One step at a time

The activity

For an everyday fear, such as dogs, the dark or a new club: together you write the steps from easiest to hardest, and your child practises each one until it feels easy before they move up.

What it is for. Avoiding what your child is afraid of feels better at the time, and the fear tends to grow. If they face it in steps they have helped to choose, each a little harder than the last, they find out that they can cope with it.

• The first step. Read what to watch for, below, before you start. Then, on a calm day, ask your child what they’re afraid might happen, listen to the whole answer, and agree a goal, in their words, for the top of the ladder: “Stroke Nana’s dog.”

Safety. Every step must be safe in itself: a calm dog whose owner has agreed, never a dog you don’t know; an adult within reach near water; nothing at a height your child could fall from. A ladder is never used to make your child face a person.

When to get help. If your child has hurt themselves, or talks about not wanting to be alive, stay calm, thank them if they have told you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day: help them ask the surgery for an urgent appointment, and if it is closed, use the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page. If your child tells you that someone is hurting them, stay calm, thank them for telling you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day, using those routes; if the person hurting your child lives in your home or your child’s other home, go straight to children’s social care or the police. If your child is badly hurt, or may have taken too much of a medicine, get medical help straight away, even if they seem well. Stop the ladder and talk to your GP if the fear is getting worse, or is stopping your child going to school, sleeping or seeing friends; if your child has rituals they can’t stop, or keeps needing the same reassurance; if they have panic attacks; or if the fear began after something frightening happened and they are having nightmares or avoiding reminders of it.

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

The sheet that goes with it is free to print: The worry ladder.

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 them try.
• Anxiety, by Age. For parents of a child whose worry has started to make decisions for them, 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.