14 Jan How to help your nervous or worried child by “simply” listening
When your child is nervous and/or worried, it is often parents’ first instinct to try to fix the problem – and why wouldn’t you? You love your child, and that’s why you do it. However, sometimes, fixing the problem isn’t what is needed.
What parents often do when children are nervous and/or worried.
When children are nervous or worried, parents often attempt to reason with the child, show them the bigger picture, present positives, teach skills and strategies to deal with the feelings of being nervous/worried. At other times, parents might simply try to distract the child from their nervousness/worries. Notice that these are all things parents might do, and they sometimes work.
Sometimes, however, you may find that these actions don’t work. If so, this blog is for you.
Some parents will find that, despite giving their child reasons why they should not be nervous/worried, and teaching them skills and strategies, their child remains nervous/worried regardless. Reminding and re-teaching seems to have no effect. The child may know what they need to do, they may know the logical reasons, they may really want to try but are somehow unable to and feel stuck in their nervousness and unable to make things work.
For these children, then, it is likely that the issue isn’t a lack of knowledge about the reasons, the positives, or the skills/strategies. What, then, to do??
Listen.
Listening with an attitude of being curious, while feeling relaxed and confident while keeping things moving forward, if possible, can be very helpful to nervous and worried children. Listening supports children’s ability to be resilient and deal with their feelings and thoughts on their own.
Listening allows you to sit alongside your child as they (not you) process their feelings (i.e., their experience of their interior world). The interior world of the nervous and worried child becomes less scary or at least more tolerable when they are sitting with a calm, relaxed and confident adult (you, the parent).
When you are focusing on listening and acknowledging your child’s feelings, you will notice that you are not rushing in and trying to “fix the problem”. Notice that this means saying a lot less than you are used to and notice if this is uncomfortable for you!
The uncomfortableness of “just” listening.
Just listening in this specific way can feel very uncomfortable for many parents who haven’t done it before!! It may initially feel completely at odds with the love you have for your child, which demands that you act and do something to ease your child’s pain.
So, know that you can work towards being comfortable with these uncomfortable feelings. When you listen to your child from a place of feeling calm, confident and relaxed, your nervous and worried child will sense this coming from you.
- They are likely to draw upon your calmness and confidence, to help them begin to face the nervous and worried feelings/thoughts within their interior world.
- They are more likely to be able to process these nervous and worried thoughts and feelings and work through them productively when you listen to them.
Listening is a skill.
Listening can be highly effective. However, it’s not easy because parents have to actively “do nothing”.
However, if you notice your uncomfortable thoughts/feelings when trying to listen (e.g., “I feel like I’m doing nothing”, “I don’t want them to feel this way”), you will come to realise that the managing your own thoughts and feelings, while listening, is hard and that you are definitely “doing something”. You’re just doing something in a way that either wasn’t obvious to you before, or you may have previously viewed listening as a passive activity.
Take a look at the blog “Listening skills for parents” to find out more about how to listen to your child. If you find that you might need more help than the blog, know that you’re not alone or unusual.
If you find yourself wanting more help with this, you might like to consider seeing one of the child psychologists at Prosper Health Collective for some extra support. These types of problems are best dealt with sooner rather than later before they become entrenched and more difficult to overcome.
