.
00:09:47
Speaker
Well, I can see how that would be beneficial for kids. Cause let's say our daughter, when she was three or four years old and you were going over it with her, she knew how to draw things, but she didn't know how to journal out her thoughts and feelings and all that kind of stuff. So I can see how the concept of a mind table helps you visualize that there are these parts to you and that there are these feelings that you have, but in like a different way than just journaling it out.
00:10:10
Speaker
Mm hmm. Something nice, too, just on the topic of drawing out your worry. So I remember one of her fears was snakes and I'm not exactly sure where that stemmed from. Maybe she saw a snake. She decided snakes were scary. And so at one point I had her draw out, OK, what does this fear of snakes look like for you?
00:10:29
Speaker
And so she drew out all these really scary looking snakes. And when they're young, when kids are young like this, you can help them make that worry just feel less daunting and scary. So he took the scary looking snakes and then he said, okay, let's make them silly. yeah And then we added eyes, we added,
00:10:45
Speaker
like little funny things on the snakes. Like a top. I think she put a top hat on yeah one of them. Draw a top hat on it and then gave it a name. I think it was like scary, silly, soupy snake or something like that. And then now I say, okay, so now when you start to visualize the scary snakes in your mind, let's think about scary, silly, soupy snake. And then she starts to laugh. Yeah. And then we're taking away the power of the worry, making it silly and playful, which works really well for kids too.
00:11:11
Speaker
I think that makes sense. Like it makes sense that it works for kids. Honestly, I can see it.
Balancing Worry and Coping Mechanisms
00:11:15
Speaker
It's playful. It's fun. That to me makes sense. And you can use it with any feeling or emotion that they have. One comment that I read was that it kind of felt like you were saying, well, just don't think about it. Right? Which doesn't seem to be the most healthy way of dealing with your emotions. So why is this not that? Yeah. Great question. Because I feel like it could very easily turn into something that is Like worry, sit back down and like just always shoving worry down instead of dealing with it. Which is not necessarily healthy either, right? So I can see where, where their point comes from. Cause it kind of feels that way a little bit that you're just kind of saying worry, that's enough. I don't need you right now. Go sit down and you're sort of suppressing that.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah. So if every time worry comes up, you're saying, worry, sit back down. I don't need you. Worry is going to push its way back even further. Right. But I i think that there's a difference between, let's say I'm giving her that story at bedtime at bedtime. She doesn't need to have worry stand up and talk to her about shiny the crab, right? She needs sleepy. We called it sleepy to stand up and help her go to sleep. And what can be really helpful for kids and adults is to know that there will be a time that we're processing that worry. Sometimes it can be called containment therapy, but like sometimes we're taking something big that feels overwhelming and daunting and being like, I'm going to give myself a time and space to focus on processing this, but I'm not going to let it take over my mind the entire day. So sometimes we would say, okay, tomorrow when you wake up in the morning, after we have breakfast, let's talk about the Grinch and let's talk about shiny the crab. And let's talk about where that comes from. So we're still going to find out why that part is there and where that part came from and why it's trying to give you a message, but we might not need to do that at all times. Cause that can feel really overwhelming for a kid and for an adult to feel like at all times they have to try and figure out why that's going on in their mind. Yeah. Does that make sense? It kind of does to a point. I mean, looking into, I've read, what is that one book on internal family systems? So I kind of know about the topic.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah. And not all of this is like direct from internal family systems. No, I know. It's, it's a variation. Like it's kind of based on that, based on some other things. My approach is very like, it has lots of different approaches. Yeah. I see the value in sort of visualizing your internal world as the true you and then all of these parts that kind of protect you from things around you. And then you're able to, if you're that mindful of what's going on in your head, you can sort of separate and understand where Like, hey, worry is not really necessary at this point. Like, it doesn't really make sense for it to be protecting me. Well, it makes sense that it's protecting me, but it doesn't need to be doing that right now. Yes. So I under- like, I understand that part of it. It's just how do you... Okay, let's say someone is using the worry toolkit. Yeah. And they read it very literally. And it's almost as though that's what they teach their kids. Like, how do you make sure that they don't do that?
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I feel like in the worry toolkit, we have other worksheets in there so that that's not the only thing that you're doing with your kids because we do want to understand as parents, this is our role. Where's this worry coming from? This worry is a messenger and we have that in that. This is not a big ad for the toolkit by the way, but we have that in the toolkit too. We talk about worry being a messenger, right? And what message is worry trying to give us?
