4 tips for managing anxiety in preschoolers MentalHealthAwarenessWeek
Three-year-old Eden isn’t a fan of the vacuum cleaner, but she takes great care to stay on its good side. “When it’s off, she’ll hug it and tell it she loves it,” says her mom, Suzanne Norton. “Then she’ll ask me to turn it on, but when I do, she books it to her room.”
Eden’s disliked any sort of loud blowing sound or white noise since she was about 18 months old. That’s when she first noticed the swooshing sound of the windshield wipers on her dad’s pickup truck. “She started freaking out whenever we had to turn them on,” says Norton.
Like adults, kids can experience physical symptoms of anxiety, like butterflies in the tummy, a racing heart or trembling. “Even though those fears may seem irrational to the parent, they are very real to the child,” says Janice Heard, spokesperson for the Canadian Paediatric Society and an assistant clinical professor in paediatrics at the University of Calgary., slowly learning to use logic to overrule their impulse to be scared, says Theule.
A preschooler—particularly a younger one—may not always understand everything you say, but your soothing voice and the fact that you’re not worried is hugely reassuring, says Theule, adding that dismissing concerns makes kids think you haven’t understood the problem. Saying something like, “You don’t like that noise—it’s scary,” gives kids words they’ll eventually learn to apply to fears. “That label is very comforting,” says Theule.
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