Wellbeing Hub

Anxiety Fast Facts

Anxiety is a normal reaction to situations where we perceive dangers or threats.  For some people it can feel overwhelming, last longer and interfere with their daily life.

How can parents help? There are also many helpful ways you can support children and young people experiencing anxiety, depending on their developmental stage. Here are some ideas:

Build emotional awareness

• Give young children the language to label how they’re feeling. For example, say, “it looks like you might be feeling worried”.
• Help children and young people understand that being anxious is normal, and there are ways to manage it.
• Help them recognise their own internal cues (for example, if they have a racing heart).
• Support them to notice their self-talk and develop some positive coping statements.
• Help them understand that avoiding the things that make them anxious, while useful as a short-term fix, is likely to make things harder in the future.

Provide mental health and wellbeing awareness and education activities

Promote help-seeking and discuss mental health and wellbeing with children and young people. Encourage actions they can take to look after themselves such as:

• staying active
• eating well
• connecting with friends and family
• getting enough sleep

Support practical strategies

• Give notice before transitions 
• Use a step-by-step approach to break tasks into manageable chunks.
• Help them recall times they’ve managed anxious feelings before and the strategies that worked for them.
• Talk about helpful strategies you use to manage stress and anxiety (for example, going for a walk, talking to a friend, deep breathing).
• Set realistic expectations to help reduce stress about tasks.
• Gently support them to face challenges rather than avoid them.
• Promote self-regulation strategies like deep breathing.

Partner with families and others

• Support families to develop consistent routines to help create predictability (for example, drop-off rituals).
• Enlist support from important people in their lives such as family, peers, and other educators.

• Strengthen relationships with their family and community so you can share information and support them together.

   

This information has been sourced from Be You - Beyond Blue.