Child Behaviour Solutions Webinar: Overcoming Childhood Anxieties and Fears.

0:00 okay so on this webinar what you're going to learn is five ways to facilitate healing for anxious kids without medication unrooting the cause and understanding the triggers of anxiety sleep and night anxiety and what to do about this different tips to deal with panics tears at bedtime bed weding and Nightmares we'll also talk about confidence and consistency in how you can increase confidence and the sense of security in childhood for children we'll talk also about how you can help kids heal through fears that are based in past traumas or hurts and near the end of the presentation I'm going to show you the 7-Day anti-anxiety prescription with no drugs involved this is a a 7-Day

0:48 way that you can help to get rid of anxiety with your children restore that sense of calm and peace and Zess for life for children that might be otherwise anxious about different things so who am I what makes me an expert on child behavior and why should you even listen to me well if you don't know me already my name is Dr blae Ryan I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine that means that I treat the root cause of disease not just the symptoms and when I became a father myself my training in Chinese medicine led me to question the standard approaches to Parenting especially around child behavior and rather than uh just react to the behavior I began to question the root cause of these behaviors and that led me to starting child brain health

1:35 and I have got involved in a lot of research around attention deficit disorder and uh childhood stress disorder as well as different child behaviors and I became the director of parent learning club.com and eventually wrote about a lot of my research around these different types of democratic parenting methods and how you can raise happy kids um and self-disciplined kids without punishments or tries and I published this in the book called Democratic parenting so let's talk about anxiety in kids why do kids get anxious well in if you've read my book Democratic parenting or if you've followed my work you'll know that I often talk about three reasons for all behaviors and the first one is unmet

2:20 needs now these are legitimate needs that children must have met um and even adults too in order for us to feel happy and to be healthy and just basic things that we need we're not talking about desires or things we want we're talking about real legitimate needs that everyone needs in order to be happy and healthy in life the next reason is stress now now this refers to the negative stress not so much the positive type of stress that we might experience whenever we try to push through limits or to tra to change maybe some destructive habits or um you know push through different limitations we might have in life where we may experience the

3:05 good type of stress of uh just uh getting things done and meeting all our responsibilities here I'm specifically referring to negative types of stress uh pressures and tensions that can build up and uh we'll we'll talk about that a little bit more especially how it relates in terms of anxiety and the third type of um reason for all types of behaviors is modeling now children are natural born models right they model the world around that's how they learn how to walk and talk you know they even model breathing patterns and postural patterns and ways of communicating and relating to others in the world through the role models closest to them in their lives uh and parents are usually the primary closest models for children now let's look at what are the

3:51 anxiety based behaviors that we often come face to face with now these are the ones that I often see in my private practice in in clinic or whether I'm counseling parents or uh the emails we get from a lot of parents as well we'll talk about a variety of different anxiety based behaviors children can be stressed about different events or school people or different situations sometimes they have butterflies in their stomach or tummy aches is a real common one or just feeling sick in general where um there there isn't anything physical that we can find in any types of tests um but the the sense of feeling sick or nauseous or having tummy eggs can uh persists and um often times parents who are perceptive enough and diligent enough in in trying to uncover

4:37 the reasons for the sense of being sick will figure out at some point that it's stress or anxiety related also bed wedding past you know frequent um reoccurring bed wedding past the age of five or nightmares night panics these types of things are often associated with anxiety or from with children who have undergone different types of traumas or had difficult lives or experiences that they may be having a hard time processing and also different sleeping issues it can even uh show with anger and aggression can be associated with fears and anxiety sense of being insecure hesitant overly shy timid or nervous children can also fall into this category or those who don't talk much or

5:22 may be easily overwhelmed or easily set off you know into uh into kind of um spiral of anxiety or fears or being nervous also sometimes children can withdraw and they can show signs of being less attentive or more withdrawn or in their own head sometimes we can see it quite clearly just in their the look in their eyes being slightly glazed over um and that can be an internal coping mechanism for them to deal with different types of um stresses that may have occurred So speaking of um different types of stresses let's take a look at the main main cause of anxiety for children the number one cause that I see most common and in all the research uh shows it has to do with

6:08 stress okay now there are four sources of childhood stress and if you read my book Democratic parenting you you'll see that um there's a whole chapter on healing from stress and we talk in detail about these four types of stresses and also different ways to heal that and it's important for us to look at this in order for us to understand what the root cause of a child's anxiety is because the stress is usually underneath that and we have to figure out what kind of stress might are we dealing with in order to help facilitate the healing process the first one is aggressive stress okay the next one we have is passive stress then we have situational stress and finally birth stress and I'll go into each one of these to explain them except for the birth stress because we're going to leave that one aside um just because

6:55 it's not usually that relevant for anxiety and fears um and any type of birth stresses that that can happen usually will show up you know in the toddler or infancy uh years in the first maybe one or two years of life now of course there can be birth stresses that can carry over and um make infants and babies cry more and maybe be a bit more anxious a bit more nervous a bit more susceptible to uh to Jumping when they hear noises and these types of things so um but we we're not going to go too deep into this we're going to focus a little bit more on the aggressive stress passive stresses situational stresses because those are the most common ones we see especially with children um you know above the the toddler age when we're we're dealing with anxiety and fears so let's look at um childhood

7:43 stress disorder and this is a a name that I give um children who are showing kind of chronic stress symptoms uh that come from these different types of stresses where whether it's aggressive stress passive stress or situational stress if anyone if these stresses is severe enough or if they persist long enough and the child doesn't have a chance to process them and it continues on it continues to affect the child's um behavior and way of being then we can um we can see that their behavior will kind of fall under the category of what I call childhood stress disorder and um this this type of childhood stress disorder cannot be treated by any type of medication or drugs because we see

8:29 that the causes of this um are not a chemically imbalanced um they're not related to a chemical imbalance but are related to a type of stress that is coming for the child so let's look at the first one aggressive stress these are encounters with violence and I'm going to show you some different situations where this commonly occurs we have physical abuse when a child is hit or sometimes spanked or grabbed or even beaten which can often happen from the parents who are doing this one of the parents parents or both of the parents sometimes grabbing or pulling them hard any type of aggressive or violent matter um can give the can be a source of aggressive stress for that child also witnessing physical abuse of family

9:15 members or anothers you know any type of witnessing of physical abuse or violence can uh be an aggressive stressor for a child and when they witness that abuse or violence to someone close to them it can have even more of an effect yelling scolding being verbally threatened or being abused verbally these types of things can also be aggressive stressors bullying um whether a bully might uh pinch the child or threaten the child or HIIT him or any type of fighting that can occur being hurt sometimes children are choked by other children in the playground and that's the way that the um the violence or the aggressive stress is transmitted of being pushed down or humiliated or

10:00 having their hair pulled or even biting especially amongst um toddlers that that can be a very common occurrence where a toddler might bite another child and um that can be a source of aggressive stress for the for the victim in that situation being attacked or bitten by an animal that can definitely be a source of aggressive stress and can cause an anxiety for children uh regarding that types of animal whether it's a dog or any other type of animal where they're hurt by the child can really carry that memory and um develop different types of anxieties whenever they see this animal later on uh and then more severe cases uh where there might be attempted kidnappings or sexual molestation War where children um you know might even see family members get killed in front

10:46 of them uh witnessing or escaping murders arrest or violence and these are very real occurrences in some parts of the world or for for some families and uh children have to uh work through this overcome this and one of my colleu colleagues um uh works specifically with with uh children and families and different organizations around the world dealing with um helping them overcome anxiety through play therapy and we're gonna we're going to talk about play therapy shortly as a as a very effective way to help children uh through through anxiety um for even extreme cases of war and violence and these types of things the next uh source of stress for children that we often with anxiety is what we call passive stress okay so we

11:32 just talked about aggressive stress which is U the experience of violence or aggression and then passive stress is really the pressure of unmet needs so when we talked about the three reasons of um of challenging Behavior or any type of behavior and unmet needs is always uh a main one and when these needs go unmet for too long then a type of stress will occur because there's something that the child is needing that is not there there right if we if there's something we need and it's just not there we're going to start to get stressed about it after a period of time or sometimes quite quickly so uh different needs that are relevant specifically for anxiety and fears are the need for Safety and Security okay and this is a very obvious

12:18 one whenever a child uh might experience some type of violence or feel that their safety or their sense of security is threatened we can see how they're they're going to exhibit uh anxi or fear-based behaviors right and it might uh if if the um if they're hurt sufficiently enough or if they they grow up in environment which is chaotic and inconsistent uh this is an often case for children who grow up in homes where uh one one parent might be um um an alcoholic and perhaps a violent alcoholic as well um you know we can see the the child is no consist they they they often don't know if they're if they're father or their mother is drunk or and uh and how they should relate to

13:03 them and you know in a way that doesn't trigger the um the abusive parent and and set them off and this is a very common occurrence where children will kind of walk around eggshells and and feel that their safety and their security is completely inconsistent so we need to help to uh restore this this need through different types of uh therapies which we'll we'll talk about soon the next one is the need for processing okay this is something something that everybody needs to do and what we need to process often is information that we receive uh that we learn uh throughout our day uh hurts pains whenever we're hurt through any type of situation whether it's a physical hurt or an emotional hurt we need to process that as well as as as experiences right um and especially for

13:50 children who might be experiencing a new things or hearing new things um that they haven't heard before sometimes uh they to have enough time to process this uh this information and these experiences so as to not feel confused or overwhelmed by it so um uh so that's a really big one and that's an important one especially for um for different types of strong stresses where there's pains that you know the aggressive type of stress that has happened these hurts haven't been healed or processed we need to create an environment and uh create the space and the time so the child feels safe enough um and support enough to process these feelings and hurts so they can return to

14:36 a place of being present and grounded and attentive and um and have that good judgment and connection with the world around them also the need for attention right everybody needs attention and especially children and we all heard we've all heard the same where you know for a child Who's acting out or being naughty is because uh bad attention is better than no attention at all so we want to avoid that whole dynamic of attracting that negative or or naughty attention just because it's better than no attention and give our children uh really good positive full attention we'll talk about specific ways to do that shortly and the need for appropriate and balanced stimulation and this is such an important need that is going U unmet more than ever before in

15:22 our modern world in my opinion because our worlds are moving so fast we have um you know ever increasing to-do list and responsibilities and our days are getting busier and busier and we're our our attention is consistently being distracted and pulled one way or another through all the different screens and all the different Electronic media and the communication devices and all the technology that we find ourselves surrounded with you know we have all this technology and we're moving and going faster than ever before but at the same time we're more oftentimes more overwhelmed and starred for just time to process all that's going on all that we're doing all that we're experiencing right um and children need to again have this time for processing but they also

