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Learning Hub

Anxiety and Stress

Resources: Websites, Tools & Books

Websites

Tools

  • Certificate of Awesome Achievement.  It's been shown time and again that appreciating what children do right, rather than focusing on correcting what's wrong, is the most effective way to support their growth.  Use these certificates to provide visible recognition for your children's achievements.            

    HINT: don't just wait for those giant accomplishments -- like straight A's or 100% on a test.  Reinforce your children's efforts.  For some children, having the courage to pick up the phone and order a pizza is a great step forward in their social confidence.  That's cause for celebration!  Maybe it's being assertive with a problem peer; maybe it's starting s school project two weeks ahead of time rather than waiting until the night before it's due.  Each of these represents important growth for your child.  Being able to appreciate the many achievements that make up an ultimate large success is one key to effective parenting.

  • Certificate of Grand Accomplishment.  It's been shown time and again that appreciating what children do right, rather than focusing on correcting what's wrong, is the most effective way to support their growth.  Use these certificates to provide visible recognition for your children's achievements.            

    HINT: don't just wait for those giant accomplishments -- like straight A's or 100% on a test.  Reinforce your children's efforts.  For some children, having the courage to pick up the phone and order a pizza is a great step forward in their social confidence.  That's cause for celebration!  Maybe it's being assertive with a problem peer; maybe it's starting s school project two weeks ahead of time rather than waiting until the night before it's due.  Each of these represents important growth for your child.  Being able to appreciate the many achievements that make up an ultimate large success is one key to effective parenting.

  • Great Successes.  Teach your children to recognize their own successes.  Daily life holds lots of challenges -- from asking another child to play at recess to finishing a project on time.  A task that is easy for one child can present a significant hurdle for another.  By appreciating children's efforts to surmount their personal hurdles, parents demonstrate respect and acceptance -- and that's how children learn to accept and respect themselves!    

    HINT: Success and perfection are not the same thing!  Part of building resilience and self esteem is teaching children to feel pride in progress toward a goal rather than withholding celebration until perfection is achieved.

  • I Found Out Something About Myself Today.  Children strive throughout childhood and adolescence to develop a strong sense of self.  It starts with the discover in infancy that they are separate from their parents and, moving into their second year, that they can disagree with them!  Children who have a strong sense of who they are, what they believe, what values they hold are less vulnerable to peer pressure and have less of a need to rebel in adolescence.  Demonstrate your respect for your child's process of self-discovery by offering this tool.                   

    HINT: If your child is curious, it can be fun to look at what you've learned about him, using the PARENTING COMPASS, next to his conclusions about himself.  Just listen and share.  Don't be insistent about your point of view.  If he says he likes red and you think he prefers purple, that's okay!  What is important is to communicate your enjoyment of his process of self-discovery.

  • My Action Plan.  My Action Plan shows your child how to set a goal and make a plan to achieve it.  Use this tool together with My Goal Tracker, a tool to help your child follow through on her Action Steps so that she can reach her goal.

    Moving from vision to accomplishment requires a set of skills that parents can teach.  Use My Action Plan to show your child how to put a goal into words and how to think through the Action Steps he’ll have to take in order to reach that goal.  Guide the process by being curious.  Ask questions like, “What do you think you’ll have to do to make that happen?” and “How often (or how many times) do you think you’ll need to do that?”

    HINT: Start small!  Use this tool with early elementary age children on goals that they can achieve quickly.  They’ll gain a strong feeling of competence and of their ability to decide what they want – and go after it.

  • My Goal Tracker.  Self-esteem is directly connected to achievement.  That’s great news, because you can teach your children the skills to name their goals and reach them.  My Goal Tracker is designed to allow children to monitor their own progress on the Actions Steps that lead to achieving their goals.              

    HINT: Celebrate success!  Consider going shopping for the stickers of your child’s choice to use on the Goal Tracker.  (Try the scrapbooking section of your favorite crafts store.)  Make sure to share the pride and delight you feel as your child takes steps towards reaching a goal.  Having their efforts recognized and genuinely appreciated is a reward in itself.

