A way back to the room

The activity

A short noticing game, and for younger children a slow breath traced with a finger. Practise them together on calm days, so she already knows them on a hard one.

What it is for. In our experience, an anxious child is helped more by something she can do herself than by reassurance. If she learns this when nothing is wrong, she will already know it on a harder day.

• The first step. Choose a calm day and tell her what it is: “This is something people do when a worry gets loud. Let’s try it now, while nothing’s wrong.”

Safety. After something frightening, let her choose her senses, and do not ask her to close her eyes.

When to get help. This is practice, not a treatment. Talk to your GP about recurring panic, worry that stops her going to school, sleeping or eating, frightening intrusive thoughts, or several weeks of waking in fear. If she tells you that someone is hurting her, that she is hurting herself, or that she does not want to be alive, stay calm, thank her for telling you, do not promise to keep it secret, and act that day, using the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page.

The other five steps, and your part in it, are in the library.

The sheet that goes with it comes with a subscription: A way back to the room.

It goes with

• When Reassurance Stops Working. For parents whose child is anxious and can’t be talked out of it, however often the adults around her try.
• Anxiety, by Age. For parents whose child’s worry has started to make decisions for her, with what helps at each age and when to ask for help.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full.

Free on this subject

• Anxiety. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.
• Emotional regulation. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.