16:07 have to have a balance in the type of stimulation they receive it has to be first age appropriate and it has to be balance stimulation what that means is that there's a balance that has to occur for children around a sense of challenge around being stimulated okay and this is a a balance is unique to every child you know because two children of the same age um May uh may be at different developmental stages whether physically or mentally verbally um you know intellectually there's lots of different stages of development and every child will develop at their own pace and at their own Rhythm um so we have to be sensitive and attentive to each individual child's needs to help support

16:52 them in whatever way they need our support So children need enough challenge that they feel encouraged and inspired to to you know to play or to achieve or to do something new but um but if it's too much of a challenge if the stimulation is too much they'll easily get discouraged or feel overwhelmed so we need to find that appropriate balance um and this this goes for any type of activity that we engage our children in as well as for the greater schedule of activities on a daily basis and even on a weekly basis and I often encourage people um to create more free and unscheduled time in their routines to allow um time to process experiences and just to have

17:38 that downtime and create more balance um in the lives for children and that can go a real long way to meet the variety of needs and also to decrease the effects of this type of passive stress that can that is really rampant in our modern world the next need which goes unmet which is um often a source of past of stress for children exhibiting anxiety behaviors is a need for consistency and predictability okay so there is a sense of a need to to be able to predict and to know our world and our environment and um that's a really important need to have met to uh to to achieve that sense of uh um uh competence in life for children to become confident in in their world and to know their place to know

18:24 where they belong in relation to everyone else and the Rhythm of the world around them in their culture in their community in their home um so the more consistent and predictable um your relationship and your connection with your child is as well as your your family routines or if you're a teacher the school routines the more predictable and consistent these are the greater the sense of Safety and Security that that gives that child um so the this a sense of predictability and consistency in different routines and as well as in the way you relate and the connection uh in other words your emotional availability to to your child um the the greater that they're going to open up and feel like a different needs are being met to them

19:10 and the greater that they'll Thrive and become more confident and more um more self self assure in themselves and so this is a you know a real big one because um you know if parents you know if wear themselves down or are too stressed in and of themselves um then um uh then then they might their their connection to their child might not be consistent you know in terms maybe in other words you know if you're really worn down your child needs your attention but you're totally exhausted because you you know you just did too much in the day or you didn't uh schedule enough you know me time or Rejuvenation time in your life or perhaps you've kind of created the life for yourself that you know doesn't allow for that um and and you might want to

19:57 rethink some of your priorities in life which you know in my personal opinion is one of the greatest gifts that children bring us is that they help uh they give us the opportunity to uh to take a second look at what what our priorities are what is really meaningful for us in our lives so um that you know I'm going off on a on a bit of a tangent here but that's in the greater picture you know in terms of figuring out how we we want to schedule our lives in a way that we have our needs met so that our emotional reserves as parents is full so that when our child needs us we'll be there because if you're exhausted and then you you know are irritated or feeling frustrated or stressed yourself which is

20:42 a big problem nowadays because you know this this this uh stress disorder we could call it modern stress disorder because it affects a lot of adults too just because of the all the types of stress that we deal with because of the increasing responsibilities we have and uh and and all the stimulation that we experience nowadays in the modern world that we might find ourselves less patient with our children and we might snap at them or we might not be as emotionally available um for them as we were at another time and the child won't know why they'll just they'll just sense this inconsistency which also um takes away some of their sense of security right because they might not feel that it's it's as safe to be open as open to you

21:28 and they have to might feel they might have to start to walk around eggshells because they don't want to upset you uh and therefore the um you know the the the trust and the relationship will diminish as well and um you know and that can be a source of anxiety as well so that's an important one for us to look at in terms of consistency and predictability not only in our environment in our community and our routines but also how consistent is our connection and our emotional availability and our good and full attention um in terms of being available for our children how consistent is that so that's those are things we need to look at also the need for Sleep nutrition and exercise just basic physiological needs that everyone needs in order to function

22:15 properly um you know on a daily basis especially because children do have a lot of Demands and pressure uh put on to them because the way you know our our current education system is set up where children often times have have to get up really early and spend long days at school processing a lot of information and a lot of different types of social interactions with a variety of different children and teachers so uh we all have very busy days and therefore it's demanding on our bodies as well so we need to nourish our bodies and and make sure that we get the proper sleep proper nutrition the proper exercise to help our bodies cope with this type of um passive stress that we were experiencing on a daily basis so any type of uh whenever children don't sleep properly

23:01 or if they're eating not getting all all the nutrients they need through an unhealthy diet or perhaps they're just not exercising enough and spending too much time in front of screens these things can all build up as a type of passive stress and therefore make them less able to cope with other types of experiences or other types of stresses and therefore the anxiety can be less manageable okay also the need for encouragement or creative expression these are other important needs that children also need to have Mets and if these um you know if a child doesn't feel encouraged in whatever they do then that can increase their sense of anxiety around different activities and you know if their creative expression is also kind of um not not encouraged to come

