Over the last few posts we’ve been looking over the subject of anxiety in kids, particularly in light of the tragic suicide of comedian, Robin Williams. I’ve been sharing a few things I learnt from the Friends for Life program when I was doing school chaplaincy. One thing that I learnt was that kids need help dealing with anxiety so that it doesn’t develop into more serious health problems later in life. To help remember the most important elements of the course, each letter of the word ‘friend’ was used in an acronym.
Kids need to hear that their body is their friend and to listen to its important messages, so we began with “F” for feelings of anxiety. “R” for practicing daily relaxation was the second skill we looked at to relieve tension. “I” was for addressing negative self talk with “I can do it” thoughts. Today, we are going to look at “E” for explore options. By the way, this will be the last post on the acronym as the remaining letters, while important are less significant in my opinion. The power of the program really lies in the first four letters. But very quickly for those who love completeness the others are as follows:
“N” is for “Now Reward Yourself” – which places emphasis on doing simple things to encourage yourself when you’ve handled anxiety well or achieved something new that bothered you. Kids need encouragement and appreciate small rewards; but note they don’t have to be money or sugar candy or huge gifts! We don’t want the kids just doing things just to get rewards. Intrinsic rewards of feeling good in yourself maybe enough.
“D” is for “Now Do It” – a reminder to practice the FRIEND program daily in all kinds of situations, big and little. It’s easy to slip back into your mind’s habits of being negative.
“S” is for “Smile” – always a good idea. Let yourself talk be reflected in your body language. Try it; I think laughter is a good antidote for worry as well. Try and talk yourself around to seeing humour in all kinds of unexpected places and moments.
Anxiety can stem from unwillingness to compromise. Children (and adults) may only be able to see one way to solving a problem: “I have to make the school project right now or it won’t be ready! I don’t care if we have to go out!”
So the child is feeling uptight and cranky, heart is racing, voice is raised…they are feeling anxious. Why? Because the school project needs to be completed and they can’t see when it will get done. The family outing is in the way, so it becomes a battle line.
First we as parents need to acknowledge the stress, the feeling of worry and help our child to see why they are feeling the way they are. Next, get them to breathe and relax for a moment. Harder said than done right?! It does take practice. But we need to take the heat out of this situation and quickly get to a point where we can work up options and steps for getting the project done. They can do it, but they’ll need help turning it into something manageable, one piece at a time.
Sometimes a project will feel like a huge mountain and it will be too big to deal with in one go. So we need to help them explore options and break it into steps, allocating some time during the week, so each step can be completed. Take a look at the steps below:
[caption id="attachment_318" align="aligncenter" width="584" caption="A coping step plan for writing a school talk"]
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In the sketch we have an example of a child needing to write a school talk to present in front of the class. It’s worrying them and feeling a bit too big. So we can help them by breaking it down into manageable chunks. First step is research, then writing and composing, followed by some practice in front of the mirror and mum and dad. Finally the child is ready to do the talk in front of the class. Just having the coping step plan can help take worry out as we can see how the new challenge will be tackled in pieces. Once we overcome one fear like this, we can see how to apply this approach to other tasks and worries.
Further information about Friends for Life can be found at:
