Tools to Help Our Kids Combat Worries
By Paint Her in Color Founder, Laura Spiegel
It’s 9:30 on a Friday night, and I’m laughing with my son about butt muscles. According to a good friend, many of us carry our stress in our gluteus maximus. I suppose it makes sense, being the biggest muscle in the body and all. But still, nothing derails a discussion quite like a butt.
My son giggles. I snort. We recite a few lines from Captain Underpants. And then we are back to business. Deep breathing and tensing and relaxing our muscles – all in the name of relaxation.
My son is only ten, but he carries some serious stress these days. He watches the COVID-19 trends like a hawk. He is obsessed with the notion of food poisoning, stomach bugs, and all things throwing up. He dreams of kidnappers plucking him off the streets and carting him off to God knows where.
The last nightmarish villain was a grandma with a cane. His soccer moves were no match for her might. It would have been funny, I suppose, if it didn’t feel so scary to him.
My friend who told us about butt muscles is a medical mama, too. Her son is a pediatric cancer survivor, and my son’s sister lives with cystic fibrosis. Different situations and diagnoses, but similar emotional journeys.
One important similarity? Our kids do not believe that rare events happen only to other people. Instead, they are a known entity.
The odds of contracting food poisoning from any given meal are very, very low. A kidnapper is probably not lurking around the corner as we speak. COVID, though frightening and real, will likely not befall my son tomorrow.
And yet… two of the rarest things ever have already happened within our sons’ families. Why shouldn’t they happen again?
My medical mama friend recently helped me to see my son’s thinking in this way. And both she (a clinical social worker by trade) and my dearest childhood friend (a mental health counselor) have given me tools to help my son work through this line of thinking and begin to combat his worries.
Here are a few of our favorite tools:
We tense and relax our muscles. We start at the top of the body and work our way down to our toes. Inevitably, the gluteus maximus talk invokes giggles. This is a good thing, as it helps to lighten the mood and take our attention off whatever’s rattling around in our brains.
We practice deep breathing. There are lots of ways to do this, but we like to inhale, hold it for 4 seconds, exhale for 7 seconds, and repeat. The act of deep breathing signals the nervous system to lower heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol - all of which can help provide a sense of calm. The counting itself helps to refocus the mind.
When our minds go into “What if?” mode, we don’t try to reason our way out of it. When my son expressed one of his go-to worries, I used to present him with concrete kidnapping stats, food poisoning odds, and COVID numbers. But that rarely worked. If there was a chance whatsoever - even 0.001% - that the blackberries he was eating had salmonella, his fears were confirmed. Instead of presenting facts and figures, I now try to get my son to think about other outcomes that could occur. “You’re right. I can’t promise you that the blackberries aren’t poisonous. There is always some chance, albeit small, that you will get sick and throw up from something you’re eating. But what are other ways this could turn out?” Inevitably, he gets to “I could eat them and be just fine.” And for the time being, that’s that.
I role model naming my own emotions and working through them. I’m fully aware that my son is not alone in his worries. I struggle too. Which is why alongside my medication, my therapeutic conversations, and my writing for catharsis, I practice all of the above skills too. I’m also working on naming my emotions (good and bad) in the moment and showing my kids how I work through them. “I’m feeling worried about that meeting tomorrow. I know I’ve done all I can to prepare, so I wonder why that is. Our brains can be so weird sometimes, can’t they? Let’s see if this deep breathing trick can calm it down…”
We focus on the bigger picture. We practice gratitude as often as we can. We try to not let a day go by where we aren’t expressing thanks for the roofs over our heads, the food in our stomachs, the doctors and medicines that give us health, and the friends and family whom we love and who love us. Yes, bad things can happen. They are a part of life for all of us. But so is the good.
Our tools aren’t perfect, and some days, they work better than others. But I like having them in my toolbox, and I think my son does too. He doesn’t refer to them as tools, though. They are his “secret weapons.”
Both my son and I are hoping to add to our toolbox/secret weapons stash over time. And as his sister grows and begins to experience the world in a fuller sense with all the emotions that come along with it, she’ll probably be reaching in too.
In the meantime, we’ll be here tensing our butt muscles and relaxing them. The ten-year-old in both of us giggling all the way…
What tools do you use to help your children combat worries? What works for your own stress? Share at https://www.facebook.com/paintherincolor or write to me at laura@paintherincolor.com!