23:49 out or not given an opportunity to come out they might find themselves less uh more withdrawn and less willing to express and and to um to to to come out into the world so these are these are some of the main needs that we often um we need to look at whenever we're dealing with a child who is exhibiting anxieties or fears based upon um what we could call childhood stress disorder this type of passive stresses created by legitimate unmet needs that happen over a period of time next let's look at situational stresses that are often at play with anxiety you know situational stresses are Life Changes or events outside your control so here we might be talking about moving schools or homes or

24:34 houses or even cities divorce or separation death of of a family member or even a pet can be a source of situational stress natural disasters okay children who experience um you know tsunamis or different types of natural disasters can uh that's a very stressful experience it's nobody's fault it's a situational type of stress it can Al be coupled with an um an aggressive type of stress as well if they witness or experience some physical pain um during that natural disaster accidents uh which again can be uh combined with a aggressive type of stress is there if there's pain experienc in that also hearing about war violence or natural disasters on the news or in medias or

25:22 even hearing other adults talk about this okay this can really affect children a lot lot more than we often think as parents um you know and oftentimes the news channels and um even uh the uh the commercials that are played on Prime Time televisions or some of the subject matters that children are often exposed to in the modern media um can be hard for children to process and can start to make them think about different types of dangers around being hurt around Wars around violence or natural disasters and children can often hear about you know CH people that might have been di because of these floodings or tornadoes or hurricanes and they can start to internalize a fear that a hurricane might come to to their place and um and cause that same type of

26:09 disaster or hearing about a you know a house that was burnt down and people died within that you know that can some children can really kind of um internalize that fear and start to worry about that happening to them so we need to be aware of this type of situational stress because this is often at play for uh for children with um who are exposed to a lot of this adult type content so one thing we want to do as well is to to help children especially when they're their um experiencing anxieties is to start to limit this type of adult subject matter because the truth is that they don't need to hear this type of thing um you know this is news uh you know kind of really negative and bad news that that adults often um are kind of addicted to hearing about and we find

26:55 it interesting but for children there's no no you know there's no need for them really to to hear about these things so we'll do them a great favor uh to limit their exposure to this type of adult uh conversations and subject matters and um you know it will it will be a great relief for them and really to help to encourage and Foster that sense that that the world is safe the world is good um you know and that life is good you know and that of course we can still teach him the basics of you know um how to escape from the home if there's fire we can explain to them in a you know in a in a logical uh manner we can talk to them about things which may be important for them to know to in order to keep them safe in the world as they grow up but we want to try and limit some of the

27:42 exposure to again violence or war or other information that really isn't relevant to them and isn't going to help them um be happier and healthier and safer in life so these are some of the situational stress involved so okay we've just gone over the main types of stresses the source of stresses that are often at the root cause of anxieties and fears okay and we talked about stress as being the number one root cause so these things are kind of like your your freak out checklist your child's freaking out or they're they're exhibiting fears or anxieties we can look through uh these different types of stressors whether it's situational stress passive stress or aggressive stress and try and figure out which ones might be at Play and

28:28 we'll go into um shortly and look at ways that we can help us uh help to create openings uh with our child in terms of communication and processing so that we can uh also gain more insight on what might be the factor and even once we do know the factor how do we go and heal that but first let's look about uh about medicating the anxious child what about medication well often times uh psychiatrist and doctors will use uh what are called selective serotonin reuptake Inhibitors or ssris to uh treat children or adolescents when they're exhibiting anxieties and these include uh the medications like proac zolof paxel LX

29:16 Effexor prisic or Celexa um these are the brand names and as well on the screen you can see the the generic names as well that go along with these um also there are types of medications that are used to treat anxiety in adults but these medications are rarely used in Children and adolescents sometimes they might be used though in extreme or severe cases um and they're not prescribed for long term um because they can have really negative side effects and these can include XX Adavan Valium clonin uh to name a few of them and like I said sometimes they are prescribed to children in extreme cases but only for the short term and they do come with with a lot of negative side effects in

30:01 fact all of these medications come with negative side effects um the biggest side effect that comes with all these medications is an increased risk of suicide for children and Adolescent actually uh for all anti-depressants the FDA requires that these anti-depressants carry a black box warning stating that anti-depressants can increase increase the risk of suicide in persons younger than 25 years old in fact all the studies ever done and this is just here's an example of one of the studies uh that shows this but all of the studies shown done on these types of drugs indicate that they increase the risk of suicide in all um adolescence and children the University

30:47 of North Carolina reviewed ssris and found that the average risk of suicide among adolescents was 4% versus 2% on the placebo okay and the the paxel drug uh actually had the greatest risk of self harm okay so that means that taking these drugs uh increase the risk of suicide by twice the amount as just a pulbo and um also the uh the St a study from The Institute for safe medication practices identified LX as being 8.4 times more likely than any other medication to be associated with violence and violence and aggression is another big side effect with some of these medications and especially um LX and proac which is the

31:36 generic name is uh fluvoxamine uh for proac um also has been associated with lots of different cases of violence and I found a lot of these in my research especially around um ADD and ADHD because these drugs are often uh prescribed for that as well as uh depression and anxiety and different uh mental health disorders in children in 1999 there was a lot of um a lot of public scrutiny over the drug Pros act because it was discovered that one of the the two teenage shooters that was involved in the Coline high school massacre has been taking this drug and in fact there's lots of there's lots of cases of children who uh are involved in these types of um these shooting Rampages or teens that are on these

