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Secret #49: Parenting Your Anxious Child
173 Plays1 month ago
Navigating the turbulent waters of parenting an anxious child might just hold the key to fostering resilience and emotional growth in both parents and kids alike. In this episode, hosts Emma Waddington and Chris McCurry engage in a meaningful dialogue about the reality of anxiety in parenting and how it not only affects parents but also their children.
They explore the evolutionary roots of anxiety, emphasizing that it's a natural, baked-in response meant to protect us. By normalizing anxiety as part of the parenting journey, the hosts empower listeners with strategies to support children who exhibit anxious tendencies.
Their candid conversation includes practical tools like the acronym "SOBER," offering a structured approach to handling anxious moments effectively. With the importance of modeling resilience and defining family values, Emma and Chris illuminate how parents can guide their children toward greater independence and emotional well-being.
This episode is brimming with insightful strategies and compassionate advice, making it a valuable resource for any parent seeking to better understand and navigate anxiety within their family lives. Listen in to discover how embracing, rather than battling, anxiety can lead to a deeper connection with your child and a more fulfilling family dynamic.
Highlights:
- Understanding Anxiety
- Parent and Child Dynamics with Anxiety
- Temperament and Anxiety
- Influence of Social Media and Society on Anxiety
- Recognizing Problematic Anxiety
- Parental Strategies and Coping Mechanisms
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Transcript
Society's Reward for Infallibility
00:00:02
Speaker
We are all very human and fallible, and yet we live in a society that rewards pretending we're not fallible, or the range of acceptable fallibility is narrow. We are constantly comparing our insides to other people's outsides and feeling inadequate and guilty, even ashamed. Trying to blend in means parts of ourselves must disappear and we must then live in fear that we will be found out.
00:00:26
Speaker
Here, together, we will create a space where we can laugh, cry and carry our suffering and hurts lightly in the service of being deeply human. This is Life's Dirty Little Secrets.
Introduction to 'Life's Dirty Little Secrets'
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Chris McCurry. And I'm Emma Waddington.
Why Address Anxiety in Parenting?
00:00:48
Speaker
And today we're doing an episode, just Chris and i to talk about anxious parents and anxious children.
00:00:57
Speaker
We felt this is a really important conversation and topic. We know many people who are anxious. We ourselves have moments of anxiety I especially do as a parent.
00:01:10
Speaker
And we were hoping to shed some light on, you know, perhaps how we can relate to anxiety differently, how we can think about our parenting and how we can support our anxious children.
Roots of Anxiety in Modern Life
00:01:24
Speaker
perhaps we can kick off thinking firstly about what is anxiety and really how normal it is and why is it so common? Why is anxiety so common? Maybe Chris, you can kick off with that.
00:01:38
Speaker
Well, i I would start by by just going back to what you were saying a moment ago. Parenting is the most anxiety-provoking thing I've ever done in my life. It definitely is.
00:01:49
Speaker
and And will be forever. you know yeah because and Even though My child is now 30. He still it gives me lots of opportunities to be anxious about him, whether they're realistic or not.
00:02:03
Speaker
But, yeah you know, anxiety is so prevalent because we are all the descendants of the paranoid people. sort of baked into our evolution as a species because all the complacent, non-anxious people got eaten before they reached reproductive age. And so, you know, every one of our ancestors got by and survived by being a little bit paranoid. And it worked.
00:02:35
Speaker
Unfortunately, so much of society today is, well, I mean, we're recording this as Los Angeles is burning. So I can't say that, you know, we we live in an anxiety-free world. ah Obviously, we don't. There's a lot to be anxious about.
00:02:54
Speaker
And with media and social media, it just gets pushed into our faces, right? all the time. And our kids are dealing with this and there's a lot of pressure on kids.
00:03:06
Speaker
So anxiety as well as depression have increased in youth in the last couple of decades. And that's not just an artifact of being better at assessing these things and having more knowledge about them and awareness of them. ah did Things really are, you know, heating up in terms of the stress that people are under and it's showing up and in all these different ways.
