in this video you're going to learn how to teach your kids coping skills for anxiety
you'll learn how to coach your child through anxiety help them overcome it we'll talk
about the skills to break tasks down into steps that they can accomplish and then
feel super proud of themselves as they grow and develop an internal sense of resilience
and I'm going to give a bunch of examples of how I coached kids to overcome their anxiety [Music]
thank you
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okay back to the video okay so just to summarize in the first video of this series we talked about
the foundation of your Greenhouse which is your mindset right you can model for your kids that
it's okay to feel anxiety but we can choose our actions and in the second video we talked about
creating a safe environment for your kid to face their fears and how the number one most important
thing is to create emotional safety for them so this is like the plastic cover on a greenhouse it
provides warmth while the plants grow and face challenges and you do this by connecting with
them as they go through their fears not shaming them not trying to change how they're feeling
or protect them from those feelings connecting with your child is the ultimate form of safety
as you demonstrate to them that they can handle challenges now in this video we'll take it to the
next step you'll learn how to help your child grow through anxiety okay so let's stick with
the greenhouse analogy for a while remember the goal of the greenhouse it's not just to
keep plants safe and our goal as parents isn't just to prevent our kids from feeling anxiety
the goal of the greenhouse is to help plants to grow up to be functional healthy and productive
on the outside and the way gardeners do this is by creating safety for plants from extreme
temperatures in the short term while building plants strength in the long run now if plants
grow up in an environment that's too safe like if there's no wind then they become leggy they grow
long and taller thin and they seem to grow fast but in reality they are very fragile they just
they won't function well on the outside so when they go outside of the greenhouse a little bit of
wind and their stocks will break so instead the gardeners in a nursery gradually introduce more
and more challenges to plants as they grow to help them be ready to live outside and this is called
hardening off so they use fans to constantly force the plants to grow stronger the wind helps
the stocks grow thicker and more resilient and they let the greenhouse get gradually colder to
strengthen the stems and leaves and then they'll separate that plant from other plants and repot
it so that it can stand on its own and they'll you know eventually decrease the humidity so that the
plant can go longer and longer between waterings and then finally they gradually start putting the
plants outside initially for short periods and then for longer and longer periods which helps
the plant adjust to you know bright Sun cold dark nights and hot days eventually the plants have
grown strong and tall and they're ready to thrive when they're transplanted into the outdoor Garden
so the same thing goes when we're parenting a child with anxiety the goal is to structure tasks
around growth and there are four main steps to coaching our children through anxiety and helping
them develop copied skills number one connect with them emotionally so this means to validate without
judging them or the feeling and we talked about that in the last video number two is to break the
task down into baby baby steps number three is to help them practice the skill and then number four
is to give them plenty of attention when they face a fear so now I'm going to teach you all
about how to break tasks down into baby steps and as we do that there's four keys to this key
number one is the best accommodations help people accomplish the task not Escape it so for example
if your child has test anxiety instead of asking for accommodations to avoid tests help them learn
the skills to take tests and to manage their fears around failure right so it's really important as a
parent to learn how to break these tasks down into small baby steps now we often assume that they
already know how to do whatever challenge they're facing or they're just being dramatic or trying to
get out of something but often they just don't know what to expect and they don't have simple
skills to manage the situation so we're going to go into a lot of detail on how to do that number
two is to structure tasks so that children spend more time in the Learning Zone now we don't want
our kids to get stuck in their comfort zone where they're avoiding difficulties as this can make
them less resilient over time but we also don't want them to get thrown into tasks that are too
big for them to handle all at once and that can lead to feeling like overwhelmed and panicked
now it's not the getting overwhelmed or panicky occasionally is going to harm them in the long run
but it simply doesn't help them learn and be more resilient okay key number three it's totally okay
to feel nervous while doing something new it's actually great because it primes your brain to
learn when your child feels nervous but succeeds at facing their fears her brain is more plastic
and rewires to believe that she is capable and then her anxiety decreases over time so
your Mantra here is it's okay to feel scared or anxious or nervous but we can choose our actions
and then number four is practice and repetition is key don't move on to the next step until they
