HELPING CHILDREN MANAGE ANXIETY AND NEW BEGINNINGS
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ASPIRE - LEARN - FLOURISH
The Aspire Learning Federation is made up of two schools - Elm Park Primary School and R J Mitchell Primary School in the London Borough of Havering.
Aims
➔ Understanding anxiety
- Fight/Flight/Freeze response
- What is physically going on in the brain and body
- Separation anxiety / New Beginnings / Transitions
➔ Strategies To become more equipped and empowered with tools and strategies to regulate and relate to children when they are feeling anxious or struggling with a transition
Learning to Manage Anxiety
We want to be able to take the anxiety away quickly because we love our child and don’t want to see them in distress.
When our children experience anxiety, it gives us the opportunity to teach them how to manage when life is hard, when they face a new change, or when they need to do something without us!
We can show children that we can manage our tough feelings with love, compassion and tenderness for ourselves and others, and they can carry this with them for the rest of their lives.
Learning to manage anxiety and what is happening in our bodies when we are anxious is incredibly empowering and resilience building as many of us face inevitable anxiety in our lives.
Fear
The emotion driving anxiety is FEAR.
Fear may be present because of past difficult experiences, imagined consequences, low self esteem, low confidence.
When our brain perceives fear, it presumes we are in DANGER. The cave person part of our brain becomes activated and we go into survival mode.
Fight / Flight / Freeze
This is a reflex from when we were cave people and needed to protect ourselves and our young from wild animals; to survive we either needed to fight the animal, freeze so that they didn’t see us, or run away (flight) as fast as we could.
It is very strong and imprinted into our brains because it helped us survive as a species.
In order to be able to do this, our brain sends adrenaline surging through our body and we then experience the following sensations, which are all symptoms of anxiety.
Even though we aren’t in physical danger, the body acts as if we are.
- Your heart pumps more blood around your body (so you have strength to fight or run away). This can cause chest pains, a feeling of it being difficult to breathe normally and a raised heart rate.
- Blood flows quickly to your legs and arms (to help you run/fight) - this can cause an unpleasant tingly or ‘out of body’ sensation
- You feel stuck but still revved up (as if you’re ‘freezing’ but still alert)
- Cold and sweaty hands and feet (because of all the blood in our muscles)
- Sweating
- Butterflies in your stomach, stomach ache, nausea, diarrhoea, urinating (because blood is diverted away from the digestive system and into our muscles)
- Blood rushing around your body making your skin blotchy
- Goose bumps
- Feeling a sense of dread
What else happens?
- The ‘logical left’ side of our brain, the parts responsible for speaking and memory, the cognitive processing etc. all ‘go offline’ so our brain can focus on surviving the perceived danger.
- Therefore, it is really important with anxiety to remember that first things first, a child needs support with calming down their fight, flight or freeze response and telling the brain that there is no immediate danger.
- Then and only then, a child is able to think more clearly and the physical responses above ease off.
Strategies for the initial calm down
To surge adrenaline around the body and cause an anxious response, we breathe in much more than we breathe out. Therefore, focusing on long exhales acts as a ‘reset’ button for the brain.
Talking through anxious feelings EMPATHY
- Feeling deeply understood
- Naming emotions physically calms the brain’s emotional processing down
- Making guesses about what your child is deeply worried about will help build their emotional vocabulary, understanding and problem solving skills
- Children need support with understanding how the world works and what would happen if their worst case scenario were to happen
- Most anxieties are about belonging and safety. If we can reassure children that no situation or event affects how loved and safe they are then children can face challenges with more resilience and ability to manage the nerves and anxiety which come up.
- Being empowered with the knowledge of their body responses helps to calm children down quicker but takes time, practice and patience.
Regulate. Relate. Reason.
Connect THEN Redirect
Something to hold in mind...
Being truly empathic not only means relating to others, but to ourselves… the parts of ourselves which have been overwhelmed, scared, lonely, out of control. Or, if we haven’t or can’t remember what it’s like to feel what our child is feeling… then we relate to our capacity to feel that if we were in their situation…
This can be really hard! (But, we need it!)
Other things we can say or do instead of “don’t worry”
Calming down the fight/flight/freeze response…
- Breathing
- Grounding
- Relaxing muscles
Empathy when flooded with emotions…
- “That sounds really hard”
- Just being there / cuddles -
- “I’d feel like that too” - “I know…”
- - CONNECT then REDIRECT / Regulate. Relate. Reason.
Things we can say/ask
- I get scared too sometimes, especially when I am doing something new. But I don’t stay scared forever.
- Can you tell me what you are most worried about?
- Can we paint/draw/make it?
- Can you show me what it feels/sounds like?
- What kind of weather does it feel like?
- What do you need from me? How can I help you?
- Big feelings are like the rain, they come and make us wet but they do go away and we dry out.
Things we can do
- Take some big deep breaths together
- Have a comforting hot drink
- Just sit together and have a cuddle
- Kids don’t say ‘I’ve had a hard day, can we chat?”, they say “Please can you play with me?” and this is how they best communicate their worries and hopes.
- Art work/drawing/colouring/play doh
Zones of Regulation
This is used throughout the school to help children identify their emotions and what they may need.
Using this at home too may support them to express any anxieties which can then be dealt with in a familiar way.
Similarities between home and school can help ease transitions.
Transitions
Tips and strategies for easing the transition
- Visual timetables for the school day and time at home. What will goodbyes look like?
- Model talking enthusiastically about what will be different (having mass in church, roof top playground, play equipment, French, trips, art room, music room) whilst also naming and acknowledging concerns/worries
- Worry jar - a place to put questions and uncertainties to externalise outside of the head/body - Discuss your children’s ‘worst fears’ about change to alleviate any anxieties that can be.
- Encourage questions, but know that it is okay to say “I don’t know” in response. You can offer empathy for how hard it is to not know something.
- Make a book of questions with their answers so your child can revisit it rather than seeking constant reassurance from you (this builds self regulation and resilience).
- Having a calm and measured approach to the transition helps build resilience. Resilience only builds in moments of tension!
Separation Anxiety
Tips and strategies for easing separation anxiety
- Plan and practice goodbyes as well as your reunions.
- Let children know you’re thinking of them
- Avoid colluding with the anxiety that your child will not be okay without you. - Talk through your child’s worst case scenarios
- think about life jacket metaphors or resources they have ‘in their pockets’
- Tangible reminders of connection
- create them together as special quality time
- ‘The Invisible String’, ‘The Kissing Hand’ books
- Address behaviours in a pro-active way e.g. if you know they’ll be anxious at bedtime, let them know you’ll go in to check in on them before they need to ask. This shows your child they are held in mind.
Helpful resources
- Happy, Healthy Minds - The School of Life
- An Emotional Menagerie - The School of Life ○ A book of poetry for KS2 age children to help develop emotional vocabulary
- The Whole-Brain Child - Dr Daniel Siegel and Dr Tina Payne Bryson
- What To Do When You’re Scared and Worried: A Guide for Kids - James J Christ
- Anxiety is Really Strange - Steve Haines ○ For parents to understand anxiety more, easy to digest comic strip style book
- YouTube video - ‘The Triune Brain’ as explained by kids ○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVhWwciaqOE
- The Invisible String - Patrice Karst ○ For separation anxiety
