Are You Causing Your Children to Be Anxious? | Episode 567

Sometimes children are anxious, they're nervous, they're fearful.

There are all kinds of things that come into their mind and they can't get it out of their mind and they're always talking about it or they're hesitant.

If your child is showing any signs of anxiety, my question to you is, are you fueling their anxiety? And there are things that we as parents do unknowingly.

that fuel anxiety and fears and worries in our children.

And one thing that can happen is that you have constant news sources playing in your home.

It's ever-present.

And what do news services report on? Do they report on the good stuff that are happening in the world? No, it's all about one bad story after another.

There are tsunamis, there's fires, there's school shootings, there's all kinds of things that happen.

And the news services report on those things.

And therefore, it fuels the sense in a child that the world is an unsafe place.

And if there's a coverage of an event like a school shooting or a plane crash or something like that, our job as a parent is to help put that into context that that is a rare event.

It's happening somewhere in the world, but not here.

But when we are constantly having those things playing in our homes, our children internalize that and they have a hard time distancing themselves from it and realizing that it is a rare event.

And so I was recently visiting in an Amish community where we were speaking.

And one of the questions that happened in a panel discussion and a question and answer time, I thought was very odd, but it fits this so well.

And one of the gentlemen said, how much news do you allow into your home? Or how much is it good to have news in your home? That was something specific to their community, but it raised the whole question of, What things do we allow in our homes that actually fuel anxiety and fear and worry in children and even in ourselves? So be careful about how much, how often, what intensity of those types of things that our children experience and it fuels their anxiety.

Let's be more of a calming influence and a reassuring and helping to put all those things into context, but not constantly fueling the fire of anxiety and worry.