mastered the first one and it's starting to get a bit boring for them so sometimes they'll learn the
skill really quickly and with some tasks it might take a lot of slow repetitions okay so those are
the Four Keys now we're going to go into how we can break down big tasks into tiny skills for your
child to practice so I'm going to do a little bit of an overview and then we'll do a couple of uh
examples so how do we break tests down one of the ways is watching examples of other people doing it
another way is to do pretend play with characters doing it another way is to do like imagination so
let's say it's like flying on an airplane right it's kind of hard to practice like going in and
sitting on an airplane when you're not actually taking a trip so instead you write a script where
you imagine yourself flying on an airplane and you imagine yourself calming yourself download flying
and you imagine yourself making space for those uncomfortable feelings and you imagine yourself
watching a movie and you imagine yourself getting off the airplane and feeling like okay I did that
good job me right so you do imaginal exposure this is all all these things I'm teaching you is
part of what's called an exposure hierarchy where you start with really tiny exposures and then you
gradually build up to bigger exposures so that's where imaginal exposure fits in okay another way
to break tasks down is to just practice the skills in their tiniest form so that you build competence
right you break the test down into very small steps or you can also decrease the duration
or the intensity of a task so for example if you're afraid of getting a vaccine you might
just practice having your arm worked with an alcohol swab over and over and over again until
that is just so boring for you right you practice that and practice that and practice that until
it's boring or you decrease the duration of a task that means um if you're scared of dogs you might
say you know what I'm gonna go sit in a room with my aunts loving kind Labrador who just sleeps and
I'm gonna go sit in that room for one one minute and then I'll leave and then I'll come back later
and sit in that room for two minutes right we're not asking someone to start off by spending an
entire day with a very loud barking dog so that's another way we decrease the intensity of a task
another way we can decrease the intensity of a task is like using a smaller dock using
um watching videos of people uh being around dogs things like that right so you just break these
tests down you get really creative you break these tasks down uh into really small steps
another thing you can do is add in support to accomplish tasks um and don't use this don't
build in escapes or distractions right so don't say you can pet the dog while you're watching a
screen because they're actually not getting that exposure they're distracting themselves from that
exposure instead we're going to add in support so like I will sit next to you while you pet the dog
I will hold your hand while you look at that dog through a window these are all really small ways
to face that fear of dogs here's another example um you tell your kid I know you feel nervous to
talk in front of Class by yourself what if you did it with a partner the first time or what if I hold
your hand while you give your first uh lesson in church or something like that right they're
still facing that scary task but they can do it with support for a while and then eventually they
can do the entire task on their own so that's just kind of the overview of how we break tasks
down into tiny little steps and this takes some creativity because as adults we've forgotten how
much we know that's helping us actually accomplish this task now remember you and your child can
learn the skill of facing Fierce it's a skill that can be learned but it may take practice with
one of my daughters we have literally practiced it hundreds of times for various situations but
she's totally becoming more and more competent with time so practice each tiny skill over and
over again until it's easy until it's boring until it's kind of slipping into that comfort zone just
pay close attention to what zone your child is in and when the task gets like really easy really
boring then you can consider taking it up a notch okay so let's go through some examples of how you
could practice these steps okay in this first example is from my life okay so once when I had
a newborn and a three-year-old we went to free day at the Museum and it was packed it was super
crowded and as we tucked the elevator to the fifth floor I'm like navigating all the people and I'm
getting a stroller with the baby out and before I know it the doors closed on the elevators with my
three-year-old in it and it went straight down and I did not know which floor it stopped on um and I
didn't know where she got out where to find her so obviously this is scary for both of us now we were
reunited in about five minutes but like yes this was scary and um my daughter never wanted to ride
in an elevator again she would literally like cry and scream if we saw one and she always wanted to
just take the stairs or avoid buildings that had elevators like all together so let me give you
an example of some of the baby steps we practice together we started by just looking at pictures of
elevators and talking about elevators and we talk about elevators and we talk about the time she
got separated but we'd also talk about elevators in like a positive light like oh elevators go to
the top of this building our elevators help food carts get up hospitals things like that
um we played elevators with her toy characters and then when we were getting ready to go to the
