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In this episode, Jess and Scott discuss how to support anxious or worried kids. Jess, a psychotherapist, shares the "Mind Table" concept - a powerful tool for helping children manage anxiety and difficult emotions. She shares the story of her own daughter's fears and explains how visualizing different emotions as characters sitting around a table can help kids externalize and cope with their worries.
Jess and Scott explore why this approach works so well for children and how it differs from simply suppressing emotions. They also include practical tips for parents supporting anxious kids.
Listeners will learn about key signs of childhood anxiety, the importance of maintaining strong parent-child relationships when addressing fears, and why gradually exposing children to challenges (rather than total avoidance) helps build resilience.
With practical, real-life examples and Jess' clinical expertise, this episode provides valuable strategies for parents who want to help their children develop emotional awareness and healthy coping skills.
Check out the post Jess reads at the beginning of the episode here. [https://www.instagram.com/p/DBuwE5pgVXE/?img_index=10]
Click here to learn more about The Worry Toolkit [https://nurturedfirst.com/printables/the-worry-toolkit/] Jess and the Nurtured First team created to help parents support their anxious children.
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
Learn more about The Body Safety Toolkit here! [https://nurturedfirst.com/printables/the-body-safety-toolkit/]
We'd love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: podcast@robotunicorn.net.
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
My four-year-old watched Moana.
She became terrified of Shiny the Crab
One night she came down to the kitchen crying.
With sleepy eyes and her PJs on, she crumbled into my arms and said, Mom, all I can think about is shiny crab coming into our house at night.
What if he gets me?
We've been helping her with this fear for some time, but nothing was helping.
So on this night I said to her, I think you're ready to learn about your mind table.
Imagine in your mind there is a big table.
In one seat there is someone named Worry.
In the other seats are disgust, joy, surprise.
sleepy and sad.
At the head of the table sits someone tall and strong.
It's you.
You are the boss of your mind table.
Sometimes worry tries to take over and be the boss of your table.
Worry gets really pushy
She tells you things like, think of Shiny Crab, think about how scary he is, but here's what you need to remember.
Worry isn't the boss of your mind
You are.
Worry helps you.
She keeps you safe.
She is important.
But sometimes worry needs to sit back down at the table.
What do you think worry needs to hear right now?
Worry!
Sit back down!
Stop telling me about shiny crabs!
My daughter smiled as she imagined telling Wori to sit down.
Then we drew a picture of her mind table.
We drew herself being the boss and telling Wori to sit back down.
Understanding her mind table was the first step in helping her cope with her worries.
She put this picture by her bed
To remind her that she's the boss of her mind and she can tell Wori to sit down.
That was over three years ago.
For months she'd take her worry table picture everywhere she went with her.
She liked it as a reminder that she was safe.
Today, I found a picture of her worry table under her bed.
It had fallen there and we forgot to grab it.
Over time, with coping tools and the safety of her relationship with us
The big worries went away.
Worry stopped being the boss of her mind table.
It can feel really hard to know how to help your worried kids.
You want them to know they are safe and you also don't want to dismiss their feelings.
The mind table is one way to help your kids know that they are the boss of their mind.
Not worry.
That's a good post.
When was that posted?
October 29, 2024.
Oh, that was this year.
That was yeah, that was pretty recent.
Does she still have that in her room?
No, she when we moved, she didn't need the worry table anymore.
But she l legit had that and even at my parents when she'd sleep at grandma papa's.
She would bring the worry table with her there and everything.
Well truthfully I feel like she's not the same
in that way.
Like worry doesn't control her mind anymore, which is kind of cool.
Yeah.
It was cool because when we did the worry table with her, like I would actually hear her like at night sometimes say, Worry, sit down.
I don't need to.
You know, I could hear her saying it.
So the mind table for her worked really, really well.
And then the whole worry toolkit that we have, like all the different exercises in there really seemed to help
her learn how to kind of navigate her own anxiety.
Honestly she's very confident now than she was when she was little.
Like she'd be worried about being around other people and now she likes being in the school play and being up front in front of everyone and
It's not the same level of like that she used to have.
