I see that you’re nervous, and I’m right here with you.
vs.
Why are you nervous?! There’s nothing to be scared of.
Come, let’s take deep breaths together so that you can calm down.
vs.
Just calm down. Stop crying and listen to me!
The way you deal with the anxiety of a little human defines how well they’re able to deal with it. As a caregiver and adult that they turn to for comfort, your reaction can not be “just power through it.” There has to be an acknowledgement of fear. Rather than trying to make them understand that the monsters in the dark aren’t real, we need to first accept that the fear of monsters in the dark is real. Then we come up with coping mechanisms that deal with that fear. The mechanisms may or may not include actually proving that the monsters aren’t real. Sometimes it isn’t easy to disprove the existence of things so going down that path may not work. And if the child is anxious about something else, like getting a haircut or talking to a neighbour or the first day at school, he or she may not even know why the thought is making them nervous in the first place. So constantly questioning them to get to the “why” will turn counter-productive. To add to the already existing anxiety, there will be an additional feeling of incompetence that creeps into the child, “I don’t even know why I’m scared, so there must be something wrong with me.”
Handling a child’s emotions isn’t easy. They need to have room to experience the whole spectrum of feeling as intense or as mild as they want. Perhaps we also need to grow with our kids and appreciate all the emotions and feelings we experience. Don’t you get nervous when you’re doing something unknown for the first time? Or maybe your nervousness doesn’t stem from the unknown but from somewhere else. Over the course of our lives, we learn to appreciate that those little butterflies in the tummy are actually a good thing. We learn to visualise how a scenario or conversation will play out mentally beforehand so that we can be prepared. We learn to talk to people who’ve been through the same situation and seek out what coping mechanisms they use. We learn to deal with anxiety, in whatever form it hits us.
But it has taken us years of conscious and subconscious actions to arrive at a place where we don’t need to melt into a puddle of tears at the very thought of doing something outside of our comfort zone. And that’s what a child also needs – lots of time, lots of experiences and lots of understanding.
Also read “Back to School: How to Help Your Child Cope“
