Supporting your anxious child

This resource supports professional care, it does not replace it. You will find here the description of anxiety disorders as clinicians use it, but reading a description does not allow anyone to make a diagnosis: only a child psychiatrist, a paediatrician or a trained psychologist can do that. No decision about medication is ever made by reading a text, including this one: it is made with the doctor who follows your child. And if your child talks about dying, hurts themselves, refuses to eat, or has not been to school for several days, do not finish this reading before making an appointment.

1. Before you start

Your child asks you ten times whether you will really be there at the school gate. They refuse to sleep over at their cousin's. Their stomach hurts every Sunday evening. They call out three times a night. They will not order for themselves at a restaurant, will not go to sports club any more, will not walk into a room where there are people. You answer, you reassure, you go with them, you arrange things — and yet, month after month, the list of what they can no longer do gets longer.

This resource is written for that situation. It concerns children and teenagers of roughly 4 to 18 years old in whom anxiety is taking up too much room: fears, worries, refusals, physical complaints, outbursts at the moment of facing something.