Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. – Natalie Goldberg
What to Do When You Worry Too Much:
A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Anxiety
Engaging, encouraging, and easy to follow, this book educates, motivates, and empowers children to work towards change. Includes a note to parents by psychologist and author Dawn Huebner, PhD.What to Do When You Worry Too Much is an interactive self-help book designed to guide 6–12 year olds and their parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of generalized anxiety. Metaphors and humorous illustrations make difficult concepts easy to understand, while prompts to draw and write help children to master new skills related to reducing anxiety.
Outsmarting Worry: An Older Kid’s Guide to Managing Anxiety
Worry has a way of growing, shifting from not-a-big-deal to a VERY BIG DEAL in the blink of an eye. This big-deal Worry is tricky, luring children into behaviours that keep the anxiety cycle going. Children often find it hard to fight back against Worry, but not anymore. Outsmarting Worry teaches 9 to 13-year-olds and the adults who care about them a specific set of skills that makes it easier to face – and overcome – worries and fears.
Anxiety Role Plays for adults/older teens. Short videos that are helpful for parents to get a new perspective on externalizing anxiety, and recognizing how it works to control families/individuals.
https://youtu.be/X53m8aJjI70
The Opposite of Worry
THE PLAYFUL PARENTING APPROACH TO CHILDHOOD ANXIETIES AND FEARS
By Lawrence Cohen
Whether it’s the monster in the closet or the fear that arises from new social situations, school, or sports, anxiety can be especially challenging and maddening for children. And since anxiety has a mind of its own, logic and reassurance often fail, leaving parents increasingly frustrated about how to help. Now Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D., the author of Playful Parenting, provides a special set of tools to handle childhood anxiety. Offering simple, effective strategies that build connection through fun, play, and empathy, Dr. Cohen helps parents:
- start from a place of warmth, compassion, and understanding
- teach children the basics of the body’s “security system”: alert, alarm, assessment, and all clear.
- promote tolerance of uncertainty and discomfort by finding the balance between outright avoidance and “white-knuckling” through a fear
- find lighthearted ways to release tension in the moment, labeling stressful emotions on a child-friendly scale
- tackle their own anxieties so they can stay calm when a child is distressed
- bring children out of their anxious thoughts and into their bodies by using relaxation, breathing, writing, drawing, and playful roughhousing
With this insightful resource of easy-to-implement solutions and strategies, you and your child can experience the opposite of worry, anxiety, and fear and embrace connection, trust, and joy.
Playing with Anxiety: Casey’s Guide for Teens and Kids
https://www.playingwithanxiety.com/
Anxiety has the power to stop kids in their tracks, preventing them from exploring and growing into independent teens and young adults. Casey, the fourteen year old narrator of Playing with Anxiety, knows all too well how worry can interrupt fun, ruin school, and take control of a family. In this companion book to Reid Wilson and Lynn Lyons’ parenting book, Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous & Independent Children (HCI Books, 2013), Casey shares her own experiences and those of her friends to teach kids and teens the strategies to handle the normal worries of growing as well as the more powerful tricks of anxiety. With pluck and humor, Casey tells stories, offers exercises, and describes her “solving the puzzle” approach that kids and their parents can explore together.
Growing Up Brave: Expert Strategies for Helping Your Child Overcome Fear, Stress, and Anxiety by Donna B. Pincus PhD (Author)
When our children are born, we do everything we can to make sure they have love, food, clothing, and shelter. But despite all this, one in five children today suffers from a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and countless others suffer from anxiety that interferes with critical social, academic, and physical development. Dr. Donna Pincus, nationally recognized childhood anxiety expert, is here to help.
In Growing Up Brave, Dr. Pincus helps parents identify and understand anxiety in their children, outlines effective and convenient parenting techniques for reducing anxiety, and shows parents how to promote bravery for long-term confidence. From trouble sleeping and separation anxiety to social anxiety or panic attacks, Growing Up Brave provides an essential toolkit for instilling happiness and confidence for childhood and beyond.
Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD
A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents
Eli R. Lebowitz
The first and only book to provide a completely parent-based treatment program for child and adolescent anxiety and OCD–parents need not impose changes on children’s behavior
Strategies are backed by extensive clinical research
Personal and accessible tone–free of jargon and eminently practicalParenting an anxious child means facing constant challenges and questions: When should parents help children avoid anxiety-provoking situations, and when should they encourage them to face their fears? How can parents foster independence while still supporting their children? How can parents reduce the hold their child’s anxiety has taken over the entire family?
Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD: A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents is the first and only book to provide a completely parent-based treatment program for child and adolescent anxiety. Parents will learn how to alleviate their children’s anxiety by changing the way they themselves respond to their children’s symptoms–importantly, parents are not required to impose changes on their children’s behavior. Instead, parents are shown how to replace their own accommodating behaviors (which allow anxiety to flourish) with supportive responses that demonstrate both acceptance of children’s difficulties and confidence in their ability to cope. From understanding child anxiety and OCD, to learning how to talk with an anxious child, to avoiding common traps and pitfalls (such as being overly protective or demanding) to identifying the ways in which parents have been enabling a child’s anxious behaviors, this book is full of detailed guidance and practical suggestions. Worksheets are included to help parents translate the book’s suggestions into action, and the book’s compassionate and personable tone will make it a welcoming resource for any concerned parent.
https://www.spacetreatment.net/
Link to Ted Talk by Eli L. re: SPACE
https://youtu.be/ExVvAn9hcjY
Treating Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: A Guide for Caregivers
by Eli R. Lebowitz, Haim Omer
“Lebowitz and Omer have taken the latest and most relevant scientific research and synthesized it into an essential read for caregivers of anxious children. Treating Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: A Guide for Caregivers provides an ‘inside look’ at the nuts and bolts of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for childhood anxiety—the treatment of choice among leading researchers and experts. The book is filled with analogies, examples, and practical advice that professionals and parents will refer back to over and over again.” —Candice A. Alfano, PhD; Director, Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK) Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Houston.
Practical real-life solutions for children living with anxiety
Focusing on the special role of the caregiver in achieving successful treatment. Focusing on the treatment of childhood anxiety, both in one-on-one therapist to child treatment and within the family, Treating Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: A Guide for Caregivers adopts an integrated approach presenting novel strategies to help mental health professionals and families create change and momentum in otherwise stagnant situations. This empowering guide offers practical, evidence-based, and theory-driven strategies for helping children to overcome anxiety, even if they resist treatment
Ruby’s Worry by Tom Percival
Ruby Finds a Worry is an excellent children’s book that deals with anxiety. Ruby is a young child who develops a very small worry that slowly gets larger over time. It becomes so huge that it begins to overcrowd her happiness. At a park one day, she finds another child with a problem and feels compelled to speak to him. After talking with each other about their problems, they both begin to feel better.