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First Aid for your Child's Mind: Simple steps to soothe anxiety, fears and worries
200Overview
Soothe your child’s anxiety and help them to develop emotional resilience for the future. The number of children suffering from anxiety is on the rise and most parents will readily admit that they feel ill prepared and lost for words when it comes to supporting their child’s emotional wellbeing. Author Alicia Eaton is a Harley Street practitioner with over 15 years’ experience of helping children to feel more confident and overcome feelings of anxiety. As she explains, nearly all children will sustain bumps and bruises on the outside of their body so it’s only natural that they’ll also pick up a few on the inside, in the form of anxiety and worries. Learning how to tackle these quickly, stops them from turning into much bigger problems later.
Whether your child has a fear of dogs, spiders, dentists or injections, struggles with school, performing on stage or sleeping at night, this book will teach you the simple solutions every parent needs to know. When your child feels happy, you’ll feel happier too.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781788601177 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Alison Jones Business Services Ltd |
| Publication date: | 10/24/2019 |
| Pages: | 200 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.42(d) |
About the Author
Originally a Montessori teacher, Alicia ran her own school for five years, then went on to train at The Anna Freud Centre. She followed this up by qualifying as a Psychotherapist and Hypnotherapist as well as going on to train in NLP with Paul McKenna and assisting him with his seminars for over 7 years.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Anxiety
What's it all about?
The number of children seeking help for anxiety and mental health issues has risen sharply, recent data from the NSPCC's Childline service has suggested. Even those as young as 4 years old are said to be displaying signs of panic attacks, eating disorders, anxiety and depression.
In the last three years alone, 120,000 referrals were made by schools seeking professional mental health help with 56% of these referrals coming from primary schools, meaning an average of 183 referrals were made per school day in 2017/18.
Experts blame the increase in school exams, the social media pressure to look good and appear popular, as well as family breakups and worries about money. Coupled with this, we're now a 24hour news society with an endless stream of information filtering into our homes. So whether it's a random terrorist attack on a city centre bridge or a tourist filled beach, a suicide bomber striking at a pop concert for teenagers, or an out of control wild fire, it's becoming increasingly hard to protect our children from hearing and seeing all the gruesome details.
It's often when these most tragic of events occur that we feel our most ill-equipped at explaining stressful events to children. Should we shield them from such horrors, or talk openly about them? And how can we help children make sense of such tragedies when we can barely make sense of them ourselves?
It's hardly surprising that anxiety levels amongst children have rapidly increased but ironically, worrying about their child's anxiety is one of the most common reasons parents give for having sleepless nights themselves. Even when kids are having 'fun' sitting indoors playing computer games, their bodies produce an adrenaline rush that never quite gets burned off. These feelings of worry and 'generalised anxiety', to give it its' proper name, can quickly spill over into other areas of life.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANXIETY AND FEAR
Anxiety is the feeling that we experience in the lead up to a stressful event — in other words, it's our response to something that hasn't happened yet. How severe our anxiety becomes depends very much on our thoughts — we can make it worse just by over-thinking or dreading upcoming situations. Most of us will agree that we can exhaust ourselves with worry for no good reason — the reality often turns out to be a lot better than we predicted in our imagination.
Fear, on the other hand, is the emotion that we experience when we're actually in a dangerous situation. You may have heard of the 'fight or flight response' — it's our body's automatic nervous system response and it releases hormones from the adrenal glands such as adrenaline and noradrenaline. These will stimulate your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate and will give you that much required boost of energy to deal with the threat or danger. This is great if you really are in danger and need to run away fast, but our bodies haven't evolved to tell the difference between an attack by a grizzly bear and the more benign threats we'll encounter in a busy supermarket, on the road in a traffic jam or even the make-believe ones we'll see on TV or in computer games.
It can take up to 60 minutes for the effects of this automatic response to calm down and if these chemicals are not required, then they start to build up in our system and can have a draining effect on us. Not only will they have harmful effects on the body but we'll also start to feel as if we're 'on alert' and these physical feelings will trigger off yet more anxious thoughts. The mind understandably, will start to think there must be some good reason why the physical stress response has kicked in and if there isn't, will invent one for you with a sequence of anxious thoughts about events in the future. And so the cycle will continue — your anxious thoughts will once again stimulate the automatic fear response and the stress chemicals released will get your mind wondering what's up.
The good news is that anxiety is a very treatable condition. Enlightened psychologists will now refer to anxiety as something that's often the result of an emotional 'injury' to the mind rather than a 'disorder' — for that word immediately suggests it's part of a long-term problem and something to 'suffer'. In reality, it's now possible to heal an emotional wound rather than leaving it to fester and turn into something much bigger.
So, just as our children acquire bumps and scrapes on the outside of their bodies, we shouldn't be surprised to discover it's possible to get a few on the inside too.
We've become used to taking care of our physical health — think back to the last time you fell ill with an unexplained tummy upset for example, or sprained an ankle. The first thing most of us do is consult the internet and it makes sense to do this for we know we'll find useful advice there that will help us feel better faster.
