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Nerds tend to be some of the most organized people on the planet. They can also suffer from several different anxiety-based disorders. Because of this, it’s important to know how to keep our nerds from getting too anxious or stressed out about situations that they have no control over.
There are 5 simple things that you can do to help your nerd manage their anxiety.
- Be Clear With Expectations
- Work Through It
- Reframe and Empathize
- Slow Down
- Model Good Anxiety Reducing Behavior
Be Clear With Expectations
It’s important to have clear expectations for both anxious and non-anxious children. However, with anxious children, it is helpful to proceed at a slower pace and be flexible. While your non-anxious kids likely want to attend every party and event that they are invited to, your anxious child probably wants to avoid them at all costs. Balancing this can be complicated. One strategy is to attend smaller parties that don’t include overwhelming triggers to your anxious child while allowing the non-anxious children to attend more of the events.
Show your nerd that your expectations are realistic by starting small and that will build their confidence. Your child will soon learn that you are not going to ask them to do something they can’t handle. Teaching your child that they can work through anxious feelings and manage their anxiety will help them in the long run.
Work Through It
No one has ever stopped worrying because someone said, “Don’t worry!”, or “ Just relax!”. In fact, worry serves a vital function in our lives. It is important to let your child worry. Without some amount of worry, we would not stop to consider real dangers that do threaten us. Allowing your child to vent worries and brainstorm solutions with you can help decrease the amount of catastrophic thinking.
Talking through what would happen if a child’s fear came true can also decrease your child’s stress. For example, a child may worry constantly about being forgotten or left at school. If we talked through that, we would ask, “What would you do if I was not there after school?” The answer would probably be to tell a teacher. We would then follow up with, “What would the teacher do?” The answer would probably be that the teacher would call my parent or wait with me. For anxious kids, having a plan can reduce the uncertainty in a healthy, effective way.
Just like telling your child not to worry won’t make those anxious thoughts disappear, avoiding sources of anxiety won’t help your child learn to cope. If your child becomes anxious around cats, for example, staying away from all cats will only validate that anxious thought. It sends the message that all cats are dangerous. It’s better to desensitize your child to triggers of anxiety by taking small steps. Try looking at pictures of cats online and talking about what feelings they bring up. Next, watch cats play at a pet store window from a safe distance. Finally, ask to visit with a calm cat of a friend or a therapy cat. By taking small steps, children can learn to work through their fears and worries.
Helping children avoid everything they are afraid of will make them feel better in the short term but will reinforce the anxiety over the long run. Let your child how much you appreciate the hard work it takes to work through their anxiety. Often, continued contact with the stressor will decrease the anxiety with the situation.
Reframe and Empathize
Anxious children can very easily get caught in a cycle of “what ifs” and “I can’ts.” This thought cycle is overwhelming and can cause feelings of helplessness. Anxious children tend to engage black and white and catastrophic thinking. The positive reframing of stressful situations can empower your anxious child to take control of their anxious thoughts.
How positive reframing works:
- Have your child name a worry floating around in their brain.
- The people in my class do not like me.
- Ask them what the worry is based on.
- Someone laughed when I almost tripped. I am scared that people think I am clumsy.
- Help them break it down and see if that worry is 100% right.
- My friend caught my arm so I didn’t fall, I played basketball in PE and made 3 baskets so I am coordinated.
- Ask them how we can take that worry thought and change it to a positive thought.
- It hurt my feelings when the boy laughed at me, but I am not clumsy and have great friends in my class.
Anxiety can be paralyzing for young children. When kids feel overwhelmed by anxious thoughts, they can struggle to do everyday things like making friends or even attend school. Anxious children often avoid fun things like play dates and birthday parties. It’s important to empathize with your child. This normalizes what they are experiencing and helps them understand that they are not alone and that you will help them through it.
It’s important to understand that validation of anxiety doesn’t always mean agreement. If a child is scared of shots, you don’t want to belittle their fear but you also don’t want to amplify it. You want to listen and be empathetic. You can help your child help understand what they are anxious about, and encourage them to face their fears. The message that you want to send your nerd is, “I know you’re anxious, and that’s okay. I’m here, and I’m going to help you get through this.”
Slow Down
Your anxious child doesn’t need to play every sport and attend every party. The most important thing for your anxious nerd is to slow down and focus on their basic health needs.
Sleep. Depending on their age, children need between 8 and 10 hours of sleep a night. Check with your child’s doctor if they are not sleeping well. Make sure you are cutting off screen time at least an hour before bedtime. The blue light from computers and phones can suppress the release of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. This makes it more difficult to fall asleep.
Healthy meals. Cutting down on soda and processed foods will help your child’s overall health. Eating dinner as a family as often as possible is a great way for you to model good eating habits.
Plenty of water. The recommended daily amount of water for a 5 to 8-year-old is 5 glasses. That increases to 7 glasses for 9 to 12-year-olds. Nerds over 13 need between 8 to 10 glasses of water a day.
Daily exercise. Turning off the technology and going for a walk can do wonders for your child’s stress level. Pediatricians recommend at least 60 minutes of exercise per day for children over 6 years old. We have some great recommendations in Exercise Away From the Screen.
A great tool in tracking your child’s sleep and activity levels is a fitness tracker like the moreFit Fitness Tracker
Model Good Anxiety Reducing Behavior
Your nerd will learn how to handle anxiety by seeing how you cope with anxiety yourself. Children are perceptive, and they are going to notice if you keep complaining to a friend that you can’t handle the stress or anxiety. Modeling good self-care and coping strategies can help your nerd feel less anxious when their world seems to be spinning out of control.
You should not pretend that you don’t have stress and anxiety. Letting your kids hear or see you managing stress calmly, tolerating it, and feeling good about getting through it gives them the tools to deal with their own stress.
Know When to Involve Their Doctor
Managing stress with strategies like working through it or reframing and empathizing can only do so much. Sometimes your nerd will need more help than you can offer. It is important for your child’s overall health and well being to keep their doctor involved in their mental as well as their physical health. You need to know when to talk to your child’s doctor about their anxiety and stress levels. Keeping your nerd’s doctor in the loop when their anxiety borders on OCD or they begin to have stomach issues when things aren’t perfect can help ease the stress and anxiety in their life.
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