My 11 -year -old son already knows how to react to a shooting at school.
His plan, which recently told me after Lockdown’s last simulated at his school, is jumping out the window and running. We stayed in my bed for an hour after bedtime, talking and dealing together with his anxiety.
It’s not just mass shootings that worry you. Your mind is fixed and thinks too much about what is happening in your personal life and what it absorbs from the outside world. This chaos has a way to invade your peace, and soon I know we’ll have another midnight concern session.
What is happening between me and my son is not uncommon. Many of our children are struggling with their mental health, and parents are worried. “We have an influx of information, and all these things together create a lot of anxiety that is simply incorporated into our culture,” said Maria Evans, co -author of the book Calm Kids in A World of Worry: Tools to Ease Anxiety and Overwhelm ” without Portuguese editing), with Ashley Graber.
Evans and Graber are licensed therapists in marriage and family and parental coaches. I talked to them about helping our children to navigate a world that seems to become more chaotic every day.
CNN: You have created a parental strategy called Safer to help parents and their children anxiously. What is that?
Maria Evans: Safer [sigla em inglês] It is a structure for parents to use that is based on therapeutic tools. Establish the tone. Allow feelings to guide behaviors. Form identity. Involve yourself as a professional. Be a model. It is a very simple guideline for parents to continue to mitigate anxiety in their children over time.
Ashley Graber: It establishes the different foundations that we know how to help in all areas for a child, parents and the whole family. Each letter [da sigla SAFER] It is part of what we are trying to help parents set at home and prepare the terrain for psychological security.
[Em inglês, a sigla SAFER se refere às seguintes frases: “Set the tone. Allow feelings to guide behaviors. Form identity. Engage like a pro. Role model.”]
CNN: How can parents recognize when their children are anxious?
Evans: Some of the symptoms [físicos] More common than we see are stomach pain, difficulty breathing or a little tremor. We see children who are curling their hair, beating or gnawing their nails. You may notice that your child is poking his face a lot, and then it can change to another something a few weeks later.
Graber: So there is a regression on something. A child may have been able to do something one day and failed to (the next day). There may be a concern that suddenly arose about something that does not seem to be linked to anything that makes sense. The other two really large behavioral signs of anxiety that we see all the time are separation anxiety, or fear of staying away from parents, and then avoidance. There may also be social anxiety as an entire set of different fears.
CNN: How can parents create a calm environment when they don’t feel calm?
Evans: We talk about finding little moments of calm wherever you can get them. So if that means you are feeling unstable inside, you can find a moment where you sit and look around the room and find only a small bustle pause window? It can be small enough to get your child approach and share a five -minute moment with them, and they can see that their nervous system is regulated and ready to be with them.
We teach many tools in the book on how to access this (calm) place despite the world around us and all the paternity tasks. When you are trying to establish the tone, it is about a moment, and also about a larger image (creating a communication habit).
Graber: If we practice these little moments over time, when we are doing so (in times of stress), the nervous system, our body and our mind will connect at these times. And we will start to feel calmer more often.
CNN: How can parents avoid passing their anxieties to their children?
Evans: We talk about safe frame versus scary framework. This is a term we create to help parents understand that the way they talk about how they see the world greatly impacts the way children see the world.
We guide parents to examine the moments of their lives where they feel more anxiety, more angry or more frustration – and then learn to moderate these reactions and this framing in front of their children. This makes a big difference because it indicates to children a world that is safer than the one where a father is warning about all dangers.
CNN: What is correlation and how can parents use it?
Graber: The correction is to use someone else’s calm. If a child is feeling anxious and worried, he can use someone else’s calm to help her calm down. We do this in therapy and coaching sessions. We help by demonstrating that we are breathing without having to say something to them.
The correction allows a person on the other side to absorb this calm and reassure itself. It is very important to parents because they can do the things we recommend, set the tone and convey this calm to help their children calm down at a time of concern.
CNN: How can parents practice self-empathy and teach it to their children?
Evans: Most parents are extremely rigorous with oneself. This has only increased over the years with all the advice on parenting that flood them.
We like parents to realize their inner voice. Ask yourself: How often am I saying negative things about me? This is important because these internal thoughts are often expressed aloud in front of their children.
Try to change the speech and say something positive or not say anything. This arises a lot with body image, especially when parents are strict with themselves about their bodies. So being very conscious about how you talk about yourself is very important, not only for your development, but to serve as a model for your children.
Graber: What were the things we can have heard during our growth and that stay in our minds? At times when you realize that there is a negative voice inside your head, be aware of it. Make these Mindfulness practices (help you) to be objective about this voice and sometimes see it as the voice of other people, not yours. When you start to realize this, you can put a more compassionate voice into practice.
CNN: How can we help our children overcome excessive thought and fixation?
Graber: When a child is thinking too much or fixed on something, allow her to have her feelings about it instead of interrupting them, but also sets limits.
One of the tools we discussed is to have a time to worry, a time to think too much. It is like an office hours. You can have an hour during the day when the child can sit down and think about these things. Out of this time, help you get out of this state.
Evans: With intrusive thoughts, we like to tell children to have a good relationship with their brains, understanding that sometimes their brains send unwanted thoughts. And you can call it a sticky thinking. If you can label this thought and say, “Oh, I’m having that sticky thought again.”
By labeling it and noticing it, you are creating a certain distance. Just imagine thought in a cloud and imagine it moving-it gives you much more power over your thoughts. So you recognize that thoughts come and go, and you decide what is filtered instead of happening to you all the time.
This content was originally published in how to help your children deal with anxiety? on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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