library which has an elevator I thought oh this would be a good chance to practice riding in
an elevator so I predicted it for her I told her beforehand everything that we would do and what to
expect right so I said oh we're gonna be going to the library we're gonna have a chance to ride the
elevator I'll let you push the button I'll hold your hand etc etc and then then we predicted it
before we even went to the library then when we were ready we went to the library and I added in
support while doing the task so we tried initially riding the elevator while I carried her right like
the ultimate form of support and then I gradually removed this support right we try it also did two
hands and I'm constantly checking in with her to see if she's in the growth Zone to see if she's
doing well and we're like talking we're engaging and I'm trying to smile and laugh and show her
how safe it is right then we tried it while holding uh one hand a few times and each time
I'm like wow you were so nervous but you did it anyway I'm so proud of you great job right like
lots of Praise then we did it without holding a hand and now she is not afraid of elevators
anymore now what do you think would have happened if instead I would have been like oh no we don't
have to take elevators we can take stairs for the rest of your life we should be more afraid we're
less afraid of elevators like definitely more afraid okay let's do another example um let's
use an example of a third grader who's afraid of presenting in class he gets like really terrified
he used to like school but now every day he says like I don't want to go to school and he says he
has a stomachache and he probably literally does have a stomachache so his parents are like really
worried like what's going on how they want to know how can his parents and teacher help him
now as parents your instinct is to ask the teacher to not make him present in class but
resist that urge right instead help him rise to the occasion so the first step obviously is to
show him empathy say yeah that makes sense to feel anxious or it's really hard for a lot of people to
present in public or I felt like that too when I was a kid but we'll help you right you can do this
we're here for you and then let's break the task down so here's a few ways you can help him develop
the ability to overcome those fears so first let's have him watch other kids do it and make
some observations right and if he does a lot of the chance to do that in his own class you could
ask the teacher or other classes if he could watch other kids doing presentations or you could watch
some YouTube videos of kids doing presentations or you know teaching how to give a presentation and
then you could practice giving a presentation at home in front of parents and again you might have
to break this down into Tiny Tiny Steps like what to put on the board where to put your hands things
like that practice in his actual classroom without students um or have been practiced with just the
teacher there um if he's afraid of speaking in class he and the teacher and you could arrange
for the teacher to ask him a question that he already knows the answer to right they arrange
ahead of time the answer to this question is six and the teacher says Billy what's the answer to
this question and he's like six right so you just get to experience speaking in front of the class
and then remember what you're practicing isn't necessarily the like perfect presentation it's
actually practicing tolerating a big emotion and saying it's okay to feel that like look
you handled feeling anxious and you did the presentation anyway okay so you could
also choose to add in some support like having a parent or a peer or an aide sit up there with him
now it's really important to give them tons of attention which is you know your child's
currency this is what children thrive on because their parents noticing that
when they chase their fear so give them a lot of attention when they face their fears highlighted
the way the brain works is that what you pay attention to you get more of so you could say
things like wow how does that feel you did it what was that like for you you say something
like oh you face that fear and you did so well or you went to preschool did you do anything fun
now remember how we talked about from the first video we talked about mindset how our kids look
to us to know how to interpret a situation when you show them that they can handle their fears and
you praise them for facing their fears they begin to really prioritize courage as a trait they feel
excited to face their fears and happy when they do it and this builds resilience in them over time
so this is the opposite of prioritizing like not feeling anxious as a life goal which leads to a
lot more avoidance and more anxiety okay I'm gonna put a link in the description to a couple more
examples of this process but long story short it works before long they'll start coming from school
excited to tell you about the challenge they face that day and how courageous they were so Mom and
Dad you got this you can totally do this in the next video we're going to talk about a handful
of other tools you can use to help your kid with anxiety so stay tuned and if you want to learn
more about this I am going to be building out a online course for parents of anxious kids so that
you can learn even more skills dive into you know more depth into this topic so check the link in
the description if you want to learn more about that okay thank you for watching and take care
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