  • Our Hours:  My Day in Pictures.  Where would you be without your daily planner to remind you what needs to be done and when?  Your kids may feel just as confused about their daily schedule, even if the routine is predictable.  Teaching your child to understand time can help your family during daily routines and can even cut down on tantrums.  However, time is not an easy concept for kids to grasp. The old saying, “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” applies here.  Each page in the Our Hours booklet lets you pair a picture of your child in a daily activity with a clock showing the time it occurs and a simple description that you’ll write together. You can put many pages together to create a book that your child will love to read again and again!                   

    HINT: Just beware: One drawback to teaching your child about time may be that when you say you’ll be out of the bathroom in five minutes, they may hold you to that!  (for ages 3 and up)

 Bookshelf

General

  • Freeing Your Child from Anxiety: Powerful, Practical Solutions to Overcome Your Child's Fears, Worries, and Phobias, Tamar E. Chansky, Broadway, 2004.

    Tamar Chansky, Ph.D. is founder of The Children’s Center for OCD and Anxiety. Author of Freeing Your Child from Obsessive Disorder, she has appeared frequently on television and radio. Chansky talks about fear and its constructive, protective role. She then examines the manifestations of childhood fears, including social anxiety, hair-pulling, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Chansky provides an approach to help your child overcome his/her fears.

  • The Hurried Child:  Growing Up Too Fast, Too Soon, David Elkind, Ph.D.

    Dr. Elkind talks about the stressors that our children are facing. He draws attention to the dangers of exposing our children to overwhelming pressures and the ways we can help to reduce these pressures for our children and minimize the damage that can be caused.

  • The Power of Play, How Spontaneous Imaginative Play Leads to Happier, Healthier Children, David Elkind, Ph.D.

    "The silencing of children's play is as harmful to healthy development, if not more so, than is the hurrying of children to grow up too fast too soon," a quote written by  Dr. David Elkind from The Power of Play, a book  about the importance of unstructured, imaginative play for children.

  • Helping Your Anxious Child: A Step-By-Step Guide for Parents, Sue Spence, Vanessa Cobham, Ann Wignall, and Ronald M. Rapee, New Harbinger Publications, 2000.

    This book explains reasons for your child’s anxiety. The authors also discuss the link between thoughts, feelings, and anxiety. They teach how your child can adjust his or her thoughts to become more realistic and less anxiety-provoking. The solutions discussed empower both parent and child.

  • The Anxiety Cure for Kids: A Guide for Parents, Elizabeth DuPont Spencer M.S.W, Robert L. DuPont M.D., Caroline M. DuPont, M.D.

    Dr. Robert DuPont is a psychiatrist who has been in practice for 35 years. His daughter, Elizabeth DuPont Spencer is a social worker specializing in anxiety disorders. His other daughter and co-author, Caroline DuPont, is a psychiatrist and on faculty at John Hopkins University. The authors use dragons and wizards as analogous figures to help parents and children understand and treat anxiety. Their approach is to turn the “What ifs” that plague anxious children’s minds into “What is’s.”

  • Helping Your Child Overcome Separation Anxiety or School Refusal: A Step-by-Step Guide For Parents, Andrew R. Eisen Ph.D, Linda B. Engler Ph.D., Joshua Sparrow, New Harbinger Publications, 2006.

    Eisen and Engler both direct Anxiety Disorders clinics and work in private practice. Their approach is to guide parents to support each child’s autonomy and confidence. The book offers strategies to help children achieve healthy separation.

  • When Children Refuse School: A Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Approach (Therapist Guide), Christopher A. Kearney & Anne Marie Albano, Oxford University Press, 2007.

    Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been shown to be a highly effective treatment for children who have anxiety-related difficulties remaining in classes for an entire day. This Guide outlines 4 treatment protocols based on CBT principles that can effectively address the main types of school refusal behavior.

Books for Children

Ages 4 to 8

Ages 5 to 13

Ages 10 to 14