Yeah, and even watching shows and everything, like she'll get scared of certain parts, but it's not like it's gonna stop
her necessarily from watching.
She can differentiate.
Maybe it's because she's older too, but she can differentiate between movies and what's real, I guess.
So my initial instinct, and I I did read this and then looked at some of the comments and everything.
So my first question to you is
Did you copy Inside Out?
I laughed at the comments.
I know the answer to this.
Oh, I laughed at the comments like this is just the movie Inside Out.
Because I mean obviously the movie Inside Out is based off of something
Right?
Some psychological research.
Yeah.
And if you look at who helped produce the movie Inside Out, there's a lot of psychologists and I think there was two clinical psychologists that
And they had different clinics that would that helped them kind of create the concept.
They're referenced at the end of the movie.
I can't remember who.
Anyway.
That being said, the first time I did a post on the Mind Table was probably three or four years ago, so before the second Inside Out movie ever came out
And the mind table is really based off the work that I have done with anxious kids.
Yep.
And I would teach them the mind table.
So that dates back like ten years.
So I would say, no, this is not based on the movie Inside Out, but Inside Out is based on the work that a lot of us do as psychotherapists.
So it makes sense that they are aligned.
Now I looked into it.
It seems to be based on IFS, like a type of therapeutic, what do you call it, modality?
Yeah
I don't know if it actually is like if that's the purpose behind it.
Like they specifically tried to make it seem like that?
Not necessarily.
I would say when I was in my own IFS therapy many years ago, that's kind of when I started thinking about this idea for kids because I was doing IFS on myself and finding it really helpful.
Yep.
IFS isn't specifically like sitting at the mind table.
That's something that's a lot of things.
IFS stands for internal family systems if you're interested in the type of looking it up.
It's a type of therapy.
It's created by someone named Richard Schwartz.
It's becoming increasingly popular.
Yeah.
Which is great because I really enjoy IFS.
When I did review it on like I looked for research that's out there.
It seems to be evidence-based, so that's good.
Yeah, IFS is great and a lot of our clinicians at our practice use it too.
So this idea of the mind table, that's something that when I was doing my own IFS work and I was working with kids at the same time, I was kind of visualizing like how can I bring this all together.
And I really liked the idea of helping kids draw out their own mind table and like name all the different people around it.
So whether it was worry or maybe anger was the boss, right?
And and trying to
see what all the different people had to say and how they were helping and then the IFS idea of but at the head of the table is the self, like the truest version of you.
and you can talk to the different parts that sit around it.
So that's kind of where the idea came from.
And it was really cool to see in therapy what would happen when we would draw out the mind table and kids would be able to talk to all these different parts of themselves.
And then when our own daughter started struggling with worry, I waited till she was like three or four to kind of bring this up.
And it was really cool to see how much it resonated with her
And then from there we created the worry toolkit and tons of kids have been using it and yeah, I I just think that visual really resonates with a lot of children.
Yeah, I mean we did it you did it in that, you did it in the anger tool.
I feel like a lot of our toolkits are
Wait, no.
Did you include the mind table in the other ones?
Or is it just a little bit more?
The mind table was only included in the worry toolkit.
Okay.
Well I mean you can use it for all of the different emotions, but you can use it for anything, really.
So obviously you found it helpful when you've done therapy with children.
Why do you think
This concept of like a mind table is so helpful for kids?
I think children I mean honestly it's helpful for adults too.
You probably see that.
The next phase of my questioning.
Yeah.
But the mind table is really helpful for kids because it's something they can draw out so they can truly visualize it.
Um, the other thing, so if you're drawing it out with your kids, you might draw a table, right?
And then you might say, let's think about all the different people or
different parts that are in your mind, right?
And so you might draw out joy.
Okay, so what does joy look like?
Like happiness?
Some kids will draw like a big sunshine or just a letter H or like it kind of depends on your kid
And you can let them decide what that part looks like, right?
Yeah, our daughter just did letters, I think.
I think she did letters.
