Parenting Tips: Parenting mistakes: Saying ‘calm down’ to your child won’t help; here are better ways to manage anxiety

It’s perfectly normal for your child to be anxious from time to time. In such cases, they may come to you for help, but you still want to avoid panicking. But how do you do it?

One common approach followed by the general public, especially parents, is to ask the child to “calm down.” However, this can make your child’s situation worse.

Simply saying “calm down” does not justify a child’s feelings. It does nothing to help them understand and manage their emotions better. Rather, it may feel like it’s being obeyed by a parent. It can also make you feel like you’re ignoring your feelings rather than dealing with them properly.

A 2014 paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology by a researcher named Alison Wood Brooks also found that telling people to calm down doesn’t help anxious people. rice field.

“She found that when people were asked, ‘What do you do when you’re anxious, what do you tell others to do?’ [more than 80%] people said ‘calm down’ but they couldn’t do it. We all know that anxiety is an intense, highly activated emotion that doesn’t go away easily,” Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant recently said of the Education Assistance Benefit. Company Guild’s Opportunity Divide podcast.

Instead of telling your child to “calm down,” get him involved in meaningful activities that help him manage his high emotions. Additionally, children learn a lot from how they deal with anxiety. Actions are therefore clearly more effective than words. Here are two of her techniques that help when they panic.

When your child begins to panic and thoughts begin to swirl, look lovingly into her eyes and teach her to take a deep breath, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. Other breathing techniques that can help manage anxiety include “box breathing” and “tactical breathing.”

read more: 5 Negative Effects of Comparing Children

Sometimes your child may feel anxious before the first day of school or a dance performance on stage. These are big moments in life, they care about it, and that’s why they’re nervous. Instead of saying, “I know you’re nervous, but…” you can turn the other person’s anxiety into excitement by saying something like, “I know you’re excited, but…” or “Try to calm down,” Grant explained. .

read more: The Right Way to Start a Conversation with Your Dad