Anxious Families

“Why is my child so anxious?”  It is an impossible question to answer.  While parents often want to assign blame to biology, personality of their child, bullies, our increasingly anti-social society or any other number of factors, in reality the question they are asking is based in fear.  “Is it my fault?”  The answers to why this is happening is always complicated and most often irrelevant.  It is likely a combination of many of those things.   Anxiety just is what it is.

I have been asked to present this weekend to the Parent Group at the Head Start Program in Sturgeon County.  These are parents of preschool aged children, some of them struggling with anxious children.  So for the past few weeks I have been thinking about how I should answer such a difficult question and more importantly what I can say to them that will help.

In my experience, supporting every anxious child is an anxious family.  This is because anxiety is contagious.  Anxious parents make anxious kids and anxious kids make for anxious parents.  It is as circular as the old chicken or egg debate.  Who introduced the contagious element to the family matters no more than who first brought in a flu bug.  When it is there you have no choice but to deal with it.

Sadly, parents often feel blamed for their child’s anxiety.  They are given contradictory advice.  Parents are told to be softer on their kids or be more firm.  They are told to ignore their children’s emotions or that they should talk to them about their feelings  more.  No wonder they are anxious.  Let me be perfectly clear.  It is nobody’s fault but every family member has a role in the solution.

As strange as it may seem, anxiety is really not the enemy.  You can’t ever completely rid it from your home.  Nor do you want to.  Anxiety is a good thing.  Like stress, it brings with it a heightened sense of danger, excitement and life.  It warns us of potential trouble but also motivates us to act.  People who embrace anxiety are more successful because they take chances.  They live life to the fullest.  They enjoy the adrenaline and rush of pride and accomplishment that happens when you overcome the anxiety of a situation.  After all, the most stressful and anxiety evoking times are also the ones we value the most in our lives when they go well:  births, weddings, graduations and holidays.

The real enemy is fear: fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of humiliation, fear of the unknown and fear of loss.   When anxiety turns to fear, we avoid it at all costs.  Some people avoid school, public places, social situations, sports, friends, family, people in general, new things and anything else you can imagine. When we are afraid we seek safety and security.  Children look to their parents to protect them and parents oblige for fear of their children’s emotions.  Fear is an ugly beast.

Anxiety is a future oriented emotion.  We worry about things in the present that are not yet here.   So in many ways it is our imagination that we are battling and the fear of “what if?”  So the advice I have for parents is this: if you have children struggling with anxiety make sure your own anxiety is being dealt with first.  You are the greatest role model in your child’s life.  If you need help, get it.  Your child will learn the importance of reaching out.  Second, help your whole family be mindful of the present rather than spending their time in the future.  We only have control of the here and now.