So a big letter H and then maybe you color it yellow or something for happy.
And then when we get to the maybe emotion or the part that your child is struggling most with, you might say, what does worry look like?
And I remember when I was doing this with our daughter, one of the things like so she drew out worry as
Shiny the crab.
Yeah, right.
Right.
Well she had a few different things though, didn't she?
She had she doesn't like snakes, so she drew out snakes and She drew out a snake, she drew out Shiny the Crab, and she drew out the Grinch.
Oh yes.
The Grinch was the big one too.
The same era.
There was three
really big fears.
And it was interesting.
So everything else is a letter and then worry is the Grinch, the shiny crab and the snake.
And what that does is it helps our kids express what's going on in their mind.
So now they're not alone with it.
It's down on paper.
And it also helps them externalize it.
And what that means is when worry is in our head, it can just feel all consuming.
It can feel like
we are worry.
Like we can't really separate ourselves from the worry feeling that we have.
But when you can draw out what that feeling looks like, you can talk to it as if it's a separate part of you and it's not all of who you are.
We'll do that with kids in therapy in all sorts of way, right?
Like
Some therapists say and I don't love the worry monster thing, but they'll be like, draw out your worry monster.
Like what does worry look like?
I personally don't like the monster language.
I like to teach kids in therapy that worry is there to support you.
Just sometimes worry is trying to support you when you don't actually need worry to support you, right?
And that's why we just ask worry to sit back
down at the table because sometimes worry is helpful.
The worry is not always bad.
And externalizing it like that allows us to talk to each of these individual parts as they are.
Because we are not one part.
Like we are not only happy.
We're not only sad.
We're not only worried.
We are nor should we nor should we be one thing, right?
We shouldn't be happy all the time.
We need all of these different parts to function as our best selves.
And as adults and as kids, and we can learn to talk and piece these parts out and know that we are not just one, we are all the things.
It can help us learn to cope with our emotions in a much better way.
Well, I can see how that would be beneficial for kids 'cause let's say our daughter when she was three or four years old and you were going over it with her, she knew how to draw things, but she didn't know how to journal out
her thoughts and feelings and all that kind of stuff.
So I can see how the concept of a mind table helps you visualize that there are these parts to you and that there are these feelings that you have, but in like a different way than just journaling it out.
Mm-hmm
Something nice too, just on the topic of drawing out your worry.
So I remember one of her fears was snakes.
And I'm not exactly sure where that stemmed from.
Maybe she saw a snake, she decided snakes were scary
And so at one point I had her draw out, okay, what does this fear of snakes look like for you?
And so she drew out all these really scary looking snakes.
And when they're young, when kids are young like this, you can help them make that worry just
feel less daunting and scary.
So we took the scary looking snakes and then we said, okay, let's make them silly.
Yeah.
And then we added eyes, we added
like little funny things on the snake.
Draw a top hat on it and then gave it a name.
I think it was like s
scary, silly, soupy snake or something like that.
And then now I say, okay, so now when you start to visualize the scary snakes in your mind, let's think about scary, silly, soupy snake.
And then she starts to laugh.
Yeah.
And then we're taking away the power of the worry, making it silly and playful, which works really well for kids too.
Mm-hmm.
I think that makes sense.
Like it makes sense that it works for kids.
Honestly, I can see it.
It's playful, it's fun
that to me makes sense and you can use it with any feeling or emotion that they have.
One comment that I read was that it kind of felt like you were saying, well just don't think about it.
Right?
Which doesn't seem to be the most
healthy way of dealing with your emotions.
So why is this not that Yeah.
Great question.
Because I feel like it could very easily turn into something that is like worry sit back down.
And like just always shoving worry down instead of dealing with Which is not necessarily healthy.
either, right?
So I can see where where their point comes from because it kind of feels that way a little bit that you're just kind of saying, worry, that's enough.
I don't need to right now, go sit down.
And you're sort of suppressing
Yeah, so if every time worry comes up, you're saying, worry, sit back down, I don't need you, worry is gonna push its way back even further, right?