32:23 medications in fact all of my research into this um hasn't found a single child involved in these types of massacres or who do these types of violent acts towards other children or towards adults um I haven't found a single case where the children were not on psychiatric medications so um that's why I definitely think that using medications like this is one of the um one of the worst things you can do for children who are suffering suffering from mental health issues um especially because there are natural safe Alternatives that that you can do no matter where you are to help your child heal from these feelings and these uh these stresses and these hurts of course there are extreme cases where medications can be useful

33:09 and helpful to help get through a very difficult and dark time but for the most part the symptoms and issues and anxieties can can be easily overcome by using these methods that I'm discussing here so let's take a look at that how can we heal anxiety naturally first let's take a look at anxiety and and fear what is fear fear is the anticipation of pain okay so this gives us great Insight on what we're actually dealing with what is the what's happening for the child on a deep level they are afraid they're anticipating pain right and that comes from being hurt at some point some type of hurt whether it's physically physical or emotional hurt you know by being um

33:56 you know if they're being bullied or humiliated by bullies at school that's more an emotional pain that they're experiencing and they they have might have anxiety about going to school because they're afraid of more humiliation being emotionally bullied by this person so they have that that anticipation of that type of pain reoccurring and that is rooted in the experience of actually um having being hurt and experiencing pain and they haven't had a chance to fully process that in a way that they can move on with that they haven't whether processed the actual hurt or process the experience in itself because they don't understand how to cope with that type of interaction or why that happened they haven't come to a sense of internal or mental resolution with an experience or something that

34:43 happened so whenever we're helping children heal from anxiety naturally we want to have our intention are focused on two things first we want to process the hurt behind the fear okay we just talked about how fear is the anticipation of pain so that fear comes from the experience of pain and it's a they anticipate there's an anticipation for it to come again that's why we're afraid so we want to process those hurts that are at the root of that also we want to restore the feeling that life is good right because if we feel that life is good if a child feels that if we feel that as adults and as people then we're not going to be anxious we're instead we're going to be filled with zest we're

35:28 going to be happy we're going to have an open-minded and you know and wondrous attitude about life and that's what we want to pass on to our children so that's what really the Democratic methods are all about we want to restore for children the sense of zest the interest in life a sense of curiosity and a sense of Engagement wanting to engage and being able to easily socially engage uh with peers or with adults without any sense of social awkwardness that might come from different types of anxieties and to have a sense of happiness and to be able to express themselves easily uh verbally and emotionally as well so these are the things we want to aim at restoring for our child so let's talk about five ways to overcome anxieties without drugs so

36:16 first we can use what's called symbolic play okay we'll go deeper into this in just a second next crying right uh healing through tears is an incredibly powerful way to heal um the the pain that that hasn't been processed from various experiences and in my book Democratic parenting I talk uh and I show different types of research where um we found in modern research that crying has a very physiological healing effect and different types of um stress hormones that that happen during um the sense of being stressed whether it's from aggressive stress or passive stress any type of stress that happens there's different hormones that get released into the body which can affect our our

37:02 um our chemistry to make us um less uh less um um more more in our kind of lizard brain and our amadala center of our brain is being being triggered more so we find uh being more reactive less uh having not a good judgment not thinking clearly but more emotional more aggressive more prone to uh to temper tantrums inability to Focus or pay attention these are all signs that the the system is overwhelmed from a different type of variety of stress hormones and that's the real cause of what I call childhood stress disorder now crying they found that by through the release of actual physical tears they can find these stress hormones that are expelled from the body through these

37:49 tears so that's why we want to take advantage of opportunities to help a child have a good cry in a in a healthy and safe way so we want to encourage that rather than to stifle the expression of tears and that can really help a child process uh past experiences or hurts laughing also is a wonderful way to heal from uh from anxieties or stress you know and uh you know the old saying that laughter is the best medicine and it's simply true um another great saying that I love is that laughter is the shortest distance between two people and that's an important one to remember because that sense of connection is so important for not only children but adults too for them to feel happy and fulfilled and and um zestful in life is to be they need to

38:35 feel connected with uh the world around them and the people around them so laughter is a great way to heal and to just dissolve tensions and and fears and anxieties around different situations talking is another wonderful way that that we heal from stress and anxieties and um you know and everyone's different around talking around all these different types of um ways to heal from anxiety some children will be prone to doing more talking and to talking easily and uh openly to process their feelings and hurts other children might not want to talk about it at all and they might be um might more easily use symbolic Play to work through their feelings so we have to um work with whatever our the children um have a tendency to do and we

39:21 want to support and encourage whatever Direction uh we can help them to go in order to to start to open up and to process their feelings also art using art and music uh music therapy or art therapy are great ways to help children work through anxieties and issues so let's talk a little bit more about these um and how to work with this also when we're working with these um different ways to heal through anxieties we want to help children get in touch with their feelings so um there's you know we want to keep in mind different age age factors around children we have children under seven years old uh we can kind of put in one category as the young

40:07 children and these children are um you know we want to Ste steer away a little bit more from uh talking too much uh rationally or analytically about feelings and emotions because these children are um less uh mentally developed and and um and and it's actually more important for children under seven years old to not rush them into thinking and logical uh rationale too soon we want to give them a greater um opportunity to explore their their bodies and that and to keep that connection between their body and their mind constant because um what what happens for a lot of children is that there's a lot of pressure for academic performance really young on so they'll