However, when it comes to caring for our mental health it's a different story. As a society we shy away from talking about 'matters of the mind', feeling that the best way to deal with these is by adopting a stiff upper lip or leaving them to the professionals — but even then, we're not too sure what type of professional might be the right one for us. This fear of dabbling leaves far too many of us limping through life struggling with anxiety attacks or phobias that restrict us in so many ways.
Living with feelings of anxiety can have harsh and long-term consequences, and children can 'grow into' their fears rather than out of them. Anxiety can set back a child's emotional growth and hamper performance in every area of their life. It will stop your child from making friends, taking part in social activities, sitting exams successfully and fulfilling their potential. To make matters worse, those who suffer from anxiety and depression as children are likely to carry the problems into adulthood.
The feelings of stress and anxiety can manifest themselves in many different ways:
• an increase in cravings for sweet foods and snacks
• a reluctance to go to social events or visit friends' houses
• struggles with school work and lower grades
• inability to concentrate or follow instructions
• deafness or ringing in the ears
• persistent worrying with endless questions that have no right answer
• nightmares and difficulty in falling asleep
• bedwetting
• thumb-sucking, nail-biting, tics and stammers
• irritability and short-temperedness
• angry outbursts and sibling fights
Most parents will readily admit that when it comes to helping children deal with feelings of anxiety and worry, they feel inadequately prepared and quite simply 'lost for words'. It's not surprising, after all:
• What is the best way to explain news reports about terrorist attacks and bombings without alarming your child?
• What should you say to a child that's witnessed a tower block fire or disaster on TV and is suffering from nightmares as a result?
• How do you handle a child that's petrified of dentists, injections, dogs, spiders or even eating vegetables?
• Or help the child who is convinced the only thing they 'know' for sure is that they'll forget everything the minute they step into in an exam room?
HINT: It's not by saying "Don't worry".
In order to develop into fully grown adults, children go through a process known as 'adaptation'. This is what gives human beings the advantage over animals — we have the ability to adapt to our environment precisely because we're not fully formed at birth and we take our time to develop into adults. If you pick up a newly born giraffe and stick him at the North Pole, he won't survive for very long for the possibility of growing a shaggy warm coat is not open to him.
Pick up a human baby on the other hand and transfer them from the UK to Japan and within a few short years they'll quickly become fluent in Japanese with no trace of an accent whatsoever. That baby has the ability to adapt to its' surroundings.
Your child's mind is open and ready to receive everything that's put in their path. In fact, it could be said that your child is in a state of 'waking hypnosis' — and you, as the parent, are programming that mind with all the things that you say and do.
This process of 'adaptation' is very powerful — a young child is using their environment to develop and in so doing, become a part of that environment. In a completely unconscious manner, children absorb the culture of their time and place along with the aspirations and attitudes of a society, simply by living in it.
Years ago, that process was very much simpler because life was more straight-forward. It is much harder for a child to adapt when their environmental influences are global rather than local, largely due to the internet.
Increased choices and chances offer today's children the kind of opportunities that can change lives. "You can be whoever you want to be", our children are told — but who is that exactly? "Reach for the stars and live the dream." is a great motivational thought but with it can come a sense of endless inadequacy.
A primary school teacher recently told me that all the children in her class either wanted to be a 'YouTuber' or a footballer when they grow up. As they regularly read about teenagers becoming billionaires overnight, it's hardly surprising. "Do think of a 'plan B' just in case", she told them.
There is a reason why so few people have an Olympic gold medal or an Oscar — they're not that easy to get hold of. So while I'm all for inspiring our children to have self-belief and become the very best version of themselves, growing up in a society that's constantly measuring success against those few, very outstanding people — or those with model-like looks and bodies to match — can only fuel anxiety and create a sense of disappointment.
Living a 'good' life with friends, family, regular work and a couple of interesting hobbies may sound a bit hum-drum but it's the kind of life that suits most of us and often is the key to happiness.
Today's children may have more choices and chances than ever before, but inadvertently this has turned into a poisoned chalice with the competition becoming ever more frenzied as the community they're growing up in is on the World Wide Web.
A couple of generations ago, a family would hand down not only their traditions and religious beliefs to a new child but also skills to prepare them for the world of work, which in all probability was going to be the same as that of their parents and grand-parents. Social mobility was not a thing discussed very often — your life was pretty much mapped out from the day you were born. I am sure none of us would wish to return to those days, but when you compare that world of certainty to the ever-changing environment that today's children struggle to navigate, it's not surprising that anxiety is so common.
How can you be sure of who and what you are when offered such an array of options and moral questions? Should you stop eating meat, for example, and become a vegetarian or better still, vegan? Will it stop global warming or is it too late? I regularly hear children being told that their generation needs to be the one that finds the solution to the climate change problem or the world will come to an end — no pressure there, then! They see their friends questioning their sexuality and even their gender and begin to wonder if they should do the same. With this ever-changing landscape it's no wonder so many children struggle to feel comfortable 'in their own skin'.