But I I think that there's a difference between let's say
I'm giving her that story at bedtime.
At bedtime, she doesn't need to have Worry stand up and talk to her about Shiny the Crab, right?
She needs
Sleepy.
We called it sleepy to stand up and help her go to sleep.
And what can be really helpful for kids and adults is to know that there will be a time that we're processing that worry.
Sometimes it can be called containment and therapy, but like sometimes we're taking something big that feels overwhelming and daunting and being like, I'm gonna give myself a time and space to focus on processing this, but I'm not gonna let it take over my mind the entire day
So sometimes we would say, okay, tomorrow when you wake up in the morning after we have breakfast, let's talk about the Grinch and let's talk about Shiny the Crab and let's talk about where that comes from.
So we're still gonna find out why that part is there.
and where that part came from and why it's trying to give you a message.
But we might not need to do that at all times, because that can feel really overwhelming for a kid
And for an adult to feel like at all times they have to try and figure out why that's going on in their mind.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
It kind of does to a point.
I mean looking into I've read
What is that one book on internal family systems already?
So I kind of know about the topic.
Yeah.
And not all of this is like direct from internal family systems.
No, I know.
It's it's a variation.
Like it's kind of based on that, based on some other things.
My approach is very like it has lots of different approaches in it.
I see the value in sort of visualizing your internal world as the true you.
And then all of these parts that kind of protect you from things around you.
And then you're able to, if you're that mindful of what's going on in your head, you can sort of separate and understand where
Like hey, worry is not really necessary at this point.
Like it doesn't really make sense for it to be protecting me.
Mm-hmm.
Well, it makes sense that it's protecting me, but it doesn't need to be doing that right now.
Yes.
So I under I like I understand
that part of it.
It's just how do you okay, let's say someone is using the worry toolkit.
Yeah.
And they read it very literally.
And it's almost as though that's what they teach their kids.
Like how do you make sure that they don't do that
Yeah, I mean I feel like in the worry toolkit we have other worksheets in there so that that's not the only thing that you're doing with your kids because we do want to understand as parents, this is our role, where is this worry coming from?
Because worry is a messenger and we have that in that
This is not a big ad for the toolkit, by the way.
But we have that in the toolkit too.
We talk about worry being a messenger, right?
And what message is worry trying to give us?
Yeah, I just I can foresee, especially someone looking at just an Instagram post.
Yeah.
They could potentially take that
As the only which is where that I think that comment stemmed from.
Like maybe they've never seen anything else that we've created.
That's where Instagram's tough, right?
Yeah.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week our daughter asked Scott a truly
kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from
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So let's take that example of like the Grinch, right?
What can we learn from her worry in that situation?
What do you think?
'Cause you're like an average dad, right?
So if you're an average dad and you're trying to help our daughter understand and yourself understand, where did this worry about the Grinch come from and what can we learn from it
Well so I know where it came from.
It came from the Grinch movie with Jim Carrey in it.
Yeah.
I think it originally stemmed from just seeing the trailer on Netflix.
So it wasn't even that we watched it, it's just that
It stopped on Netflix on the trailer and then it just sort of started playing.
And it freaked her out because I mean of course they make it even more dramatic in the trailers, make him seem evil.
Yeah.
And like he's trying to hurt the one girl or like scare her or something like that and they're purposefully making him seem kinda scary.
Right
So I get that that's sort of where it came from.
She saw this scary thing that she's never seen.
It looks real.
The Grinch looks real on the screen
So she's like, I wasn't expecting to see that.
I'm just scrolling through Netflix.
Now I'm alarmed because I wasn't expecting to be terrified while I'm scrolling Netflix.
I don't know if it's a big thing.
Well we were scrolling Netflix and just stopped on it.
Yeah, exactly, because we like that movie.
Yeah
I don't know if this is a real person or not.
If it is a real person, that's quite terrifying.
Because it looks real.
And now my brain doesn't know how to process
the difference at four years old between imagination, which is like a movie, and reality.
And so I'm now thinking that this scary Grinch is real.
Yep.