40:52 they'll end up being a lot more in their heads and less connected to their bodies and their feelings and what can happen a lot of the time is when we're we're helping children work through feelings and if we get too analytical or too too much talking about different types of feelings or emotions it can actually take them farther away from their real feelings from their what is actually going on for them inside their bodies and their beings um and more into just talking about it more from a third person perspective so what we want to do is to use the use uh our communication to lead them into the the physical experience to help assist in the in the processing of whatever the hurt or the the feeling there rather than guide them

41:38 away from what what they're actually experiencing into talking about it more objectively so with children under seven years old we want to be a lot more careful around talking about their feelings and uh we might use a lot more type of play or laughter type of therapy or crying uh opportunities to to help them um process these feelings and um with the with the crying I just want to mention U that with that you know there's specific ways to set up um different types of uh limits and opportunities to assist the child to heal through tears but uh so but I wouldn't try to do this if you haven't read the the chapters on that in my book Democratic parenting or been professionally trained in this um because because we don't we don't you

42:24 know you don't want to you know hurt your child and trying to make them cry and the the what we really want to do is If the child starts to cry or you know the the opening comes for them to just to work to to start to have a good um cry and for the tears to come we want to support that um allow space for that and keep the child safe through throughout that experience and some children they can cry a lot and they can um you know and cry for a long time and sometimes even rage and cry so we want to know how to handle those different situations so if you haven't already I really encourage you to read the chapter in my book uh that deals with this because there's a lot of details information that can help um set up the environment and to uh assist your child through the

43:10 healing process around teers um that you'll find useful in that chapter and way too much information for me to cover on this webinar so um and then over children that are over year um age of seven they uh will oftentimes be uh able to to talk about their feelings more accurately um and again some children may or may not want to talk about things or experiences or feelings so again we want to respect that and um and build that trust with the child so we don't force them or manipulate them into expressing things that they're not uh ready to do that but we can create different types of openings and I'll talk about how to do that just shortly in um when we we talk about the uh the methodology around using um Talk therapy

43:57 for children and then for teens of course with teenagers they're at a whole different level and they'll be able to um to get in touch with their feelings and communicate that in a whole different way so and we'll you know we'll use the also be we'll laugh about different things or we might use a different type of play uh therapy with teens as well also uh we want you know there there are sometimes differences in boys and girls too in terms of how they get in touch with their feelings or how they express their feelings for the most part um girls may be more more easily able to cry or to be in touch with their feelings than boys but again it depends upon their age um and it depends how they're raised as well but but it's not the over overall whether um the child

44:45 that is has anxiety is a boy or a girl it doesn't make a big difference in terms of using these these five U natural ways to heal from anxiety now what we're going to talk about next next is how to use um play therapy play attention time self-directed play and symbolic play to help children heal through anxieties and fears and these are different ways that we can help children get in touch with their feelings by using play so we don't have to talk about it or rationalize it or get too logical about things and uh take children out of the experience of the feelings or possible hurts so a few guidelines when we're using

45:30 these uh these methods now uh the difference between them all is uh that symbolic play refers to the overarching um way that children process experience through play by using different manipulatives or situations uh to to reenact um this the the experience or the the situation that caused the hurt or the trauma or the stress to begin with so they use the the uh the experience of play whether it's with things or with people or by themselves uh to process it through the type of symbology um play therapy is a very effective way uh to help children work through stresses um with a with a type

46:16 of therapist and there's different methods uh that are involved in this different ways to do this and uh play attention time is one of the most powerful methods that we have in our Democratic parenting toolbox to help meet a lot of different needs and to help a child work through anxieties and uh reestablish a sense of connection with your child now there's a chapter in my book again that deals specifically with play attention time there's another one that talks about self-directed play as well and how to set that up in more detail the difference between self-directed Play and play attention time is simply that self-directed plays when a child um does this type of play therapy by themselves so they they learn how to process their own experiences

47:02 through doing the self type of self-directed play whereas play attention time is the same as self-directed play but the only difference is that the adult or the parent uh stays with the child given them their full attention and supports them um throughout the play so what you want to do when you're setting up this type of play therapy is you want to establish um a safe relationship and environment with with the child this is important to meet the child's need for Safety and Security consistency and predictability and to help the create the environment where they can really to open up and heal and we set this up um we we create a nice setup and we want to communicate the boundaries that that we're doing with this type of play therapy and the boundaries we want to communicate have to do around space and time so we can

47:50 communicate exactly how long we're going to be doing this for whether it's 45 minutes whether it's an hour hour and a half two hours whatever time you're devoting with your child to do this type of play therapy um you can communicate that uh to them uh you know again depending upon their age and their ability to understand that with really young children or toddlers they're not going to possibly understand that the or have a concept of time but you can still communicate in other ways you know about the the time and the boundaries around that and also space right so we can set up specific types of boundaries or rules to let them know about where we can go or what we can play with or what can be played with and how different things can be played with during this this type of activity a great way to set up in the

48:35 beginning of the play therapy is to do a little bit of breathing so when you connect with your child and you're just kind of setting the the play up and stuff like that you can start by just sitting down maybe just looking each other's eyes or or touching hands or you know not even touching uh uh hands or touching each other or not even looking each other's eyes but giving a bit more space and just concentrating a little bit on maybe doing some slow deep breathing and this can help the child get deeper into their body into their feelings and just create a a smoother transition from what they were doing before into the type of play therapy and acts a little bit like a gateway to bring them deeper into their feelings and um and into a healing experience different types of manipulatives that you can use to help children you know

