Waiting for the school bus to arrive, thoughts run through a child’s mind: Where will I sit? Who will be beside me? Will they like me? Does my hair look good? What happens if my bus driver is late? Where is my first class? Will I make it there before the bell? Did I remember to pack my homework? Did I study enough for my quiz? Why do we need metal detectors at school? Am I safe?
This is just the start of the day for many children in school. Anxiety is an emotion focused on worry and repetitive thoughts, and it can cause significant distress when not managed effectively.
Anxiety related to school – feelings of worry before a big exam or standardized test – can sometimes be easily identified. Other symptoms of anxiety can be misunderstood or more difficult to recognize: anger outbursts, upset stomach (and the visits to the nurse that come with it), or struggles brought on by learning disorders.
In the school environment, children and adolescents are faced with significant pressure on many levels: keeping up with academics, navigating social environments, and figuring out how to solve problems, to name a few. And these are just school-related concerns. Factor in home life – finances, conflict in the home, medical issues, family stress, etc. – and anxiety can increase exponentially.
How to Help Children Who Live with Anxiety
There are important components in successfully providing support for children who experience anxiety. It is unlikely that a caregiver alone will be able to eliminate anxiety in a child, but by focusing on our connection with a young person and acknowledging the emotion, we can help a youth tolerate it.
As caregivers, the relationships we build with youth are at the foundation of everything we do. Children learn and develop in the context of relationships that are responsive, consistent, and nurturing.
A responsive, nurturing relationship helps instill in the child a sense of self-acceptance, safety, and belonging. Always try to show respect for children’s feelings and avoid statements of dismissal, like “it’s not that bad,” or “there’s nothing to worry about.”
A child who is living with anxiety will naturally try to avoid the source of the anxiety. For example, if going to the cafeteria creates anxiety, a youth will likely not go to the cafeteria and will visit the school nurse instead. If that kind of behavior is encouraged, the youth may experience longer-term avoidance and distress in this or similar situations.
Adults can encourage children to try new things and not avoid things that make them anxious. Remember to be honest and realistic about fears and worries. Facing fears will get better over time, even if it does cause distress at first.
Validation Is Key to Managing Anxiety
Youth want to be understood, even when they are struggling to understand themselves. Validation communicates to another person that their feelings, thoughts, or actions make sense and are understandable in a given situation.
Adults need to understand that validation does not necessarily mean you like or agree with what a young person is doing, saying, or feeling. Rather, it means you understand where they are coming from. Validation is not the same as praise, reassurance, general positivity, or solving or fixing a problem. When talking with a child, one way to validate is to name what you think you understand, and invite them to correct you. It might be: “I hear you saying you’re not eating lunch in the cafeteria because you have an upset stomach, and you feel safer visiting the school nurse. Is that correct?”
Validation can improve our relationships with young people especially. It can de-escalate conflict and intense emotions, especially anxiety. Validation can show the children in our lives that we are listening, we understand, we are being non-judgmental, we care about the relationship, and we can disagree without having a big conflict.
What should we validate? As caregivers, we can validate feelings, thoughts, and behaviors – in ourselves and others. It’s important to note here that we can validate the feeling without validating the behavior. For example, do validate when a student you care about feels upset about a low test grade even though you know they didn’t study; don’t validate the lack of studying that resulted in a low grade. You can and should validate a young person’s anxiety about going to school, but not their skipping classes.
How Can We Validate Others?
First, pay attention! Actively listen, make eye contact, and stay focused.
Be mindful of your verbal and nonverbal reactions to avoid invalidation (rolling eyes, sighing, walking away, and making light of serious things with dismissive statements). Observe what the youth is feeling in the moment. Look for a word to describe that feeling. You might say: “I am wondering if you are nervous right now – is that right?”
Reflect the feeling without judgment. The goal is to communicate that you understand how the young person feels. Try: “It makes sense that you’re nervous,” or “I understand that you’re having a tough time right now.”
Demonstrate tolerance for the other person’s emotions. Look for how a young person’s emotions make sense, given the worry or their history and current situation, even if you don’t agree with the emotion or approve of the action.
Respond in a way that shows you are taking the young person seriously (with or without words). Try sitting with them and listening attentively, naming and validating the emotion, offering a tissue to someone who is crying, and offering praise to kids when they demonstrate the ability to tolerate their anxiety while being brave or staying calm. You might ask, “How can I be most helpful to you right now?” or “What will help you to be brave right now?”
Show children you care about that anxiety is normal. Let them see you cope with anxiety. Youth will learn just as much from what they see adults do as what they hear us say. Don’t hide all stress and worry. When appropriate, demonstrate that stress and anxiety exist and have to be tolerated by everyone. Be sure to celebrate and validate your own bravery with your kids. Know that validation can feel different for everyone. Always be open to learning what causes your youth to feel seen, heard, calm, and well.