And that threatens my safety.
So that's kind of what's going through her mind at that time, seeing that image.
And I will say now at seven and a half, the Grinch is probably one of her favorite
Christmas movies.
Right.
So above and beyond the mind table, we did a couple other things to help her get over specifically the fear of the Grinch
And I want to talk about that because I think something that parents will often do that can further a child's anxiety.
And we have to be mindful with the way that we do this.
But a child says, I'm terrified of the Grinch, right?
And we go, oh boy
So I never want you to see anything to do with the Grinch again because you're scared.
Right.
But what does that do to a kid?
Well, it makes you think, well, then it must be really, really scary because my parents won't even let me see it again.
Something to be scared of.
Yeah.
I think I handled that more than you did.
Yeah, you handled that part of it.
Yeah.
Because you you worked on the like let's say the mind table, the worry toolkit, that's the emotion stuff.
Yeah.
But what I did was I explained to her
That it was actually a person that was in a costume that took like seven or eight hours to put on.
And he c this person kind of turned into
a quote unquote grinch just because of how terrible the process was to get it on.
And then I explained that a a few more times and just she had a ton of questions on well why why would he have to sit there for so long and
Answered all the questions just plainly.
And then I think I found like a mini documentary or something like that of how they made it.
That movie came to be and showed all the cameras and
Kind of like this podcast, like we have cameras behind the scenes.
You almost can't even see it when you're in here with the lights on you.
But then when you go behind the scenes, you see there's a whole lot more.
than just the two of us sitting at a table.
So I was trying to explain like the whole process of creating the movie and then that they're real humans that are doing it, but they're paid
to specifically take on a special character that they're playing.
And I think that was kind of the first time I really explained that whole process to her.
And I think once she understood, oh, it's a character and it took him hours to get in his costume and this is what he really looks like.
Then it was like, oh that's actually interesting.
I showed her a whole bunch of pictures of what Jim Carrey actually looks like
And then she slowly became, I don't know, warmer to the idea of just maybe we watch a couple minutes.
Like a couple minutes.
That's what sh she and now our youngest daughter says, couple minutes.
Couple minutes
And eventually we are able to watch the whole movie with her.
Yeah, and now that's what like if if it was up to her, she would be watching that movie every Friday night during the holidays.
And I mean that we can't do that for every movie because sometimes kids will just see a movie that's just frankly inappropriate for them to see.
Yeah, I mean but you can't throw on the Terminator and expect that to to go very well.
I think movies and anxiety in kids like
Sometimes kids are exposed to movies that they shouldn't be seeing and it does lead to anxiety because their brains can't process it.
But if your child, let's say they walked downstairs and you were watching a movie and you didn't know they were standing behind you or something
I remember doing that to my parents once.
I can't remember what it was.
It was like King Kong or something like that.
And being terrified.
I didn't tell them because I didn't want them to know that I was downstairs when I wasn't supposed to be
We don't want to leave them alone with their fear ever and we don't want to just dismiss it.
Like if we just dismiss the th the Grinch and say, Oh, don't worry, it's not real.
It wouldn't be enough.
Yeah.
And then all she learns is, well, I can't come to Mom and Dad with this fear.
I gotta just deal with it myself, and that makes it get worse and worse.
I saw something from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield once about
how they plan for like he was on a space shuttle, so plan for a launch, like a rocket launch, and how they research and they practice and they just
do as much as they possibly can to prepare for this incredibly nerve-wracking event.
So much so that the only change is like the feeling of, let's say, the inertia on or the acceleration on their bodies.
But otherwise everything else is essentially the exact same and they know exactly how to go through the process of getting into space.
I've taken that in a lot of cases where it's better to know information
and prepare yourself because it makes things feel less scary.
So I've taken that with our kids too.
Like the more information or knowledge they can acquire, it just ends up making things feel less scary to you.
So that's
That's the approach I took with the Grinch.
I taught her, explained to her the whole process of making a movie and one like the Grinch and explained all the people that were in it.
and showed her real pictures of all those people and it slowly over time helped her understand and prepare her for the fact that this thing that she's watching on TV is actually not necessarily real.
