nyxhit Alleviate anxiety in kids with techniques that calm anxious children – small changes in their environment with some wellness routine.
Discover the best ways to cope with anxiety in your child. These techniques will help them learn to calm their mind when they are anxious due to so many triggers – studies, school-related issues like bullying, ill-health, or home environment.
As a parent, it is our responsibility to teach our kids to overcome fear and anxiety. It can only be done when we create an environment at home that calms their anxious mind and gives them lifelong learning to control their emotions.
While so many of us as kids spend time running around enjoying ourselves, these days there is a lot more anxiety at play. We need to do our best to create a calming home environment for our children, and this is why where we live is the perfect place to cultivate that calmness and give them a foundation to thrive when they go to school or anywhere else. So let’s show you how you can help your child with anxiety, right at home.
Engaging the Senses
Any anxiety reduction tactic should be practiced on a regular basis. One of the best times to practice anything is just before you go to sleep because it doesn’t just allow your brain to process it while you are asleep and, therefore, capitalize on the best time to learn, but it also can be a part of their bedtime routine. Something like engaging the five senses helps to anchor your child in the moment, and you can do a number of things here to help the process along. You can buy a reed diffuser and encourage your child to focus on the smells, but also help them to engage the other senses that will root them in the moment.
Limiting Screen Time
As beneficial as technology can be, every parent has faced some sort of battle with their child’s screen time. We have to remember that screen time when done excessively can contribute to anxiety in children, especially in the run-up to bedtime. The blue light emanating from tablets or phones can disrupt the sleep hormone melatonin, and this means that your child won’t feel as rested, leaving themselves open to a lot more anxiety and overstimulation. In the run-up to bedtime, and in general, it’s worth encouraging them to engage in other activities, for example, drawing, reading, or playing outside. This can gradually dampen down that overstimulation that’s very common with many kids.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Breathing Exercises
Teaching children simple techniques such as deep breathing can be an amazing starting point. Box breathing is simple to teach because you breathe in for the count of four, hold for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, and hold for four seconds. As they get older, you can incorporate other types of breathing, such as 4-7-8, where you inhale for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, and exhale for eight, which is very good for helping people sleep.
Creating Calm Spaces
Children are all experiencing a greater sense of pressure than the kids of 20 or 30 years ago, and it seems to increase with every new generation. Having the fear of failure at such an early age is incredibly unhelpful, and this is why we need to remember that our home should be a space for them to feel calm, rather than overwhelmed or stressed. Designating a specific area for calmness is a great solution, so when your child feels anxious they can go to that space to practice calming techniques but also feel like this is their safe space, especially when living in a cluttered house.
There are so many other approaches that you can utilize, but remember, above all else, you need to be a calm role model too!
The parents get anxious too with so many triggers and, that’s okay! The goal is to teach our kids that we can create an environment and do certain activities to deal with our anxious minds.
I hope you agree with me!
Lots of love,
xoxo