49:22 process experiences through play might be types of stuff like Play-Doh or clay or even sand uh sandboxes and sand therapy has been very effective to help children work through for variety of traumas from from really major life-threatening War type traumas to to just other um not so extreme passive stress or situational type stress experiences you can also set up an environment where you might have different opportunities for a child to express anger and aggression um on on on harmless things like punching bags or pulling out grass or breaking branches in the in the forest or throwing stones in the water or punching pillows or

50:08 kicking uh pillows or things like that anything that won't uh get hurt and obviously won't hurt the child but just uh to uh create an opening to help them uh process and express and heal um some of the frustrations and anger and rage that might be over top of the hurt right often time children who are angry and upset who might Rage or might exhibit aggression or violence towards another child and this is often the case with bullies as well is that underneath the anger and aggression there is a sense of being hurt from some type of experience um they may have been hurt they may have uh encountered some type of aggressive

50:54 stress and been abused or hurt themselves or or any other type of hurt experience that they're still carrying within and then covering that up is all the anger and the upset so you can set up a type of play experience where they can express some of that aggression in you know in a way where there no one is getting hurt and that can help to get through some of that anger and just expel that so you can start to work down into the um into the the um the HTS there are underneath that also painting right do art we talked about art as being a great way to heal and when you're setting up art as a as a way to uh heal anxieties you don't want to do any types of uh you know masterpieces or anything like that you can set set it up where they can draw

51:40 different things to represent feelings or experiences um you know but you you want to take away any type of um U comments around how things look whether it's well done you want to take uh the sense of performance out of the experience of painting an art so that the art becomes pure therapy a great way to do this is to just paint simple Strokes right back and forth or up and down or just and allow the child to just process feelings through the art through the activity right through uh through the movement and the experience also you can use puppets or toys or dolls as symbolic relationships and this is very effective uh that uh way that play therapists um help children kind of get

52:26 to deeper issues or to communicate things or to to figure out different Dynamics between people or to help a child work through Dynamics you know um was there was one child uh that that was uh kind of attacked by a dog years ago so anytime they saw a dog they had a lot of anxiety around this so one way that we can do type of play therapy with this child is that we can show them pictures of of dogs and we can even get them a little a puppy doll a cute little puppy doll that they can start to play with the dog that dog and then you know and then they can start to uh to to increase their their their experience their experiences around connecting to dogs you might take them once they feel ready to um to a pet store where they can see

53:13 cute little puppies and um and create more experiences for them where they can interact with uh less um threatening dogs uh in a way where they won't get hurt or have negative experiences and that can help them process um the the previous experience they had where they were hurt by the other dog also you can listen to music and you can dance you can roll around or play natural Giggles types of games these are just different things that you can do during a play therapy session or during play play attention time to help a child get in touch with their feelings and process the hurts that are underneath the symptoms of anxiety also we talked about using talking as a way to heal right now when

54:00 we're using talking and communication we want to focus on them talking not so much us right we want to do less talking and we want to listen more but we want to create openings where they can talk where they can express so we want to take these stance of listening empathizing and acknowledging their feelings and Our intention is on creating an opening um opening Pathways to process whatever they need to process right so that's what our focus is when when we're engaging a child in conversation and communication around their feelings and their anxieties is we want to lead towards an opening to process that so um you know once a child starts to open up and talk about something that might be bothering them whether it's being bullied or whether it's feeling like they're a failure that

54:46 they don't understand something at school or uh whether they're upset about some other type of experience that they they went through um once they start to open up by that the last thing we want to do is to jump in and start to uh to lecture them about life experiences and they're just going to have to Fig you know those are things that happen in life they're just going to have to get over it um we don't want to go there what we want to do is to keep that sense of openness and just expand that openness to let all the feelings come out all the frustrations so we to do that we want to listen we want to empathize so first uh we want to establish a safe relationship and environment just like setting up the uh play therapy okay and we want to again communicate the boundaries um whenever

55:32 we're Crea this connection we might do breathing as well at the beginning of the situation focus on listening and if we're going to use questions to help the child uh talk more and open up more we want to use what I call opening questions not so much guiding or probing questions okay so some therapists they'll use guiding question or probing questions where they'll ask the child if they feel angry or if they feel upset or um they might guide them and say you know by saying well what happened um you know what happened then or how did you feel when this person did this thing right um we want to be very careful in using these probing and guiding questions because it can really change the flow of experience for the child and

56:18 it can put words in their mouth and uh it can often lead them away from processing and working through something that or something different that they might have worked through themselves if we would have just kind of let them continue to talk so instead we can ask open questions opening questions as they start to talk we respond or we might ask questions that support and encourage them to continue on to expand to expound and to share more about what they're talking about so again be very careful of using feeling descriptors okay describing or def finding or identifying feelings and emotions for our child we want to be very careful um uh by using that saying that in other cases it can

57:06 be quite useful especially with older children uh who might be kind of closed down or shut down or not you know not really open to talking um there are great opportunities and and a skilled play therapist or child therapist uh counselor can help a child um open up a little bit more by perhaps giving them um you know by using different dolls that have different faces you know an angry face or a happy face um or different pictures that type of thing and they might ask the child which one that they feel like if they feel like any of those or if they don't feel like any of them you know and and creating a an opening for a dialogue by using these types of props around feeling descriptors can sometimes be very effective okay so again there's no hard and fast rules around um around how we

