Almost every parent can share about a time when their child has felt nervous, anxious or scared. These are normal emotions for any human to experience. At times, it is easy to connect these feelings to past experiences, upcoming changes/transitions or developmental stages. Often, these fears decrease over time and/or our children find better ways to cope and manage their emotions. Other times, anxiety stems from irrational fears and thoughts and they have a tendency to “take over” aspects of our children’s life. They may start avoiding certain situations, making specific requests, complaining of somatic symptoms or exhibit big emotional and/or behavioral responses. These behaviors can impact not just the child but entire families and households.
As parents, it is our natural instinct to step in and protect our young from danger and emotional distress. Really, we are hard wired as mammals to do this! In fact it is necessary, especially when our children are young, to step in & protect them from actual threats or danger. However, when we do something to help our children avoid or feel less anxiety/distress when there is no threat or danger this is called an accommodation. All parents accommodate from time to time – it’s ok and sometimes even the best choice in that moment! But long-term accommodations for our children can actually lead to increased anxiety. As a parent myself, I’ve had first hand experience with this…
My daughter has had a fear of dogs since she was a toddler. She was particularly scared of bigger dogs that jumped, licked and barked. We are a “cat family,” so her experience with dogs was limited. We started to notice some behaviors emerging when she was around dogs. If our neighbor’s dog was outside, she didn’t want to play in our backyard. If she saw a dog walking towards us on the sidewalk, she’d ask to cross to the other side of the street. If we were at a friend’s house who had a dog, she would act scared & ask that we pick her up.
We quickly jumped into accommodating these requests. Not being a dog “lover” myself, I even overidentified with her fears and recognized that a big dog can seem scary to a young child. These also felt like “easy” requests to meet at the time. If she didn’t want to come outside, my husband or I would just stay in the house with her or check on her frequently. In social settings, we’d pick her up and hold her to avoid a huge meltdown. In the moment, accommodating often felt like the best path – she calmed down and avoided a meltdown; therefore we calmed down & could enjoy what we were doing. What we didn’t see right away is that when we accommodated, we were actually sending messages to our daughter that weren’t very helpful. Actually they were the opposite messages of what we wanted her to receive. When we avoided dogs or picked her up, we were actually saying: “that dog is scary,” “we need to protect you,” and “we don’t think you can handle this.” Whoops – not our intention!
So what could we do instead when our children feel anxious? Not accommodating our child’s anxieties almost always means allowing them to feel uncomfortable, even distressed (temporarily). This is SO hard as a parent – especially when an option to make them feel better is staring us in the face! But the only way our children can learn to tolerate the discomfort that comes with anxiety is to experience it, cope with it and know they will be OK. In order to do this, we as parents also need to learn to tolerate our own discomfort at seeing our children upset.
Over time, my husband and I realized that the accommodating we were doing for our daughter was not making her feel more comfortable around dogs – it was actually increasing her anxiety. She started to want to avoid any situation where there would be a dog, such as playdates at friend’s houses. She would cling to us at any social function with a dog. She demanded we stay inside our house with her if our neighbor’s dog was outside. This all started to impact our family routines/schedules and my husband and I felt frustrated and exhausted. We needed to make a change. We began decreasing accommodations around familiar dogs first, like our neighbors’. We knew this particular dog might bark and/or lick but we also knew she was not in danger. We stopped picking up our daughter when we were around familiar dogs but offered to hold her hand. She could choose how close to get to any dogs we were around but we no longer accompanied her inside the house or to other rooms when she requested it.
No doubt this was difficult at times – both for our daughter and for us. She argued, cried and demanded. There were multiple meltdowns in social settings. In addition to talking to our daughter before we started making changes, we also started using supportive messages with her. These are statements that validate how she feels AND communicates our confidence that we know she can handle it. We would say things like “We know you feel scared when you’re around dogs and we know you will be OK” or “We know it feels scary when we don’t know what a dog will do and we know you can handle it.” We also acknowledged when she took a brave step by getting closer to dogs or simply tolerated an uncomfortable situation.
As we started to make changes around familiar dogs, we continued to accommodate when we were around new dogs that we didn’t know yet. Over time, we stopped accommodating with these as well. We saw her confidence soar around dogs. She is now interested in dogs, pets them willingly and actually enjoys meeting new dogs. The first time she walked by our neighbor’s dog without asking to be picked up was huge. Our jaws dropped this summer when she announced she wanted a dog for a pet. What’s even more remarkable is that this confidence has transitioned into other areas of her life as well.
While we can’t protect our children from experiencing worries/fears, we have tremendous power as their parents to help them navigate uncomfortable situations.
If you’ve noticed that anxiety is impacting your child – or your family – consider joining Arbor Psychology Group’s 9 week virtual SPACE parenting group this fall. Find connection and support with other parents as you learn about childhood anxiety and the role you have to help your child feel more confident and independent. Click here for group description and registration information.
