How to help kids with anxiety: tips for frequent movers and Military families
Image by Canva's: text to image
Anxiety.
It’s a complex word for the big feelings that can overwhelm little people… for a Military family like ours; seasons of huge transition and constant change have become a part of life and so has helping our kids through their change-induced anxiety.
~ If you’re anything like me, you’ve already googled on more than one occasion:“how to help your kids with anxiety” ~
Maybe like me, you’ve desperately scoured the web in search of relief for your precious little person who is struggling under the weight of a million fears and overwhelming feelings.
These feelings can tumble around and around tiny hearts and minds: some causing nightmares, others upset stomachs or frequent emotional outbursts and they can snowball until your little person is struggling to function under the weight of so much worry.
Image by: Canva text to image
While we can’t keep our little ones from ever experiencing childhood anxiety, we can safeguard them by reinforcing confidence and resilience: giving them tools for coping in times of change and transition. There are some brilliant and readily available resources for helping your kids with anxiety these days and I’ll link a few of my favourites at the end of the post (not sponsored).
I’m also going to touch on the key strategies my hubby and I implement in our family whenever we’re facing a season of immense change or are about to undergo a major transition, to help our kids with whatever anxiety they may develop and make their journey through this transition period as smooth as it could possibly be.
I need to preface the following tips, strategies and resource list by saying that nothing in this post constitutes medical advice in any form; for diagnosis and an official treatment plan, please consult with your child’s regular practioner.
I’ve broken my family's strategies for navigating relocation-related childhood anxiety down into four “keep commandments”:
Keep traditions
Keep familiarity
Keep to the plan
Keep reinforcing
Keep traditions
Functionally, this one is exactly what it sounds like: keep doing what you typically do - don’t allow impending change of circumstances to shortchange your family traditions. As an Army family, every two years like clockwork (usually right around Christmas time), we’re required to pick up our lives (and those of our four littlies) and report to our next posting location. This transition is anticipated by the whole family for a number of months and the final process happens over a number of weeks (with two to four typically spent in short-term accommodation while we wait for our new home to be ready for occupation).
As you can imagine, we spend a great deal of time helping our kids with their anxiety around leaving friends and adjusting to a new town or city, along with changing home and school. One of the key ways we do this is to create stability by keeping traditions alive. Each year, over the couple of weeks which encompass the end of December and early January, our family has: Christmas, New Years, my eldest daughter's birthday and summer school holidays to contend with. Hubby and I decided a long time ago that we would make these family moments sacred (to the best of our ability) and keep our family traditions no matter where we are located or what we do or don’t physically have at that time of the year.
We do our utmost to make Christmas Eve and Christmas day look the same each year by following our familiar routine and making the same memories together each year. We’ll go search for Christmas lights together the night before Christmas, eat ice cream (or drink hot chocolate - whatever the crazy Australian weather dictates!) under our Christmas tree together, follow the same wake-up/open gifts/get ready for the day progression each year and eat the same Christmas lunch foods together.
Similarly, we have birthday morning traditions which make birthdays on the move a little more predictable and reassuring. Our oldest children know what to expect on their birthday morning (how the house will be decorated, what they'll get to eat and what we’ll do together for the day) whether we’re in a hotel, staying with family or in our own home.
Sure, this requires some creativity when you’re in the middle of a cross-country relocation right at Christmas time, but it calms and reassures kids to know that even when everything in their world seems to be coming apart - some things won’t change. These dependable moments become the memories they cling onto; their safe experiences in the middle of a storm. Later when the chaos of change subsides, they’ll fondly remember the moments they could depend on and these memories will form the basis for their coping mechanism during the next time of upheaval.
Keep familiarity
Maintaining familiarity creates a soothing environment for your kids wherever you are. Our kids are still young (eight, five, three and 13 months), to them: comfort items are life. We’ve found that travelling with particular comfort items can make any environment instantly feel comfortable and familiar for our kids.
