Calming Your Anxious Child: Words to Say and Things to Do

by Kathleen Trainor

Practical, effective steps for parents to take as they help their child overcome anxiety. Ten million children in the United States―two million of them preschoolers―suffer from anxiety. Anxious children may be afraid to be out of their parents’ sight; they may refuse to talk except to specific people or under specific circumstances; they may insist on performing tasks such as brushing teeth or getting ready for bed in a rigidly specific way. For many children these difficulties interfere with doing well in school and making friends as well as with daily activities like sleeping, eating, and bathing. Untreated anxiety can have a devastating effect on a child’s future emotional, social, academic, and work life. And since most kids don’t naturally outgrow anxiety, parents need to know how to help. In Calming Your Anxious Child , Dr. Kathleen Trainor builds on cognitive behavioral therapy to provide practical steps for guiding parents through the process of helping their children manage their anxieties and gain control over their worry-based behaviors. Dr. Trainor’s method involves identifying the anxieties and the behaviors, rating them, agreeing on what behaviors to work on changing, identifying strategies for changing behaviors, noting and charting progress, offering incentives, and reinforcing progress. Combining family stories with practical advice and support, Calming Your Anxious Child teaches parents and caregivers how to empower their children to overcome their worried thoughts and behaviors. Children who have generalized anxiety, OCD, social anxiety, separation anxiety, phobias, or PTSD can all benefit from Dr. Trainor’s method, which also helps parents move from feeling controlled by their child’s anxiety to feeling that they are in control of their family’s future.

264 pages, Hardcover

Published June 15, 2016

Reviews

[Emily D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this book on display in the children's section of the library and after looking it over, I checked it out only intending to read one specific chapter I thought would be helpful. However, I ended up reading the book cover to cover because once I was introduced to the author's methods, I decided I liked her approach, and I wanted to see how she applied her approach to a variety of situations.
By the end, I think I learned as many strategies for helping myself with anxiety as I did for helping my kids. I think the strategies and concepts I learned from this book will be very useful in my life.

(p. 14) "As parents of anxious children, the message can't be, 'If it makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to do it.' With the TRAINOR Method, the message is "If it makes you uncomfortable, we will break it down into steps, because there's nothing to be afraid of; you can do it, and it's very important that you do it."

(p. 25) "As parents, from the time our newborn is placed in our arms, we have an instinct to protect and shelter our child from pain. Parenting anxious children demands the opposite response: we must support our children to push through their discomfort to get to the other side. We help our children learn to push themselves, even when it feels difficult, knowing that those anxious feelings will go away.
Protecting and sheltering your anxious child fuels the anxiety and makes it worse. An anxious child who is too comfortable is limited by the anxiety- her world will become smaller and smaller over time."

"His parents needed to understand that Patrick was a kid. He would choose what felt comfortable, not what was best for him. Knowing what is best for him is his parents' job."

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it really fascinating learning about the different types of anxiety and the strategies used to help each of these children work through it. If you have an anxious child, one of these chapters may be fitting for you to read and not necessarily the whole book.