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, I just, I can foresee, especially someone looking at just an Instagram post, yeah they could potentially take that as, this is you just don't think about it, which is where that, I think that comment stemmed from. Like maybe they've never seen anything else that we've created. That's where Instagram stuff, right? Cause Yeah. you just giving I mean, that's the whole point of, I guess this podcast. Yeah, exactly. So let's take that example of like the Grinch, right? What can we learn from her worry in that situation? What do you think? Cause you're like an average dad, right? So if you're an average dad and you're trying to help our daughter understand and yourself understand where did this worry about the Grinch come from and what can we learn from it?
00:15:10
Speaker
Well, so I know where it came from. It came from the Grinch movie with Jim Carrey in it. Yeah. I think it originally stemmed from just seeing the trailer on Netflix. So it wasn't even that we watched it. It's just that it stopped on Netflix on the trailer and then it just sort of started playing and it freaked her out because I mean, of course they make it even more dramatic in the trailers, make him seem evil. Yeah. And like he's trying to hurt the one girl or like scare her or something like that. And they're purposefully making him seem kind of scary. Right.
00:15:40
Speaker
So I get that that's sort of where it came from. She saw this scary thing that she's never seen. It looks real. The Grinch looks real on the screen. So she's like, I wasn't expecting to see that. I'm just scrolling through Netflix. Now I'm alarmed because I wasn't expecting to be terrified while I'm scrolling Netflix. I don't know. that We were scrolling Netflix and just stopped on it. Yeah, exactly. Cause we liked that movie. Yeah.
00:16:01
Speaker
I don't know if this is a real person or not. If it is a real person, that's quite terrifying because it looks real. And now my brain doesn't know how to process the difference at four years old between imagination, which is like a movie and reality. And so I'm now thinking that this scary Grinch is real.
00:16:20
Speaker
ye and that threatens my safety. So that's kind of what's going through her mind at that time seeing that image. And I will say now at seven and a half, the Grinch is probably one of her favorite Christmas movies. Right. So above and beyond the mind table, we did a couple other things to help her get over specifically the fear of the Grinch. And I want to talk about that because I think something that parents will often do that can further a child's anxiety, and we have to be mindful of the way that we do this, but a child says, I'm terrified of the Grinch. Right? And we go, oh boy. So I never want you to see anything to do with the Grinch again because you're scared. Right. But what does that do to a kid? Well, it makes you think, well, then it must be really, really scary because my parents won't even let me see it again. It confirms that it's actually something to be scared of. Yeah. I think I handled that more than you did.
Demystifying Fear through Education
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, you handled that part of it. Yeah. Cause you, you worked on the, like, let's say the mind table, the worry toolkit, that sort of stuff. yeah But what I did was I explained to her that it was actually a person that was in a costume that took like seven or eight hours to put on. And he, this person kind of turned into a quote unquote Grinch just because of how terrible the process was to get it on.
00:17:31
Speaker
And then I explained that a few more times and just she had a ton of questions on. Well, why, why would he have to sit there for so long and answered all the questions just plainly. And then I think I found like a mini documentary or something like that of how how they made it. That movie came to be and showed all the cameras and kind of like this podcast. Like we have cameras behind the scenes. You almost can't even see it when you're in here with the lights on you. But then when you go behind the scenes, you see there's a whole lot more than just the two of us sitting at a table. So I was trying to explain like the whole process of creating the movie and then that the are real humans that are doing it, but they're paid to specifically take on a special character that they're playing. And I think that was kind of the first time I really explained that whole process to her. And I think once she understood, oh, it's a character and it took him hours to get in his costume. And this is what he really looks like. That it was like, Oh, that's actually interesting. I showed her a whole bunch of pictures of what Jim Carrey actually looks like. And then she slowly became, I don't know, warmer to the idea of just maybe we watch a couple minutes, like a couple minutes. That's what she, and now our youngest daughter says, couple minutes, couple minutes. And eventually we were able to watch the whole movie with her.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah. And now that's what, like if, if it was up to her, she would be watching that movie every Friday night during the holidays. And I mean that we can't do that for every movie because sometimes kids will just see a movie. That's just frankly inappropriate for them to see. Yeah. I mean, you can't throw on the Terminator and expect that to to go very well. I think movies and anxiety and kids like sometimes kids are exposed to movies that they shouldn't be seeing. And it does lead to anxiety because their brains can't process it. yeah But if your child, let's say they walk downstairs and you were watching a movie and you didn't know they were standing behind you or something. I remember doing that to my parents once. I can't remember what it was. It's like King Kong or something like that.