00:03:30
Speaker
And that's despite the fact that we live in a safer world than we did, maybe not 20 years ago, but certainly 50 years ago. Despite that, we're still getting more and more anxious.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's an epidemic. It really is. And how do we make sense of that? How do we make sense of the fact that we are getting more and more anxious, both as parents and children?
00:03:57
Speaker
Well, I think we make sense of it in that. in terms of recognizing that there is so much to be anxious about, and that it really is part of the deal.
Parental Anxiety and Its Impact
00:04:10
Speaker
When you sign on to be a parent, we may not have read the fine print, but it was there that, you know, here's your child, here's your anxiety. think I mentioned on one of our podcasts before, it's like, you know, they don't let you leave the hospital without having the inappropriate RCD for your child. And they also hand you this bag of anxiety along with it.
00:04:30
Speaker
So I think sort of normalizing it in a sense. My father was a, what they used to call an efficiency expert and solved problems within companies. And he used to talk about the difference between problems and conditions.
00:04:46
Speaker
And he said, a problem is a situation you don't like, and you look around, you solve the problem by applying some solutions. A condition, on the other hand, is a situation you don't like, but for which there are no solutions.
00:04:59
Speaker
So the weather is a condition. The weather can cause problems, obviously, as we're seeing in LA and other parts of you know the world, climate change and what have you.
00:05:10
Speaker
But in and of itself, the weather is not something we can really solve or control very readily. And I think in some situations, anxiety is just a condition. And as I would tell my clients, you know, it's part of the deal. If you're going to be trying out for the school play, you're going to be anxious.
00:05:27
Speaker
If you're, you know, getting ready to take a big exam, if you watch your child drive off for the first time by themselves right after they got their driver's license, you're going to be very anxious.
00:05:41
Speaker
It's part of the deal. But when we start seeing anxiety as a problem per se, even though anxiety can cause problems in the sense of keeping us from doing what we need to do, i think it helps just recognize that, yeah, of course I'm anxious. I'm in a situation that would make anybody feel anxious. And so the question is, but do I cope with that?
00:06:03
Speaker
And I guess that's the
Managing Anxiety through Education
00:06:05
Speaker
piece, isn't it? That when you care about something, you will have... fears and worries. Like ah as a parent, we care deeply about our children's wellbeing and therefore we will worry for them.
00:06:19
Speaker
whether it's, you know, when they go on camp, whether it's when they're sick, whether it's when they get their driver's license. I can't bet the thought. You know, the problem is that we care about them.
00:06:31
Speaker
Otherwise, we wouldn't feel anxiety. and And I guess, like you said, that's a condition of being a parent, that we will feel anxiety for our children. And I think it gets even more complicated when our children feel anxiety themselves.
00:06:45
Speaker
Like that's even harder. contagious. It's contagious, yeah. We feel even more worried for their well-being. And with some individuals, like when we think about anxiety, we often think about temperament too.
00:07:02
Speaker
Some people are more predisposed to being anxious and any parent can turn you know spend a lot of time in our arms and those children are more predisposed to be anxious.
00:07:15
Speaker
So I think temperament is an important piece to recognize, like you said, you know, perhaps one of the conditions of our children, if they are of a temperament that they're more sensitive, may be anxiety.
00:07:28
Speaker
They will be more likely to have it. Yeah. the The shy child child with the tendency to be more withdrawn, particularly in novel situations. But we like to say that temperament is tendency, not destiny.
00:07:43
Speaker
yeah So one of the things that I like to do is educate parents and and their children about, okay, this is your temperament. This is your biological wired in personality style.
00:07:57
Speaker
And, you know, some situations in life are going to ask you to override your tendency to stretch a little bit. and And for the exuberant child, you know, that means still out a little bit and sit on your little carpet square and circle time and not bug the kid next to you.