There's real people and real things that are happening
But it's sort of a made up story that's fun.
Right.
So I do want to have a caveat to that though.
So there's a couple of things that when we deal with anxious kids that we want to think about.
Yep.
So anxious kids
And all kids.
It's like Mr.
Rogers.
He has this cute little song, I like to be told when I do something new.
And I always think about that little song from Mr.
Rogers.
Like kids like to be told when they're doing something new
And the parent has to take the lead on that.
So don't wait for your kid to be like, can you tell me more about this and this plan?
Anxious kids
need to know what the plan is going to be, right?
And maybe it's not too far in advance because then they can get stuck on thinking about, well, what if this happens?
But they do need to know the plan and we need to be the ones leading that discussion.
Now my caveat comes in is that many times the anxious kids that come to us are asking about the plan over and over and over and over and over and over.
Right.
And parents come to me like I've told them the plan about a hundred times now and they want to know every single thing, like down to, you know, what color
this person's gonna be wearing when I get there.
Right.
So there can be a part where it gets too much for a kid and they wanna know so many details that we can't even answer.
And that's very, very, very common for anxious kids.
So I just I'm when you're describing that, I'm imagining the parent who has a super anxious kid who's like, I do tell them the plan, but it's never enough.
Yeah, that's true.
My only experiences with our oldest our kids and
They're not highly anxious, I would say.
Yeah, so I'd say let's say easier for me to do that with them.
Yeah, I'd say for the majority of kids and the majority of the time, I think that is the the right approach.
Now if your child's constantly like
Okay, but mommy, what about this?
And you've already told them the plan.
Sometimes that's just a sign that, okay, you're feeling anxious about this and and maybe
We need to support them with the anxiety and some some tools to cope and not always telling them the plan a million times.
So what you might do
If your kid's older, they can write it out.
They might write it in a journal.
Like, this is the plan.
This is what we're gonna do.
And if they keep asking you, okay, I told you the plan.
Why don't you go back to your journal?
The plan hasn't changed.
Or draw pictures the plan or something like that.
Yeah, like going to the doctor.
Oh
What's the doctor gonna say?
What are they gonna do?
What are they gonna check me?
Draw it out together and then refer your child back to the drawing.
Yep.
Repeatedly asking.
questions is one of the most common signs of anxieties in kids.
I was actually just gonna ask that.
So what are the main signs?
So that's one of them that you have an anxious child.
Yeah, so one of them would be repeatedly asking questions.
One of them might be really big meltdowns over doing something.
Well repeatedly asking questions about a specific thing that they're worried about.
Like you know that they're worried about.
Or not even necessarily, I guess.
Not even.
So I had a kid recently who his sister, let's say, was in karate and would repeatedly ask questions about her his sister going to karate
Well when is she going?
When will she be there?
How long will she be gone?
And the mom is like, Well, you're not even going, you know, so I don't understand why am I getting so many questions about this.
So we get curious, why is he asking so many questions about karate?
Okay, well that means that mom's gone.
Okay.
So what happens when mom's gone?
Well, the child has a really hard time being home with the babysitter.
Okay, so that's actually the issue here, right?
So
We want to just always You're getting curious.
You always want to get curious to try and understand.
But these recurring questions, even when you've answered it, I will say in my experience with anxious kids is one of the most common things.
Another another common thing would be like avoidance.
You know, I was thinking about our middle daughter who recently had like a choking
Incident, when she was on the highway, she choked on a a Timbit and I had to pull the van over on on the highway, which was quite scary because cars were
like flying past us.
I had to get her out of the car seat.
Don't come mom shaming me for giving my kid a timbit.
I have learned my lessons and not give them food while we're driving.
Yep.
But basically what happened after that is she didn't ever want to go on the highway again.
Yeah.
Still to this day she It's still hard to get better I went to Costco with her last night.
And she actually chose to go on the highway 'cause it's faster.
Yes.
She did that with me the other day too.