57:53 interact with our child and how the dynamic we create when communicating and opening um creating openings for processing feelings but these are just some guidelines that you want to think about and be aware aware of as well so because all of these have their their pros and their cons but if we empathize and acknowledge their feelings Mo for the most part that can be very useful and we want them to feel like they've been heard and they've been understood okay so ultimately while they're talking and and sharing and opening and expressing the more that they feel understood the more that they feel heard the more that they're going to open up and the safer they're going to feel uh to go deeper and to process more of their feelings and that's really what we want to help them with Okay so we've

58:39 just gone through uh some of the main ways uh the five different ways to uh to heal through through um anxieties and uh and fears right we talked around we talked about talking and express when we talked about playing we talked about crying we talked about laughing and also about using art and music as ways uh to to heal and to process feelings of hurt now also what I've put together is what I call the 7-Day anti-anxiety challenge okay so this is a a 7-Day challenge that you can use it's a very simple and practical um thing that you can apply with your child or any child who's experiencing any type of anxieties whether it's uh you know issues around going to school bed wedding night issues

59:26 anything like that that is associated with anxiety that we've talked about tonight um I this challenge is to use this method for seven days and then to see how your child responds and transforms uh with after those seven days and it's a very simple thing the only thing that you need to do is to practice the play attention time method for at least two hours every day for seven days okay so you need to schedule this into your life um typically after school in the afternoon um you know or in the evening any type you know find the best time in the day that you can do this with your child and practice this play attention time and there if you have my book Democratic parenting there's an

1:00:11 entire chapter on play attention time that you can follow if you don't have uh the book Democratic parenting I I recommend that you get it because there's a lot of uh other details that support what we've talked about tonight but if you if you can get it and you want to do the 7-Day anti- anxxiety challenge then send us an email at support parent learning club.com that's support parent learning club.com and let us know you want to do the 7-Day anti-anxiety Challenge and you don't have the Democratic parenting book and you want to know how to do the play attention time method so what we'll do is we'll send you the uh the the details on on what you need to know in order to set up play attention time and um and then you can practice this schedule it

1:00:57 in and then practice this for seven days with your child now if you have two or more children that have anxiety okay how do you do the 7-Day challenge well there's two ways you can do it first you can devote maybe say one hour to each one of the CH child for seven days so you so for each child you you give them um the play attention time uh daily for seven days or you can just focus on one Tri at a time so you work with the one who might be the most stressed or the more most anxious first for seven days and then you can move on and repeat it for the others um that way it can you know you can just focus on one child at a time so you can do them all over the seven days and give them a little bit less play attention Time Each or you can just focus on one at a time uh and

1:01:43 repeat the seven-day challenge for each one and so um yeah you'll see that if you do this for seven days just by doing the play attention Time by following the guidelines this play attention time creates the opportunity to use all all of these methods all five of those methods it's the play therapy you get uh opportunities for healing through tears and through laughter will often come up through this play attention time also you can engage in different types of art or or use Music um and opportunities for talking will often surface throughout this play attention time now it's important that you set aside a length of time like two hours um as what I recommend is the minimum for this and while you're doing this you know what's really rewarding um and such an A

1:02:29 transformational and deepening experience for for you the adult or the parent to do while you're doing this is to enjoy the play yourself you know oftentimes we we grow up we become parents and adults and the responsibilities start to build up and we lose touch with a sense of play ourselves but you know all of us need to play All Humans not only children but adults need to play and have fun too so and um Mo I hear from a lot of parents how pleasantly surprised they become to uh to reconnect with their their desire and their Joy of playing um and just for themselves as well as their child sometimes they'll ask well can I do it for more than two hours a day during this challenge I of course you can right if you want to play in the morning and

1:03:16 the afternoon or know if you have the uh opportunity if you want to play all afternoon with your child for seven days then all the better if you can do that that based upon your circumstances and situation but no matter what your situation is you should be able to carve out for at least seven days two hours every day right and you might not be able to do it this week or right away you might need to make some adjustments in your schedules and in your commitments and stuff like that you might need to uh reduce some of the the um the the prescheduled stuff that you had um planned extracurricular activities or different types of events in order to set this up but it's definitely worth it because if you look in the the greater scheme of your child's life you want to nip this

1:04:02 anxiety uh as soon as possible for your child to help them return to that state of clear thinking good judgment and zest for life and that will make their your life and their life much smoother um and much quicker So the faster you can get through these issues the better and uh the 7-Day challenge uh is the best way that I've found to do it and it's something that that you can do no matter where you are and you don't need to buy any types of supplements you don't need to buy expensive medications or pay for you know expensive therapy or see doctors or anything like that you can just uh focus on this anti-anxiety Challenge and see the transformation that makes for you uh and the in your in your child's life so uh that's it for the main presentation I'm going to go

1:04:48 into the question and answer period now so if you have any questions related to anxiety uh for your child that you want to ask me now is a good time to ask there's a chat box there that you can ask I just also wanted to let you know that coming up we have some more webinars um on the at the end of this month we have a webinar on discipline without punishments or bribes also at the end of the month we're going to be releasing the the um add transformation program this is a program I've been

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