Category: Children’s Anxiety

What Happens When Someone I Love Can’t Get Better: A Book to Prepare and Cope with End of Life 

By Jenni Rogers (Author), Sara Olsher (Author) (2024).

From Amazon.com: “It’s a conversation no one wants to have – you just found out someone you love is dying or needs hospice, and you don’t have as much time as you’d hoped. How do you tell the kids? Where do you start?

Millions of families, when faced with a shortened life expectancy, struggle with how to talk to their kids about it. We don’t want to take away their innocence or end their childhood. How do we have this conversation in a way that isn’t devastating or super scary? We start by making it make sense, from a scientific point of view.

Join Mia and her stuffed giraffe Stuart as they explain how bodies work and what happens when important body parts aren’t able to do their jobs anymore. What Happens When Someone I Love Can’t Get Better uses bright and engaging illustrations to explain what keeps bodies alive and helps reduce confusion about why bodies die.

It covers important topics such as:

  • how internal organs are supposed to function
  • what happens when internal organs stop functioning properly
  • the role of medicine and surgery in treatment
  • what happens when medicine is no longer effective
  • comfort care and hospice
  • legacy building and memory keeping

…all using child-friendly terms that explain and normalize death.

Open, Honest, and Accessible: Kids can handle learning the truth about most any situation – as long as it’s presented in a way that makes sense to them.

Validation of Feelings: By shining a light on big (and sometimes shameful) feelings, this book validates kids’ feelings and experiences, reassuring them that their emotions are normal and encouraging them to share with a trusted grown-up, in addition to providing suggestions for coping.

Resource for Caregivers: When there’s no resource to make hard conversations easier, grown-ups are far less likely to have them. This book aims to empower adults and kids with knowledge, which is proven to help kids through traumatic situations.Therapeutic and Educational Tool: What Happens When Someone I Love Can’t Get Better is a go-to book in hospitals, schools, counseling settings, and support groups. There are no references to God or the afterlife, leaving room for families to have discussions based on their own belief system.”

Helping Your Anxious Teen: Positive Parenting Strategies to Help Your Teen Beat Anxiety, Stress, and Worry

By Sheila Achar Josephs, PhD  (2017)

From Amazon.com: ““… thoughtful tools for helping young people help themselves.”
—Library Journal

Parenting a teen isn’t easy, but parenting an anxious teen is especially challenging. Written by a psychologist and expert on adolescent anxiety, this essential book will show you what really works to overcome all types of teen anxiety and how to apply specific skills to support your teen.  
 
Most parents find it frustrating when common sense and logical methods such as reassurance don’t seem to work to allay their teen’s anxiety.  They want to know:  Why is anxiety so hard to get rid of once it takes hold?  Why aren’t my efforts to help working?  And how can I best help my teen break free from anxiety to become happy and resilient? 
 
This powerful book, based on cutting-edge research and cognitive behavioral strategies, will help you develop the know-how to effectively manage teen anxiety.  You’ll learn the best ways to support your teen in overcoming problematic thinking and fears, discover what behaviors and coping strategies unwittingly make anxiety worse, and understand how anxiety is best defeated with surprisingly counterintuitive methods.  Step-by-step guidance, along with numerous real-life examples and exercises, will help you to:

  • Sensitively redirect your teen’s worries when they intensify
  • Reduce social anxiety, perfectionism, and panic attacks
  • Proactively address common triggers of stress and anxiety
  • Implement a proven approach for decreasing avoidance and facing fears

From overcoming minor angst to defeating paralyzing fear, you and your teen will feel empowered by radically new ways of responding to anxiety. With Helping Your Anxious Teen, you’ll have a wealth of research-backed strategies to lead you in being an effective anxiety coach for your teen.”

Video for Kids: Why Do I Have Anxiety?!