00:08:16
Speaker
ah That's hard for some kids because of their temperament. Other kids, it's the opposite where they have to step up in situations that are making them anxious. And by recognizing our tendencies, we can see them as as they begin to appear.
00:08:31
Speaker
and we can have strategies for overriding that tendency when the situation calls for it. And I guess that's where as parents, we can support our children if they have these tendencies that you could probably see from a fairly young age. Like I'm thinking of I do think part of the reason why we are more anxious than we were is that we'd get a lot of messages about how dangerous the world is. Like social media can bombard us with these messages and that creates more anxiety in us as parents. And inadvertently, we tend to be more controlling of our children.
00:09:11
Speaker
And I wonder if that's also impacting their anxiety. So if we see our child has ah tendency to be a little bit shyer, a little bit more tentative, we may tend to want to protect them more than our more exuberant child.
00:09:26
Speaker
Right. The exuberant child, we have to admonish them not to be, you know, leaping off the, you know, the roof of the house with a sheet to see if it works as a parachute. so they get you in other ways. But one of my favorite authors is Wendy Mogul, who wrote a book called The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.
00:09:45
Speaker
And it's all about not overprotecting your child. And you know, I think kids get the message that the world is a dangerous place when we keep asking them, you know, are you feeling anxious? Or, you know, how did it go at school today? Mogul talks about interviewing for pain. You know, the child gets into the car at pickup time at the end of the school day, and the parent immediately launches into, did anybody have lunch with you today? Did anybody play with you at recess? And Giving the child the idea that you know that the world is fraught with all these you know difficult and painful and anxiety-provoking situations.
00:10:25
Speaker
I've done this myself, and of course you want to know what's going on with your child so that you can be helpful if possible, but it does send the message that there is something to be anxious about.
00:10:36
Speaker
And Lord knows there are things to be anxious about. But we just have to be careful with that information that we give to our children and that we consume ourselves. I mean, all the stuff that we get, the evening news or wherever, it's probably not very, yeah very helpful.
00:10:55
Speaker
And it's great to to think about the impact of our anxiety on our children. Like if we are concerned, so I guess it's important to distinguish when anxiety becomes problematic because anxiety is part as part of our journey as a parent.
00:11:13
Speaker
And also it'll be part of our children's journey. In fact, I can't remember the name, but there is a condition where people don't experience anxiety and they tend to not live very long. Like anxiety is important to our survival.
00:11:27
Speaker
It's and like you said, baked in. So experiencing anxiety is part of the journey. And was listening thing to conversation on a podcast recently, how, you know, there's a word for sadness and there's a word for depression, but there isn't another word for anxiety. It's all anxiety.
00:11:46
Speaker
So it's sometimes it's hard to know problematic anxiety from anxiety. Anxiety just is. And I think perhaps thinking about whether anxiety, our children's anxiety is getting in the way of their life, like they're consistently missing out on play dates or sleepovers or their anxiety is having an impact on our life.
00:12:12
Speaker
where we're having to accommodate by driving them to school and not taking us an extra hour to get to work. Or I guess it's when anxiety is making is taking up too much space in our lives or our children's life that we need to start to think about how to support our child, whether it's at home or with additional help.
00:12:34
Speaker
Sure. it's For me, it's to what extent are the anxious thoughts and feelings interfering with the child or the parent, any adult, interfering with their ability to do age-appropriate and necessary tasks?
00:12:53
Speaker
Like, you know, at some point, You know, depending on what's, you know, family traditions, most kids learn to sleep on their own. They learn to, you know, go to school and deal with everything there.
00:13:04
Speaker
you know, they go off to university, whatever it may be. And if you just have the feeling as a parent that all his peers are doing these X, y and Z things, and he's not, and he's been blaming or I'm blaming anxiety on it.
00:13:19
Speaker
then it's getting in the way. Then it becomes an impediment to living ah full values-based life.