00:19:21
Speaker
and being terrified that I didn't tell them because I didn't want them to know that I was downstairs when I wasn't supposed to be. We don't want to leave them alone with their fear ever, and we don't want to just dismiss it. Like, if we just dismiss the Grinch and say, oh, don't worry, it's not real, it wouldn't be enough. And then all she learns is, well, I can't come to Mom and Dad with this fear. I got to just deal with it myself, and that makes it get worse and worse. I saw something from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield once about how they plan for like he was on the space shuttle. So plan for a launch like a rocket launch and how they research and they practice and they just do as much as they possibly can to prepare for this incredibly nerve wracking event. So much so that the only change is like the feeling of let's say the inertia on or the acceleration on their bodies.
00:20:10
Speaker
But otherwise, everything else is essentially the exact same and they know exactly how to go through the process of getting into space. I've taken that in a lot of cases where it's better to know information and prepare yourself because it makes things feel less scary.
00:20:28
Speaker
So I've taken that with our kids too, like the more information or knowledge they can acquire, it just ends up making things feel less scary to you. So that's the approach I took with The Grinch. I taught her, explained to her the whole process of making a movie and one liked The Grinch and explained all the people that were in it and showed her real pictures of all those people. And it slowly over time helps her understand and prepare her for the fact that this thing that she's watching on TV is actually not necessarily real. There's real people on real things that are happening, but it's sort of a made up story that's fun. Right. So I do want to have a caveat to that though.
Parental Guidance for Anxious Children
00:21:05
Speaker
So there's a couple of things that when we deal with anxious kids that we want to think about. Yep.
00:21:09
Speaker
So, anxious kids, and all kids, it's like Mr. Rogers, he has this cute little song, I like to be told when I do something new. And I always think about that little song from Mr. Rogers, like kids like to be told when they're doing something new. And the parent has to take the lead on that. So don't wait for your kid to be like, can you tell me more about this and this plan?
00:21:30
Speaker
Anxious kids need to know what the plan is going to be, right? And maybe it's not too far in advance because then they can get stuck on thinking about, well, what if this happens? But they do need to know the plan and we need to be the ones leading that discussion. Now, my caveat comes in is that many times the anxious kids that come to us are asking about the plan over and over and over and over and over and over.
00:21:51
Speaker
Right. And parents come to me like, I've told them the plan about a hundred times now and they want to know every single thing, like down to, you know, what color this person's going to be wearing when I get there. Right. So there can be a part where it gets too much for a kid and they want to know so many details that we can't even answer. And that's very, very, very common for anxious kids. So I just, know I'm, when you're describing that, I'm imagining the parent who has a super anxious kid who's like, I do tell them the plan, but it's never enough. Yeah, that's fair. My only experience is with our oldest or our kids and they're not highly anxious, I would say. Yeah. So I'd say, let's say easier for me to do that with them. Yeah. I'd say for the majority of kids and the majority of the time, I think that is the the right approach. Now, if your child's constantly like, keep it mommy, what about this? And you've already told them the plan. Sometimes that's just a sign that, okay, you're feeling anxious about this and and maybe
00:22:43
Speaker
We need to support them with the anxiety and some, some tools to cope and not always telling them the plan a million times. So what you might do, if your kid's older, they can write it out. They might write it in a journal. Like this is the plan. This is what we're going to do. And if they keep asking you, okay, I told you the plan, why don't you go back to your journal? The plan hasn't changed or draw pictures of the plan or something like that. Yeah, like going to the doctor. Oh, what's the doctor going to say? What are they going to do? What are they going to check me? Draw it out together and then refer your child back to the drawing. yeah Repeatedly asking questions is one of the most common signs of anxieties in kids. I was actually just going to ask that. yeah What are the main signs? So that's one of them that you have an anxious child.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah. So one of them would be repeatedly asking questions. One of them might be really big meltdowns over doing something. Well, repeatedly asking questions about a specific thing that they're worried about. Like, you know, that they're worried about you or not even necessarily, I guess. Not even. So I had a kid recently who his sister let's say, was in karate and would repeatedly ask questions about his sister going to karate. Well, when is she going? When will she be there? How long will she be gone? And the mom is like, well, you're not even going, you know? So I don't understand why am I getting so many questions about this? So we get curious. Why is he asking so many questions about karate? Okay. Well, that means that mom's gone. Okay. So what happens when mom's gone? Well, the child has a really hard time being home with the babysitter.
00:24:07
Speaker
Okay. So that's actually the issue here, right? So we want to just always getting curious. You always want to get curious or try and understand, but these recurring questions, even when you've answered it, I will say in my experience with anxious kids is one of the most common things. Okay.
