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This guest blog post was written by Julian Hooks. He is a writer for TrainingInTheBay.com, a site that showcases companies in the Tampa Bay, Florida area dedicated to helping clients achieve their health and fitness goals. Read his blog to gain valuable knowledge about topics like dieting safety and more.
Children have a multitude of feelings and emotions that they do not fully understand. It takes a lot of dedication and determination to push anxiety out of their system. If your children are suffering from anxiety often, you need to take them under your wings and show them the proper steps to take control of this frustrating condition.
Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it sounds. Many children have the fear of taking that first step in that direction. A rewards program may help them get started so that they can progress to other important steps as well. All of these rewards are there to help them feel better about themselves and get their lives back to where it was before anxiety took control of them.
Design A Points Plan To Reward Brave, Non-Anxious Behavior
Creating a rewards plan will help your children get motivated to tackle their anxiety. You can use different tools to help them manage their fears in a step-by-step manner. Verbally encouraging them will be quite helpful, along with providing tangible rewards and benefits.
To get started , it is best to come up with two separate lists. The first list should include everything that your children need to conquer their fears. This can be a few bullet points that you determine together. The second list should include the actual rewards that they can get for reaching each goal. Be sure to include a mix of simple and small to exciting and large rewards depending on the level of difficulty in each step.
When your children display almost zero anxiety, you can offer them a reward. This will make them feel very positive about themselves. Whenever they shows signs of supreme bravery against their fears, support them by showing that you feel good about it, too. This can easily be accomplished if you set up a rewards program that will make them feel better whenever they take on a challenging moment.
It is important that you allow your children to receive initial rewards to get them started. Eventually, this will lead to a noticeable change in their behavior, and help them think through their feelings to build confidence. The simpler the plan, the more effective it will be for you and your child.
Encourage Your Children To Face Challenging Situations
Most children do not have the courage to face their fears head-on. Unfortunately, if they do not do this, they will never learn how to overcome their anxiety. The worst part is that they will never know that there is practically nothing to fear about these moments. It will help them tremendously if you provide the necessary push to get them to take that initial leap to face their fears. Slowly giving them nudges will eventually put them in a face to face situation with many of the things that scare them.
Develop Constructive Coping
There is no doubt that your children need all the encouragement that you can give them. However, you can only do so much. This is why it is important that you also help your children to realize what they can do to cope with their situation. The best way to do this is to lead by example. One of the ways that you can do this is to lead a healthier lifestyle together, which will certainly make you and your child feel happier, healthier, and more confident.
Give Opportunities To Overcome Fears
Encouragement can only do your child so much, but this might not be enough. It is important to find opportunities to help them overcome their fears. Try putting your children in actual situations that frighten them (but don’t put them in harm’s way, of course). The rest is up to them. If they are unable to handle it the first time around, try again until they succeed. They will feel so happy and empowered once they reach this goal.
Model Self-Care And Positive Thinking
If this still fails, you may have to take the leap to show them that there is nothing to fear. You can model ways to cope with your own anxiety. This might give your children the courage to overcome their own worries. Try to keep your children positive and ensure them that they will succeed and feel better eventually. And always remind them that you are there to support them no matter what.
What ways have you challenged your children to face their fears?
There are some brilliant ideas here. I don’t think some people consider anxious behaviour in a child as a real problem, more that they are just being naughty. It’s important to be able to tell the difference