Tools for Coping with Anxiety
00:13:25
Speaker
But I would actually disagree that we don't have more words for anxiety. In fact,
00:13:32
Speaker
I should mention to our listeners that Emma and I have some books coming out this spring, the first one being On Anxiety, which is coming out in the end of March. And in it, we do talk about a lot of different words for anxious and nervous feelings, you know, trepidation.
00:13:50
Speaker
And even came across the word fantods, which is an old word meaning a case of the willies, you know, like, ah like, whoa, you know, that, that,
00:14:02
Speaker
One look at that roller coaster gave me a case of the Phantoms. But, you know, there's shadings of anxiety. You know, there's being pensive and then there's being, you know, then it shades into fear, which is a more physiological here and now, you know, feeling of, you know,
00:14:22
Speaker
impending doom or, you know, terror or things like that. So one of the ways that we can help our kids is to, you know, give them some good vocabulary around their emotions like so that they can actually see the shades of difference between being nervous and being terrified.
00:14:42
Speaker
and I guess as parents, we need those words too. Actually, that's true. i that That part in the book is really helpful because It lists all these and some of like you said, some of the words that we wouldn't use in our day to day language, but it's important because it's more nuanced. And as parents, we can start introducing different words and not just anxiety. When, you know, the child says, i you know, I'm too scared to go to school.
00:15:10
Speaker
the parent might say, hu you know, so what's making you nervous? to get maybe get at, you know, well, we have a test today or I'm worried that nobody's going to play with me at recess. And you say, oh, okay, well, maybe we can talk about that, come up with some strategies for handling that.
00:15:30
Speaker
But the book is called Justin Case Sits with Anxiety. And Emma came up with but the the main character's name, Justin Case, which was brilliant.
00:15:44
Speaker
It's on Amazon for pre-order. Or you can order it directly from Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Yes. And actually, it's got, i think we first came up with the idea 12 years ago.
00:16:00
Speaker
I remember very well. because Yes, because it was when got long to write it
00:16:06
Speaker
I think, um yeah, it's been in the back burner since then. Because obviously, you know, both you and I work with a lot of anxiety. It's it's something that, um like you said, is baked in to being human. So knowing how to navigate it with more skill, yeah.
00:16:26
Speaker
is really important, really helpful. And as parents, it's very difficult to see our child experiencing any emotion, but especially anxiety and not one to make it better.
00:16:40
Speaker
And so this piece around anxiety Accommodation, i think, is really important and how we, as parents, can sometimes accommodate to our children's anxiety. And and a little bit of accommodation is okay. And by accommodation, we mean trying to reduce their anxiety.
00:17:00
Speaker
So we might accommodate by driving them to school if they don't want to take the bus or you know, taking a different route because they're scared of dogs.
00:17:12
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, the the two main ways that anxiety can present themselves behaviorally where things really become problematic is either avoidance of things that they need to engage in or trying to control things.
00:17:30
Speaker
that really you know can't be controlled. And so they might say, i you know i i I don't want to go to school today. Please don't let me go to school, which is both avoiding school and also trying to control the parent to get the parent to be okay with them not going to school.
00:17:48
Speaker
But you might, you know, kids might try to control peers on a play date because it makes them anxious. The uncertainty of knowing what we're going to play on the play date is anxiety provoking. So I've got the play date planned exactly how it's going to go. And then when my buddy comes over and he doesn't want to do what I want to do, then, you know, my anxiety is even more.
00:18:10
Speaker
doubled or tripled. And so I try to control him and persuade him that, you know, we need to do it my way. So if your parent is recognizing, you know, a lot of avoidance of things that the child needs do, and again, you know, not everybody has to try out for the school play or go skydiving, but, you know, just certain typical age, typical, you know necessary things kids need to do.
00:18:33
Speaker
We need to lean on them a little bit and, you know, obviously give them strategies for being successful. maybe even role play a little bit. Okay, let's role play, talking, you know, inviting another child at recess to play with you.