00:24:22
Speaker
What are some others? Another common thing would be like avoidance. You know, I was thinking about our middle daughter who recently had like a choking incident. When she was on the highway, she choked on a ah timbit and I had to pull the van over and on the highway, which was quite scary because cars were like flying past us. I had to get her out of the car seat. Don't come mom shaming me for giving my kid a timbit. I have learned my lessons and not give them food while we're driving. yep But basically what happened after that is she didn't ever want to go on the highway again.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah. Still to this day, she, she's getting better. I went to Costco with her last night and she actually chose to go on the highway because it's faster. Yes. She did that with me the other day too. That's like only recently that she's been okay with going on the highway. Right. So for about six months, anytime we got in the car, immediate tears are we going on the highway, right? So sometimes we see anxiety come in, like trying to avoid something. Sometimes we see anxiety come out in really big meltdowns over things and we don't necessarily know what. Like a lot of times, let's say we're dropping a kid off at school, huge meltdown. That can be a sign of anxiety. Sometimes we'll see kids being really angry.
00:25:30
Speaker
Anger is one of those like hidden signs of anxiety. You think they're mad, but really they're stressed out about something. Peeing the bed at night is a really common one that we see in in children. like Repeatedly peeing the bed over and over, nightmares, unable to sleep well at night. As our kids get older, we'll often see that. Misbehavior, so and like again with the anger, it's just misdirected anxiety. It's coming out in different ways. Sometimes kids will say that they're worried. That's great. like I love when kids can actually just tell us.
00:26:00
Speaker
But a lot of the times with anxious kids, they're not just telling us. It's coming out in a lot of other ways. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, and it's funny you say all those things. Yeah. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I had every single one of those as a kid. Yeah, you probably did. so It would make sense. It would add up.
00:26:17
Speaker
Interesting. Well, we see that a lot in kids, like they'll come to the office because, well, they won't stop letting the bed and they're nine, right? Let's work on this behavior of letting the bed. And then the more we get curious, we try and understand. Is that a behavior though? Like it can be seen as behavioral. Like sometimes a doctor will be like, Oh, you should see a therapist for the bed letting to, you know, try and change that. And then we get curious and we're like, Oh, okay. Like there's nightmares and the kid.
00:26:44
Speaker
saw, you know what I'm seeing a lot these days actually in anxious kids is they saw something on YouTube that was really scary and I had that with a a little boy he saw something on YouTube and it was really terrifying for him and he wasn't supposed to be on YouTube so he didn't want to tell his parents.
00:27:01
Speaker
He was probably like nine and he started having bedwetting incidents and they like ruled out all medical stuff and the doctor's like, I think he should just see a therapist. So he saw me and we were doing a lot of like drawing out stuff and and going through stuff and many sessions in because this this little boy was so guarded.
00:27:20
Speaker
and did not want to get in trouble for watching YouTube. Fair. We got to the root of it, which was he saw something really terrifying that no kid should ever see while he was scrolling YouTube on his parents' iPad one night. Yep. And he could not get the images out of his mind and he was having nightmares every night. Makes sense. So that's why, yeah, we want to get curious and and know that sometimes we'll see a symptom and we won't necessarily know what the anxiety is. And the more we kind of unpack it, the easier it can be to to support the child.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So what other things can parents do other than the mind table to help with worry? I think specifically with worry, I mean, with all emotions, your child needs to know that you are on their team. So the biggest thing that will increase the anxiety is if there is a like a separation or a rupture in the relationship, right? So let's take this little boy, for example, his parents would often yell at him, get mad at him. He was often in trouble. So his anxiety is so much worse because he's not sure that he can actually tell his parents what's going on.
00:28:22
Speaker
Right. And so there's this kind of distance in the relationship and they can't talk it through together. And that's why eventually he saw a therapist and highly recommend therapy because then your therapist can also help you kind of restore that relationship. yeah But I would say letting your kid know you're on their team and you want to support them and you want to help them through it. That is key. And sometimes that looks like taking them to therapy and sometimes I've said to parents before, like their child was really anxious and we got to the root of it. It was because they really had no time with the parents. They were so busy. They were always rushing. The dad just wanted to watch CNN when he got home every single night from work. And that was the biggest issue because this little boy desperately wanted time with his father.
00:29:02
Speaker
And I kind of said like, I can do what I can do in therapy, but at the end of the day, this was many years ago, but at the end of the day, this anxiety is stemming from like this desire to be with you. And you would be better off spending the hour that you're coming to me going and doing something special with your son, right? And you know, in that case, that didn't happen. But I truly think if you have an anxious kid, it's time to tune back into the relationship as much as you can.