At Parenting Survival for All Ages

January 24, 2018

This video is not intended to replace medical advice. This is for information purposes only. This video is for informational purposes only and should not be used to replace the guidance of a local mental health professional. Kids can’t fight anxiety until they understand anxiety. Parents often skip this step and wonder why their child’s anxiety never gets better. The best way to help kids with anxiety is to take the time to explain how anxiety works. So how do you explain anxiety to them in a way where they’ll not only get it, but be motivated to work on it? Have them watch my YouTube video made just for anxious kids to watch. In this short video I explain what anxiety is, why kids get it and how it works. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for new videos every week created just for kids with anxiety and OCD. *** Sign up for my e-mail newsletter at: http://madmimi.com/signups/188009/join Subscribe to my Podcast: The AT Parenting Survival Podcast https://www.anxioustoddlers.com/podcast/ For my online OCD class: Parenting Kids with OCD Http://anxioustoddlers.teachable.com/p/child-ocd For more support parenting a child with anxiety or OCD visit: http://www.anxioustoddlerstoTeens.com Sign up to get notified when my online Social Anxiety Class opens: http://bit.ly/Socialanxietysignup To join my private Facebook group visit: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATpar… For AT Parenting online classes visit: http://anxioustoddlers.teachable.com For the AT Parenting Class: Teach Your Kids to Crush Anxiety: http://anxioustoddlers.teachable.com/… For my anxiety books visit: https://www.amazon.com/Natasha-Daniel… https://www.anxioustoddlers.com/paren… Other social places I hang out: http://www.facebook.com/anxioustoddlers http://www.pinterest.com/anxioustoddlers http://www.twitter.com/anxioustoddlers http://www.instagram.com/anxioustoddlers

CategoryPeople & Blogs

Keep Talking: Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents

Brattleboro Retreat

November 13, 2014

Research shows that children with anxious parents are up to seven times more likely than other children to develop anxiety. An untreated anxiety disorder in a child is one of the top predictors of depression in adolescence and early adulthood, but it is also the most successfully treated mental health challenge. In this episode of Keep Talking, treatment specialist Lynn Lyons, LICSW, shares with Gay Maxwell of the Brattleboro Retreat what families can do to externalize, manage, and liberate themselves from the tyranny of anxiety with results that include new problem solving skills and greater self-confidence when facing uncertainty.

Category

Education

Anxious Little Pishy

By Brittany Joseph (Author), Christopher Joseph (Illustrator) (2018)

Age Range: 3 – 7 years

From Amazon.com: “Anxious Little Pishy is a beautifully illustrated, and genuine story about a small fish who suffers from anxiety early on in her childhood. Written with a delicate vocabulary for easy to understand reading, the story line is laid out in a simple yet informative context. Brittany Joseph writes this tale from a sincere and authentic point of view. Follow along as Little Pishy swims away from her anxiety.”

What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Anxiety (What-to-Do Guides for Kids)

By Dawn Huebner (Author), Bonnie Matthews (Illustrator). (2005)

Age Range: 6 – 12 years; Grade Level: 1 – 7

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From Amazon.com: “A Gold NAPPA (National Parenting Publications Awards) winner

Did you know that worries are like tomatoes? No, you can’t eat them, but you can make them grow, simply by paying attention to them. If your worries have grown so big that they bother you almost every day, this book is for you. What to Do When You Worry Too Much guides children and parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of anxiety. Lively metaphors and humorous illustrations make the concepts and strategies easy to understand, while clear how-to steps and prompts to draw and write help children to master new skills related to reducing anxiety. This interactive self-help book is the complete resource for educating, motivating, and empowering kids to overcoming their overgrown worries. 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.

From the Note to Parents:

If you are the parent or caregiver of an anxious child, you know what it feels like to be held hostage. So does your child. Children who worry too much are held captive by their fears. They go to great lengths to avoid frightening situations, and ask the same anxiety-based questions over and over again. Yet the answers give them virtually no relief. Parents and caregivers find themselves spending huge amounts of time reassuring, coaxing, accommodating, and doing whatever else they can think of to minimize their child’s distress.

But it doesn’t work. The anxiety remains in control. As you have undoubtedly discovered, simply telling an anxious child to stop worrying doesn’t help at all. Nor does applying adult logic, or allowing your child to avoid feared situations, or offering reassurance every time the fears are expressed.

This book is part of the Magination Press What-to-Do Guides for Kids® series and includes an “Introduction to Parents and Caregivers.” What-to-Guides for Kids® are interactive self-help books designed to guide 6–12 year olds and their parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of various psychological concerns. Engaging, encouraging, and easy to follow, these books educate, motivate, and empower children to work towards change.”

Coping Skills for Kids Workbook: Over 75 Coping Strategies to Help Kids Deal with Stress, Anxiety and Anger Workbook Edition

by Janine Halloran, MA, LMHC. (2018) From Amazon.com: “Dealing with stress, anxiety and anger are important skills to learn, but not all kids learn those strategies naturally. The Coping Skills for Kids Workbook can help teach children to calm down, balance their energy and emotions, and process challenging feelings. Author Janine Halloran, LMHC, share over 75 innovative, fun and engaging activities developed from her experience in schools, outpatient mental health clinics and as a mother.”