Welcome to the ‘How to Help a Child with Anxiety’ website

We have all suffered from anxiety at some time in our lives.  Babies are born anxious, who wouldn’t be if suddenly ejected from a secure environment in the womb into a very different place!  Little lambs and other animals can get to their feet after being born and soothe themselves by finding their mother close by, the source of comforting warm milk.  Babies must wait for us to pick them up and feed them.  They have no direct control over their environment, it is the parents’ instinctive response to their baby’s needs that will help him to feel secure.

Anxiety can be useful if it helps us, as it would have done for our cavemen ancestors, to avoid situations that are potentially harmful to us or to prepare us for situations we may encounter.  In modern day experience an actor would make sure they knew their lines or your child might be anxious to prepare for a test or exam.  Unfortunately in some cases anxiety may be counterproductive and leave the child with phobias that prevent him or her from doing what they would really like to do.  Anxiety might make the actor forget his lines or the child the facts that he’d learned and revised.

Children can use food to soothe themselves like the little lamb, but in the modern age they may use their phones and tablets to seek distraction and self-affirmation from their friends.  Unfortunately sometimes these can increase anxiety if the affirmation is not there or online bullying takes place.  Over-anxiety can lead to panic attacks, particularly in the case of teenagers who may dwell on and enlarge their fears until they can feel their very lives are threatened.