Helping children cope with stress
Childhood anxiety is much more prevalent these days, and parents and carers need to be able to help their children prevent dangerous escalation. With 18 years of expert, qualified experience, Michael Hawton shows how to help children and tweens build up the necessary brain architecture and perspective, and create the emotional reserves and balance needed throughout life in his new book The Anxiety Coach .We asked him some questions:
Tell us about your background.
I have worked as a Child and Family Psychologist — daily seeing families and children — across a 30-year span. Prior to that, I was a primary school teacher. In my work with parents, I try to combine good psychological principles with good teaching practices. So, my training courses, also captured in my new book, are aimed at making treatment for child anxiety accessible to the key adults in a child’s life.
What inspired you to write The Anxiety Coach?
It’s getting hard to book an appointment with a psychologist who can see a child and to find ones that specialise in children’s anxiety. And parents don’t need to see a GP or see a psychologist
to get the right help; they, themselves, can take steps which will help with a child’s anxiety. We have taught parents in our child development courses using a parent-led model of helping children with mild to moderate anxiety. So, a book was a logical next step. One of the things parents can do is to orientate themselves towards their child to assist their children to manage their anxious moments. Stress is part of life so we are better off trying to help kids manage their anxiousness and deal better with stress. Parent-led interventions are the new ‘black’ in therapy for children. Surprisingly, there are not that many child anxiety books, written by psychologists, on the bookshelves. The Anxiety Coach is a step-by-step treatment book for child anxiety. It’s full of tips for what not to do, as well as tips about how to help your child.
Why do you think there is more child anxiety now compared to a generation ago? It’s not down to any one factor. Children’s brains could not have changed that much in one generation so it’s almost certain that it’s environmental causes, plural, which are affecting the upsurge we’re seeing. There are a few things that have changed in recent years:
1. Children are not getting the right amount of sleep compared with a generation ago.
2. Some children are introduced too early to social media platforms that hook them in and distract them — and,
3. Not enough key adults are training children to manage stress compared with previous times. I think there’s also not as much free play as there used to be.
What are the main problems facing parents who have an anxious child? Children who are developing anxiety problems will be more reticent and they will avoid normal challenges. They will be reluctant to deal with little challenges to begin with, which can turn into larger behaviour problems over time — like schoolrefusing or children not wanting to go on school camps. The main thing for parents to recognise is that a child with anxiety symptoms won’t generally grow out of them. Most child anxiety won’t get better by itself.