Parent Partnerships

Four reasons why your child may be anxious

By Michael Grose

Martin Seligman found through his research that children have a significant propensity to copy their primary parents’ explanatory style by eight years of age. If parents see events through the frame of stress, anxiety and fear then they are passing this same frame on to their children.

1. You are passing your anxiety and stress on to your child

The contagious nature of anxiety means that parents often pass their stresses, worries and fears on to their children. Legendary psychologist

p their minds and bodies active. Many of these activities have a high performance element attached (get that badge, win that game, attain that level) so that kids are always striving or attaining. The pressure to perform is always there. 

2. Your child is overloaded

Few would argue that an active child is a healthy child. However it seems that we now have too much of a good thing as Australian kids have a smorgasbord of ​organised pre-school and after-school activities to kee

Increasingly, Australian children and teenagers are experiencing anxiety at levels that are affecting their mental health, school achievement and happiness. As a loving parent, you naturally want to prevent your child or young person from being overwhelmed by anxiety.

There are four main reasons your child may be experiencing anxiety:

activity stimulates the brain rather than rejuvenates it.

3. Your child doesn’t play enough

Play is the release valve for the pressures of a high performance, serious life. It’s the way kids have always relaxed and let off steam. The best type of play for relaxing and letting off steam is generally physical play that takes place outside. Your child may play a great deal on a digital device, but this to the present, temporarily releasing them from their worries and anxieties. When kids learn these techniques from a young age or even during adolescence they are likely to become hard-wired for life.

4. Your child focuses too much on the future

Some children are born to worry. They fret about seemingly simple activities such as starting a new school term, going to a birthday party or who’s picking them up from school at the end of the day. Worriers are future oriented, anxious about things that haven’t happened yet. These type-A anxious types don’t know how to stay in the present. Their minds constantly wander ahead to what may happen. They benefit from learning relaxation techniques such as mindfulness and deep breathing that anchor them

Remember - the free webinar on Understanding Anxiety will be online on June 5 at 7:30pm with Dr Jodi Richardson (voucher in last week's newsletter).