Parenting your Anxious Child

Parenting Your Anxious Child – Helping your Worrier find their Warrior

Experiencing anxiety can be debilitating for a child when the fear of being disconnected from their primary attachment figure becomes so great that in a bid to avoid it, their world dramatically shrinks. They may become unable to go on play dates, participate in extracurricular activities or even attend school.

A child experiencing anxiety is operating from the emotional centre of the brain - logic and reason are inaccessible. To counteract the effect the anxiety has, a parent must first connect with their child and then continue to relate through an attuned and sensitive relationship to re-engage the reasoning part of the child’s brain. This is easier said than done!

Parenting an anxious child with such a need for attachment can be stressful, frustrating and heart breaking in equal measure. It can be difficult to imagine them ever transitioning from worrier to warrior.

This introductory workshop will support parents to

• Understand anxiety and the impact it has on a child’s way of being
• Respond to those anxieties in a child centered, playful way
• Learn strategies to re-create a secure base from which the child can explore the world
• Explore how anxiety can lead to school refusal and begin to develop a plan to support the child to continue attending school

Facilitator: Aideen Flynn, PG Dip Ed, MA, M-IAPTP

Aideen has worked with children in educational settings for 20 years, specialising in S.E.N. and children with complex needs. She is a child and adolescent

psychotherapist working in private practice in The Treasure Within, Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Clinic, Quin, Co. Clare. From here she empowers

children, their families and teachers to work together to enable the struggling child be the best he or she can be.