00:18:47
Speaker
ah If the worry is about nobody's going to play with me at recess. So we have to equip our kids with the tools to be able to manage these situations and encourage them to get out there and do that.
00:18:58
Speaker
One of my favorite quotes is from a psychologist, O.H. Maurer, who was around in the 50s, and he said, i can act my way into feeling better sooner than I can feel my way into acting better.
00:19:13
Speaker
Such a good quote. I really like that quote. And then, you know, it's when we talk about exposure therapy for phobias and things like that, you know, that's what we're talking about. It's like maybe not going off the high dive right away, but, you know, getting your toe in the water and then, you know, maybe up to your knees or whatever. But gradually...
00:19:34
Speaker
getting out there and doing the things that you need to do. And then lo and behold, you know, 99 times out of 100, it's okay. that That worked out. I didn't die.
00:19:46
Speaker
I didn't get humiliated. Maybe I can try that again. But yeah, it's tough because our brains are just like worry machines. They just crank out these stories about, you know, how terrible it's going to be. And we believe it because it's our own brain telling us.
00:20:07
Speaker
So it's a trusted source.
SOBER Strategy for Parents
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess for for our children and for ourselves, I think having clarity as to why it's important to do to have the sleepover or to, you know, go on the school bus, you know having clarity of, of you know, the bottom line, why are we doing this?
00:20:30
Speaker
Helps us to have the willingness because anxiety feels deeply uncomfortable. Yeah. It's supposed to feel deeply uncomfortable. suppose I mean, if anxiety was pleasant, we we would have died out as a species a long time ago.
00:20:44
Speaker
yeah And for some people, you know, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is like ah a great experience. That sort of like adrenaline rush for some people is, is you know, they pay good money to do that. and ah But I think for most of us, anxiety is an unpleasant, you know, emotion that we would like to avoid if at all possible. But I think you're right. I mean, orienting, you know, your child or ourselves to the bigger picture to the valued goal that we're moving toward can give us, you know, that willingness to push on through and get to the goal. and
00:21:20
Speaker
But that that's tricky. It is tricky. And I think as parents, if we're watching our child who is really upset and, for example, doesn't want to go to school, we have to manage our own anxiety about their anxiety first, don't we really? We need to...
00:21:39
Speaker
really have the eye on the kind of world we want for our kid. And if what we want for them is greater independence, um greater autonomy, then we have yeah to be willing to feel our own feelings, our own worries in the service of giving them a life that has more autonomy. but And that's a great opportunity for the parent to model you know, not so much anxiety management because we're not managing the anxiety per se. We're not trying to control it because good luck with that.
00:22:17
Speaker
But managing our response to the anxious situation. So that would be the time for the parent Take an obvious deep breath, what I call coping out loud, to be able to say, whoa, you know, you're really anxious about going to school.
Promoting Independence while Managing Anxiety
00:22:32
Speaker
I'm really anxious about you being anxious.
00:22:36
Speaker
i mean Let's think about this for a second. You know, school is really important, and you've got your friends, and they're waiting for you. And I know, you know, because we've talked about this, that five minutes after you're there, everything's fine, so let's head toward the door.
00:22:52
Speaker
But you're being you know compassionate and you're validating their emotion and you're maybe giving them a little nuanced vocabulary while you're moving them in the direction of growth.
00:23:03
Speaker
But it is an opportunity for the parent to cope out loud and say, yeah, you know, this is really uncomfortable and we have things we need to do. And what's the acronym we have in the book, don't we, at the end?
00:23:18
Speaker
To help parents cope. Sober, yeah. where we help parents to really anchor in the moment. So talk us through the acronym.
00:23:29
Speaker
How do we sober? The acronym is SOBER, and it was developed by a psychologist, Alan Marlatt, here at the University of Washington in Seattle. And the S, it's S-O-B-E-R, and the S stands for STOP.
00:23:45
Speaker
So you're confronted with the challenging a situation. You're feeling panicky. You're about to react as opposed to respond to the situation. So you stop just for a second.