That's like only recently that she's been okay with going on the highway.
Right.
So for about six months
Anytime we got in the car, immediate tears are we going on the highway.
Right.
So sometimes we see anxiety come in like trying to avoid something.
Sometimes we see anxiety come out in really big meltdowns
over things and we don't necessarily know what.
Like a lot of times, let's say we're dropping a kid off at school, huge meltdown.
That can be a sign of anxiety.
Sometimes we'll see kids being really angry.
Anger is one of those like hidden signs of anxiety.
You think they're mad, but really they're stressed out about something.
Peeing the bed at night.
is a really common one that we see in in children, like repeatedly peeing the bed over and over, nightmares, unable to sleep well at night.
As our kids get older, we'll often see that.
Misbehavior.
So
kind of like again with the anger, like it's just misdirected anxiety.
It's coming out in different ways.
Sometimes kids will say that they're worried.
That's great.
Like I love when kids can actually just tell us.
But a lot of the times with anxious kids, they're not just telling us.
It's coming out in a lot of other ways.
Yep.
That makes sense
Well, and it's funny you say all those things.
Yeah.
I'm like, I'm pretty sure I had every single one of those as a gift.
Yeah, you probably did.
So it would make sense.
So it would add up.
Interesting.
Well, we see that a lot in kids, like they'll come to the office because, well, they won't stop wetting the bed and they're nine, right?
Let's work on this behavior of wetting the bed
And then the more we get curious, we try and understand.
Is that a behavior though?
Uh like it can be seen as behavioral.
Like sometimes a doctor will be like, oh, you should see a therapist for the bed wedding to, you know, try and change that.
And then we get curious and we're like, oh, okay.
Like
There's nightmares and the kid saw you know what I'm seeing a lot these days actually in anxious kids is they saw something on YouTube that was really scary and
I had that with a a little boy, he saw something on YouTube and it was really st terrifying for him and he wasn't supposed to be on YouTube, so he didn't want to tell his parents.
He was probably like nine and he started having bedwedding incidents.
And then they like ruled out all medical stuff and
the doctor's like, I I think he should just see a therapist.
So he saw me.
And we were doing a lot of like drawing out stuff and and going through stuff and many sessions in because this
this little boy was so guarded and did not want to get in trouble for watching YouTube.
Fair.
We got to the root of it, which was he saw something really terrifying that no kid should ever see while he was scrolling YouTube on his parents' iPad one night
Yep.
And he could not get the images out of his mind and he was having nightmares every night.
Makes sense.
So that's why, yeah, we want to get curious and and know that sometimes we'll see a symptom.
And we won't necessarily know what the anxiety is and the more we kind of unpack it, the easier it can be to to support the child.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what other things can parents do other than the mind table to help with worry
I think specifically with worry, I mean with all emotions, your child needs to know that you are on their team.
So the biggest thing that will increase the anxiety is
if there is a s like a separation or a rupture in the relationship.
Right?
So let's take this little boy for example.
His parents would often yell at him, get mad at him.
He was often in trouble.
So his anxiety is so much worse because he's not sure that he can actually tell his parents what's going on.
Right.
And so there's this kind of distance in the relationship and they can't talk it through together and that's why eventually he saw a therapist and highly recommend
therapy because then your therapist can also help you kind of restore that relationship.
But I would say letting your kid know you're on their team and you want to support them and you want to help them through it.
That is key.
And sometimes that looks like taking them to therapy and sometimes
I have said to parents before, like their child was really anxious and we got to the root of it.
It was because they really had no time with the parents.
They were so busy.
They were always rushing.
The dad just wanted to watch CNN when he got home every single night from work.
And that was the biggest issue because this little boy desperately wanted time with his father.
And I s kinda said like I can do what I can do in therapy, but at the end of the day this was many years ago, but at the end of the day
this anxiety is stemming from like this desire to be with you.
And you would be better off spending the hour that you're coming to me going and doing something special with your son, right?
And you know, in that case that didn't happen.