When packing for any vacation or house move, I’ll be sure to include each child’s: favourite blanket, bed pillow, snuggle toy, nightlight, bedtime stories, clothing and snacks in my inventory for the car or plane.
We also use music to create a soothing environment at night-time. We have always (since my firstborn was about 5 months old) used music as night-time ‘white noise’. Our portable speaker travels around the country with us and come 7.30pm every night, without fail, we switch on our sleep time music (easy-going, instrumental type album) and this signals to our little ones brains that the end of the day has come and it’s time to start winding down. The music also helps them stay regulated during the night, we let it continue to play softly while we are all asleep and find it incredibly soothing for all of us. It’s grounding for the children when they have their night wakings: hearing their familiar music play in the background helps their brain to process that they’re in the same safe space they fell asleep in and they will usually settle themselves back to sleep.
Keep to the plan (…the one your kids have in their mind!).
A time of huge transition and change is not the time to be making any major decisions or changes to plans that don't strictly need to be made.
Buying or rehoming a family pet, changing or getting rid of your children's familiar items (cherished furniture or toys from playrooms, bedrooms, or anywhere else!) without discussing with them beforehand or making last minute changes to the family schedule (I.e. the destination where you will spend the summer together, or what activities you will do) are all examples of decisions that may be fairly easy for us adults to process, but constitute major life changes for a little person who may already be overwhelmed by the many transitions to come.
Sometimes of course such changes are unable to be avoided, but they should always be approached with caution and much conversation and reassurance between parents and the children who will be affected so that they are never made to feel powerless in the one place they should feel safe, heard and empowered.
Keep reinforcing
Finally - model resilience: the greatest determinant of how your kids will handle the strains of constant transition is how you, their parents, handle it! I reiterate this in my post on travelling with toddlers during a defence relocation. Ultimately, during a time of great upheaval, our children’s comfort doesn’t come from any material belonging - it comes from you.
Staying calm, encouraging and upbeat about the situation, even when unexpected challenges crop up (and they will!), models resilience to our children and encourages them to do the same. Help them process transitions by daily talking over the events of the next few weeks, discussing all of the changes to come/answering any questions or allaying any fears which come to light.
We daily reinforce to our little ones when they are missing their old home and noticing the absence of many of their familiar items that all their things will be carefully packed by movers and will arrive to us on a big truck very soon. We also take practical steps to assure them that good things are coming next: we take them to visit their new school, we drive by our new home for a little peek at where we'll be living, we scope out the best playgrounds, restaurants, museums and family attractions near to our new home in preparation for family days spent together and we remind them of all the changes that have come before: that even though at the time change was hard, the adventure to come was worth the difficulty of the change before it.
As promised, these are my all time favourite at-home resources for helping kids with anxiety. My three oldest children each use some combination of these resources and each of them has benefited immensely from making these a part of their daily or weekly routine.
Childhood Anxiety Resources:
*The Feelings Series written by Trace Moroney: aimed at toddlers; this 10 book collection beautifully illustrates each emotion and safe, healthy ways to process the feelings involved
*Hey warrior written by Karen Young: book describing the origin and purpose of anxiety in a child friendly way
*www.heysigmund.com: childhood psychology based website with wonderful resources on anxiety
*Emotional ABC’s: an online, self-paced cognitive behavior approach to self-regulation and management of childhood anxiety
* Disney Pixar's Inside Out: I couldn't help but throw this one in there ... this movie does a wonderful job of examining the complex emotions of cross-country relocation and adjustment to transitions in an extremely clever and delightfully child friendly way (It's a favourite of my children!)
Also, for fellow Australian Defence families: Please don’t forget that Open Arms is a resource for current and previously serving ADF members and their immediate families. They provide a range of mental health services, all free of charge. You can contact the Open Arms 24-hour hotline on: 1800 011 046 to arrange family or individual counselling with a telephone/online or in-person therapist near you.
For any of you who are seasoned movers; how do you prepare your young children? - leave a comment below!