00:23:57
Speaker
The O is observe. Observe what's going on. What's going on with my child right now? Okay, he's really anxious. What's going on with me right now? I'm starting to get anxious. I'm starting to time travel. I'm starting to think, how's he ever going to go off to university on his own? And if he can't, like, go to second grade, B is breathe. You take a deep breath.
00:24:20
Speaker
So you've already kind of stepped back a little bit by doing the observing thing. So you're getting a little distance from the emotions. They're still there, but you're a little okay. You take that deep breath, it buys you a little time. And then the E is expand.
00:24:36
Speaker
and the expand is there because when we get stressed out, we tend to go do what I call the tube view, where we get this narrow focus. It's like, um my gosh, my child is really anxious right now. I'm really anxious. I want to just terminate both our anxious states. I'm going to let him like stay home from school, which would feel great.
00:24:56
Speaker
That's what we call negative reinforcement because I've just reinforced both of our behaviors, his leading and my giving in. That's probably not the wisest choice. But so when we expand, we get away from this two view to say, OK, what's the bigger picture here?
00:25:12
Speaker
okay yes, we're all feeling anxious and we got to get this kid to school. And so the R is respond. So we respond to the situation, you know, which is a little different from reacting. It's a little more, probably no less, you know, anxious, certainly, because that's not going to go away anytime soon. It may not even be very calm. I think calm is overrated.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah. And it's invalidating if you're too calm when you say, I understand you're upset. You know, it's like you have to be able to go, whoa, I can see you're really anxious.
00:25:48
Speaker
We've got to get to school, you know. so you put a little affect behind it and it it lets the person know that you you get it at a real, you know, visceral level.
00:26:00
Speaker
So you stop, you observe what's going on, you take that deep breath, you expand, or if things are getting too crazy and you're worried about him going out to university in like 12 years, you kind of kind of contract, you bring it in but contract messes up the acronym, so I left it out.
00:26:17
Speaker
And then you respond. And very often your first best response is some sort of validation where you play the child back in some you know meaningful way saying, I get it, you're feeling X, you want to do why you need to do what are we going to do? so You know, you so then you do a little parental Aikido and you try to like move the child in the, you know, good direction.
00:26:43
Speaker
And, you know, and some days you just say, fine, we're not going to school today. You know, we'll just sit here and, you know, enjoy ourselves. and But tomorrow we're going. But that's a tricky trap. And tomorrow is going to be another another the painful day.
00:26:57
Speaker
But, you know, i I don't blame parents if they, you know, just cave because it's hard. and Kids can be relentless. I think, yeah, lots of compassion for parents who have to navigate these challenging moments, but that's a brilliant acronym.
00:27:14
Speaker
um And I know that we go through that really carefully in the book um because it is so important for parents to know how to regulate their own emotions because they will be triggered um and feel quite distressed as we should do.
00:27:31
Speaker
We should feel distressed when our children feel distressed. It's Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, good parents are going to resonate with how their child is feeling. It's part of, think, what makes human connection possible.
00:27:48
Speaker
ah You mentioned before that some parents don't get anxious about their kids, but those aren't particularly good parents. in my opinion. But, you know, this does get to, you know, resilience and parent resilience and self-care and all that sort of thing.
00:28:04
Speaker
And I'm sure I've mentioned this before that my favorite definition of resilience is struggling well. Yes. Which again goes back to the idea of, you know, so this is a condition.
Balancing Long-term Values and Immediate Pressures
00:28:15
Speaker
This is part of the deal.
00:28:16
Speaker
And struggling is part of family life. And, you know, I used to say, if having problems as a family is a problem, you have a big problem.
00:28:29
Speaker
This family life is full of problems. Like almost every day there's a problem to be solved or a condition to be, you know, ah coped with. That's exhausting. it is exhausting. And that's why having clarity on what's important helps.