But I truly think if you have an anxious kid, it's time to tune back into the relationship as much as you can
and get that special quality time with them so that they can come to you and be like, the Grinch is scary or the highway is scary.
Yeah, that's probably the number one thing.
That one of their worries is not coming to you
Yes, exactly.
So we're gonna eliminate the worry that you're gonna get mad at them for their fears, right?
Something else that we really do wanna think about and like
I there's so much nuance here, so I'll be careful how I say it.
But not allowing your kid to just avoid all things that make them anxious.
Right.
So for example with the highway, I was very delicate in how I approached that, knowing that she had that choking incident and of course that was scary, right?
So of course we're drawing out what it felt like to choke on the side of the highway.
We're talking about safety, right?
Like you were safe.
Mom was there.
It felt scary.
It felt scary for me too.
Like I understand.
And like kind of talking through what happened, processing it, and then being like, we're gonna try going back on the highway again.
Yeah
Well, mostly cu because we have to.
We have to, right?
We can't avoid the highway forever.
And if we avoided the highway immediately after that and we're like, Okay, like you're too scared to go on the highway, we won't go back on, we're telling her the highway is scary, you're right.
And
it's not safe to go on and we don't feel capable to take you on.
So pretty soon after that we were back on the highway, but I was coaching her through, taking some deep breaths when we're on there.
We would start like small little stints on the highway and slowly kind of building on that and now
Sometimes I feel like and I I'm pretty sure we talked about this in in another episode, but sometimes I feel like you have to sort of push your kids a little outside of their comfort zone in order to help
show them that they're capable of doing things that they don't know how to do or that they've never done before.
Yeah, I think they're something or that they're they're worried about like our oldest
doing piano lessons for a couple months and already playing piano in front of the whole school.
There's two pieces, right?
There's helping your child with something that you know that they're capable of
without like forcing them to do something that they're not ready for.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
So it's it that's in knowing your own child, right?
And like we knew that our child was like capable of doing this
little piano performance in front of the school and that she wanted to, the motivation was there.
So we encouraged her to do it.
And then after she did it, then you can tell them the story of bravery, right?
Like you were nervous, but you still went up there and you
But you don't think, let's say with our middle daughter, sh we were to have this same exact same situation, but she's like, I don't want to do it.
Do you just stop there?
I don't think you necessarily stop there 'cause I think kids will often be like, I don't want to do it.
Yeah.
Right?
Especially our more sensitive kids.
But we do want to be mindful
Because like you'll hear stories of kids who are like, well, I was forced into this and almost in an angry way.
Not in a, I know you can do it in your brave and strong way, but like
You're gonna do it because I said so and I paid fifty bucks for your piano lesson.
You're gonna do it.
You know what I mean?
Like there's a very delicate difference in the way that you approach it.
So that's why I just think there's a lot of nuance there and it's always tuning in with your own child because you might have a more sensitive kid.
And and a ladder.
Like I always talk about a like a laddered approach to anxiety.
I used to like draw out a ladder for their parents and be like, Okay, let's even say sleep.
Like separation anxiety is huge at nighttime, right?
And so if your goal is to get your child to sleep in their own bed and every single night they're sleeping in your bed, you're not just gonna one night throw them in their own bed and be like, okay
I know you're capable of doing this, good night.
Right?
You're gonna build tiny successes up that ladder until the point where they can sleep in their own bed.
Help to show them that they're capable of doing it.
Right.
That's exactly what we did with the highway.
We took a laddered approach and now she can go back on the highway.
But I don't just one day say, let's drive for an hour on the highway.
Well, let us know.
We talked a lot about anxiety in kids and I feel like we need to do an episode on anxiety in adults and that parts work in adults because
I was just thinking about for myself, like we talk about the different parts of who we are.
And when I'm really anxious, sometimes I have to ask myself, like
Like how old is that part and what where did that come from?
And I think we should do an episode on that at some point.
This is like a teaser for a future episode.
People let us know if you like this episode and you want to hear more about
How we can do this sort of mind table-esque style of therapy.
Great.
Thank you for letting me therapist nerd out in this episode.
This was fun.
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