Back in the 1970s there were only three TV channels available so it's not surprising to learn that 30 million people sat down to watch a Christmas Day episode of The Morecambe and Wise Show in 1976. In those days, the shops were closed, churches were open, everyone watched the Queen's Speech and had roast turkey for lunch. That type of connectedness would be almost impossible to create nowadays, for even when families are all in the same house, they'll be living separate lives in different rooms.
Most of us would agree that too much choice is a hindrance rather than a help. I carried out a quick survey in my local supermarket and was shocked to discover there were 255 different types of tea on the shelves. That was just the tea section — I didn't count the coffee! Gone are the days when you were simply asked if you wanted tea or coffee, with or without.
As I moved into the aisle selling cleaning products and toilet rolls, the various combinations and permutations of special offers bemused me — should I have three packs for the price of two, an extra large pack with 25% off or go for the special offer with £2 discount? It's enough to frazzle your brain and the reason why we regularly see episodes of 'trolley rage' at the checkouts.
Too much information and too many choices lead to indecision and ... anxiety. Remember, when our brain detects stress or a threat, that 'flight or fight' response will be activated. The sudden quick release of chemicals might provide the burst of energy needed to jump out of the way of an oncoming car, but placed on 'high-alert' your brain will struggle to concentrate on smaller things. Contestants on TV quiz shows demonstrate this perfectly, as they struggle to answer the simplest of questions when the neuro-chemical overload makes their mind go blank.
* * *
Over the years, I've seen hundreds of children in my Harley Street clinic suffering from a huge variety of problems: fear of toilets, spiders and sharks, exam stress, strange obsessional thoughts, recurring nightmares, stage fright and nervous habits and tics. And it's no less varied for adults as I've worked with people who have phobias of big plants, zips and bananas.
As random as these problems may appear, they all have something in common. There's a structure and pattern to the way that our mind and body processes feelings of anxiety and creates those automatic fear responses.
While we may not always understand how someone could be so scared of something so seemingly trivial, it's important to accept that 'thinking about it' is creating genuine feelings. The structure and mechanics of the thought process are what produce the physical feelings of fear and anxiety, rather than the object itself.
In my clinical work, I use a blend of techniques from the fields of Positive Psychology, CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), mindfulness, psycho-sensory therapies, hypnotherapy and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). In this book, I'm going to explain what it is I do to help people overcome their fears and anxiety.
Armed with this information, you'll be able to adopt my strategies and techniques to keep your child in a calmer, happier, more resilient state able to face the stresses of everyday life more easily. Even just changing the words and language that you use on a daily basis, can change the way your child feels about themselves. And as every parent knows, when your child feels happy you'll feel happier and more relaxed too.
CHAPTER 2How your child's mind works
In this chapter, I'm going to give you an insight into how the mind receives and processes information and how this then becomes our thoughts, which in turn create the feelings that have an impact on our behaviour. As you'll see, having this knowledge will help you to address anxiety symptoms in your child more confidently.
A young child's senses are in a developmental phase for at least the first six years of life and during this time, it's not uncommon to see some children struggle to deal with the sensory overload. New tastes and smells can trigger a violent dislike of certain foods while for some, loud noises and crowded places will be difficult to handle. Some children hate the feeling of an 'itchy' shirt collar or a sock that continually slips down a leg, while others will be completely oblivious to the fact their clothes are a mess or they're covered in mud.
It's estimated that our nervous system receives around two million bits of information about what is happening around us, every second of the day. With so much information bombarding our minds, we have no choice but to filter or condense it down and make what are referred to as deletions, distortions and generalisations, like so: Deletions: We automatically have to delete some of the information that we receive because there's simply too much of it so we chunk it down into a more manageable size. Because this can be a fairly random process, it's possible to throw away vital pieces of information without realising it. It's the reason why it's not uncommon to hear people arguing about the content of past conversations — one of them will insist that they did indeed say something and the other will claim to have heard no such thing. More often than not, both of them will be correct.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "First Aid for Your Child's Mind"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Alicia Eaton.
Excerpted by permission of Practical Inspiration Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
SECTION 1 – MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL 7
Chapter 1: Anxiety: what’s it all about? 9
Chapter 2: How your child’s mind works 17
SECTION 2 – STEPS TO SUCCESS 25
Chapter 3: Detox your environment 27
Chapter 4: Let’s talk 35
Chapter 5: Tools to help 53
SECTION 3 – FIRST AID TECHNIQUES AND STRATEGIES 59
Chapter 6: Let’s relax 61
Chapter 7: Psycho-sensory therapies 75
Chapter 8: Visualisation techniques 85
SECTION 4 – PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE 113
Chapter 9: General worries 115
Chapter 10: Stage fright, auditions, interviews 125
Chapter 11: Phobia: fear of dogs 131
Chapter 12: Fear of spiders and snakes 137
Chapter 13: Medical anxiety: doctors, injections and germs 143
Chapter 14: School refusal 149
Chapter 15: Bullying 157
Chapter 16: Exam stress 165
Chapter 17: Travel anxiety: fear of fl ying 171
Chapter 18: Sleep problems 177
A final note 183
Notes 185
Useful contact details 187
Also by Alicia Eaton 189
About the author 191
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