00:28:44
Speaker
Like knowing, for example, that, you know, we want our child to have an education. or we want them to have active social life, or we want to have, yeah know, we want to pursue a career or we want to,
00:29:02
Speaker
you know develop, I don't know, run a marathon, whatever it might be, that we have clarity on those pieces that are really important will help us navigate some of this sort of stormy weather. Because in the moment, it can be really difficult not to be reactive, like you were saying, and be responsive. Like it takes a lot of skill to keep your eye on what truly matters in that moment.
00:29:26
Speaker
And being a parent I remember you saying to me very early on and sort of after I had graduated that it's not about being your kid's best friend.
00:29:38
Speaker
Like there are many moments as a parent that we have to make difficult decisions and that what we say and what we do may not make them happy. It may not be the thing they want. may infuriate them.
00:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, fairly regularly. and i hate you I hate you. Oh, gosh. um Yeah. In writing. and Of late, I've been getting it in writing just to make it more.
00:30:06
Speaker
Well, my son used to say, you know, I'm going to be picking your nursing home. That is quite dark. It's chilling. Yeah. I think it's, it is. I think it's important because of course we want our children to like us all the time.
00:30:22
Speaker
Ideally love us all the time, but that isn't, doesn't come with, you know, the journey of a parent. The journey of the parent means that, you know, our child will dislike us. And that may be the most important thing we need to do in the moment, even if they're really unhappy.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, but like you said, its it's in the context of having clarity, you know, and if there's multiple parents, you know, parenting partners whatever, to make sure that there's good communication around these things.
00:30:54
Speaker
What is important to us as a family? What are sort of our bottom line expectations and values? And how do we do that? And again, you know, you wouldn't do this with three-year-old, but with 14-year-old, you might have some discussion around this and say, okay, how are we going to do this? You want to do X?
00:31:11
Speaker
I need you to do Y, know, let's negotiate. And that's an important life skill and an opportunity to model communication and to help the child develop some skills around give and take and you compromising and, you know, keeping an eye on, you know, the valued goals at the same time and not just reacting to what would feel good in the moment.
00:31:37
Speaker
to help them navigate their anxiety too. Like if I think of our, just going back to the workbook and how we can teach them certain language, the different words for anxiety, but also to recognize that anxiety is often stories, stories that we have, be it as parents or be it our children about a situation.
00:32:00
Speaker
Or ideas. And I really like that concept, the concept of an idea and whether that idea is useful or not in the service of that bigger picture that we were just talking about.
00:32:12
Speaker
And i guess even as parents, this idea that our children need to like us all the time. How useful is that in the service of, you know, getting them to school or getting them to do chores, which is a big part of my day to day.
00:32:31
Speaker
you know, they don't want to do it and they're not particularly happy, but I think it's really important for them to learn about responsibility. That doesn't go without a few battles.
00:32:43
Speaker
No, of course not. But again, it's in the context of your value of saying, by my children are going to learn responsibility and thoughtfulness.
00:32:54
Speaker
They're going to do it through chores, because that's one of the best ways to contribute to the family. It's true. It is true that giving our kids, supporting our kids and to grow and develop in ways that we think are important requires us being comfortable with difficult feelings, both our own and theirs, in the service of what's but's really important. And I think anxiety comes into it because sometimes they have to do things that give them lot of anxiety.
00:33:28
Speaker
Like you were saying, sitting tests, going to school, um peers having to go to to, because as they get older, their anxieties can be around their friendships.
00:33:40
Speaker
It's tricky. And this is perhaps another conversation. i remember the quote from the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who said, the most important influence on the life of a child is the life his parent never led.
00:33:55
Speaker
So is it is are we pushing our child into, you know, football or the school play or getting their Eagle Scout thing because it's best for them or it's because it's like, you know, they're living out our fantasy or our ideas and what their life should be. That's so ah whole nother topic. But it's It's just, you know, it's one of those tricky things about being a parent that you have to keep your eye on all of these these stories and these ideas that we have and not to take them too seriously, particularly if they're not working out very well in the life of the family. good point.