00:29:28
Speaker
and get that special quality time with them so that they can come to you and be like, the Grinch is scary or the highway is scary. Yeah. That's probably the number one thing that one of their worries is not coming to you. Yes, exactly. So we're going to eliminate the worry that you're going to get mad at them for their fears, right? Something else that we really do want to think about and like there's so much nuance here, so I'll be careful how I say it, but not allowing your kid to just avoid all things that make them anxious. Right. So for example, with the highway, I was very delicate in how I approached that, knowing that she had that choking incident. And of course that was scary, right? So of course we're drawing out what it felt like to choke on the side of the highway. We're talking about safety, right? Like you were safe. Mom was there. It felt scary. It felt scary for me too. Like I understand and like kind of talking through what happened, processing it, and then being like, we're going to try going back on the highway again. Yeah. Well, mostly because we have to, we have to, right? We can't avoid the highway forever. And if we avoided the highway immediately after that, and we're like, okay, like you're too scared to go on the highway. We won't go back on. We're telling her the highway is scary. You're right. And it's not safe to go on. And yeah we don't feel capable to take you on. So pretty soon after that we were back on the highway, but I was coaching her through taking some deep breaths. When we're on there, we would start like small little stints on the highway and slowly kind of building on that. And now.
00:30:48
Speaker
Sometimes I feel like, and I, I'm pretty sure we talked about this and in another episode, but sometimes I feel like you have to sort of push your kids a little outside of their comfort zone in order to help show them that they're capable of doing things that they don't know how to do or that they've never done before. Yeah. I think there's, or that they're, they're worried about like our oldest doing piano lessons for a couple months and already playing piano in front of the whole school. There's two pieces, right? There's helping your child with something that you know that they're capable of without like forcing them to do something that they're not ready for. yeah right right So it's it that's in knowing your own child, right? And like we knew that our child was like capable of doing this little piano performance in front of the school and that she wanted to, the motivation was there. So we encouraged her to do it. And then after she did it, then you can tell them the story of bravery, right? like You were nervous, but you still went up there and
00:31:44
Speaker
But you don't think, let's say with our middle daughter, we were to have the same exact same situation, but she's like, I don't want to do it. Do you just stop there? I don't think you necessarily stop there because I think kids will often be like, I don't want to do it. Yeah. Right.
00:31:57
Speaker
especially our more sensitive kids, but we do want to be mindful because like you'll hear stories of kids who are like, well, I was forced into this and almost in an angry way, not in a, I know you can do it and you're brave and strong way, but like you're going to do it because I said so and I paid 50 bucks for your piano lesson. and You're going to do it. You know what I mean? Like there's a very delicate difference.
00:32:17
Speaker
in the way that you approach it. So that's why i I just think there's a lot of nuance there and it's always tuning in with your own child because you might have a more sensitive kid and and a ladder.
Exposure Therapy and Overcoming Anxiety
00:32:26
Speaker
Like I always talk about a like a ladder to approach to anxiety. I used to like draw out would a ladder for the parents and be like, okay, let's even say sleep. Like separation anxiety is huge at nighttime, right?
00:32:36
Speaker
And so if your goal is to get your child to sleep in their own bed and every single night they're sleeping in your bed, you're not just going to one night throw them in their own bed and be like, Hey, I know you're capable of doing this good night, right? You're going to build tiny successes up that ladder and to the point where they can sleep in their own bed. Help to show them that they're capable of doing it. Right. That's exactly what we did with the highway. We took a lattered approach and now she can go back on the highway. But I don't just one day say, let's try for an hour on the highway.
00:33:02
Speaker
Well, let us know.
Future Topics: Adult Anxiety
00:33:03
Speaker
We talked a lot about anxiety in kids and I feel like we need to do an episode on anxiety in adults and that parts work in adults because I was just thinking about for myself. Like we talk about the different parts of who we are. And when I'm really anxious, sometimes I have to ask myself like how old is that part and where did that come from? And I think we should do an episode on that at some point. It's just like a teaser for a future episode. People let us know if you like this episode and you want to hear more about how we can do this sort of mind table-esque style of therapy. Great. Thank you for letting me therapist nerd out in this episode. This was fun.
00:33:43
Speaker
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We are glad that you are here. If you enjoyed today's episode and found it interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and a review. Scott and I actually sit down together and read them all. A five star rating helps us share our podcast and get these important messages out there. Thank you so much for listening and we can't wait to talk to you again next time.