00:34:36
Speaker
Such a good point because we are this environment, what you said at the beginning, that, you know, there's a lot of anxiety out there that our children need to be successful.
00:34:47
Speaker
you know, this overachievement culture you know this toxic striving, and we're going to have a conversation about that on the podcast, is a problem for us as parents and for our children, that we fear that they're not going to have the success that they should have and they need to have. And that means that we can push them in directions that maybe they don't need to go.
00:35:11
Speaker
and that maybe anxiety is coming from their inability to do the things as opposed to their fear about doing things. Like sometimes I wonder,
00:35:23
Speaker
If, you know, as parents, when our children are anxious, it's because they don't have the coping skills that they need or it's not yeah appropriate for them.
00:35:35
Speaker
I do think our expectations are going up of our children. I remember talking about that with Debbie Sorensen that, you know, when I hear parents taking their three-year-olds to five sessions of football a week and then they wonder why the kid is feeling overwhelmed. Yeah.
00:35:51
Speaker
I'm thinking because they're going to football five times a week. Why would you do that to yourself, let alone to your child? But I do think we have to be constantly on the lookout for our expectations of ourselves and our children because those have skyrocketed.
00:36:10
Speaker
we need to take a step back. Yeah, I think so too. And that's not that's not anxiety per se. That might just be that developmentally it's not appropriate. Or that it doesn't match the child's temperament.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, so true. And that's where knowing our kids and knowing ourselves is important. Being really attuned. yeah And that's what we learn as parents. But keeping an eye on things, like holding things lightly, like you just said, Chris, is very important. like Don't take our thoughts too seriously.
00:36:42
Speaker
Our ideas too seriously. Keeping an eye on how things are really working. Yeah. To be curious, to, you know, just say I wonder if that's true.
00:36:54
Speaker
How can I find out? And, you know, we usually find out but by engaging rather than, you know, trying to figure it
Recognizing and Managing Anxiety as a Life Skill
00:37:01
Speaker
out ahead of time. You know, i I could act my way into feeling better sooner that I can feel or think my way into acting better.
00:37:08
Speaker
Really helpful. So I think we've done a brilliant job of, may I say? please. Yeah. um Of talking about parental anxiety and childhood anxiety. And obviously i I've learned so much about this from you, Chris, and your years of experience. And I've really enjoyed writing the workbook, Just In Case, Sits With Anxiety.
00:37:32
Speaker
um And the the two more that are coming out, one on sadness and one on anger, which will be coming out in May and July, respectively. So we'll have all that in the show notes.
00:37:46
Speaker
Brilliant. and Yeah, because anxiety sometimes can show up as anger. We can get, you know, quite angry. Certainly oppositional behavior because, you know child doesn't, you know, it's fight or flight. So, you know, they're going to fight you on going to school or they're going to like run off and hide under the bed or whatever. But yeah, it can show up as attention concentration problems because they're in their head worrying about something and they're not paying attention to you or the teacher or whatever.
00:38:13
Speaker
There's a lot of what we call comorbidity between ADHD and anxiety because they all come from basically the same part of the brain, which is central to attention allocation.
00:38:25
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of ways anxiety can present itself. So looking at the child's behavior patterns and how much fight or flight control trolller avoidance is going on and how much is that impacting the child's development and having a good life.
00:38:43
Speaker
And our own. Right. And our own. Because as parents, it will influence us immensely. Wonderful. Any parting final thoughts? This my turn to say it. Just keep breathing.
00:38:55
Speaker
You know, it's ah anxiety is a fact of life and it's a fact of many important situations if we're living, you know, an interesting life and it needn't get in the way if we can handle it well and keep our eye on the prize.
00:39:14
Speaker
Beautiful. So true. It needn't be the boss of us. Love that. All right. Well, yeah thank you, Emma. This was a lot of fun. It really was.
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00:39:24
Speaker
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00:39:28
Speaker
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