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What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety Sep-01-2005 Paperback

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What to Do When You Worry Too Much, Second Edition, guides children and parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of anxiety. Now revised and expanded, this groundbreaking bestseller has helped millions of children around the world.

An updated edition of the world-wide bestseller What to Do When You Worry Too Much, the second edition combines everything that worked so well in the original—the conversational tone, interactive elements, clear and actionable strategies—with new tools, new illustrations, and expert advice based on current understandings of anxiety. Lively metaphors and humorous illustrations make the concepts and strategies easy to understand, while clear how-to steps and prompts to draw and write help children learn new skills. This interactive self-help book remains the complete resource for educating, motivating, and empowering kids to overcome their overgrown worries. Includes a note to parents and caregivers by psychologist author Dawn Huebner, PhD.

This book is part of the Magination Press What-to-Do Guides for Kids® series and includes a “Note to Parents and Caregivers.” What-to-Guides for Kids® are interactive self-help books designed to guide 6–12 year olds and their parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of various psychological concerns. Engaging, encouraging, and easy to follow, these books educate, motivate, and empower children to work towards change.

Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

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About the author

Dawn Huebner

32 books74 followers
Dawn Huebner, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist and Parent Coach specializing in childhood anxiety. She is the author of 20 books for children (and one for therapists), including bestsellers What to Do When You Worry Too Much and Outsmarting Worry.

Dr. Huebner recognized the need for lively, easy-to-read take-home materials to help children practice the strategies they were learning in her office. She created a format effective for 6-12-year olds – the What to Do Guides for Kids - teaching complex psychological concepts using metaphors, language, and humor easily understood by children. Subsequent books maintain her distinctive voice while adding a layer of detail and sophistication appreciated by older children and teens.

All of Dr. Huebner’s books echo her philosophy - that children can and should be taught to help themselves, and that they are capable of overcoming even stuck-seeming challenges.
Dr. Huebner’s books sell briskly around the world, and have been translated into 23 languages. She has been featured on the TODAY Show, CNN.com, WebMD and many other news and information outlets, and is frequently interviewed by popular parenting magazines. Dr. Huebner’s TEDx talk on Rethinking Anxiety has been viewed over a million times.

Dr. Huebner enjoys hearing from readers. She is always at work on her next book...

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5 stars
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185 (10%)
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 174 reviews
Profile Image for Books_the_Magical_Fruit.
899 reviews139 followers
May 3, 2024
Five out of five stars. I LOVE THIS BOOK. This is already a well-loved book for many, since this is the second edition, and I can see why. I have anxiety, and I’ve unfortunately passed it on to my progeny, so these strategies will be tried out on more than one person in my family. I love how simple the process is. Huebner breaks down why worries start and how to not continue to feed that worry. The activities and spaces to draw are a great way to interact with the target audience.

The strategies contained herein can be used by anyone of any age, and I plan to put that to the test myself.

I highly recommend this if you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety. The revised and updated edition comes out August 6th!

Thank you to NetGalley and American Psychological Association | Magination Press for an advance copy. All opinions are mine alone.
Profile Image for Mary.
845 reviews41 followers
March 14, 2012
I know I'm not a kid, but there was a lot of stuff in this book that seemed really helpful. The author does a great job of explaining things--like the concepts of containment, externialization, and competing demands--in language that makes sense and that sticks in your mind. Containment, for example is the idea that milk in a carton is not a big obstacle in your life, but a gallon of milk without a carton or something to hold it is a mess. She also explains how worries are like tomato plants -- which totally made sense to me.
Profile Image for Diane.
8 reviews1 follower
November 26, 2018
Recommended by the pediatrician for my anxious 9 year old. We read it together over a week. The writing is a perfect combination of reassurance and encouragement. He is doing the suggested exercises without much reminding.

This book has convinced my son to keep trying and given him hope that he will overcome the worries. Also he has learned that he is not alone. So grateful to find this series! Next we will read the one called What to do when you dread your bed.

I love the specific exercises. This book truly teaches your child what to do and how to do it.
Profile Image for Kris.
3,568 reviews69 followers
June 11, 2015
I read this to my girls, ages 10, 8, and 6, who all struggle from anxiety to one degree or another. They seemed to find it helpful. I think at the very least, it made them realize that there are other kids out there who have similar problems. I liked that there were concrete techniques presented, and I am hoping they will be useful.
Profile Image for محمدعلی کرمی.
72 reviews6 followers
August 12, 2021
از اونجایی که در کتاب برای افراد کم سن و سال نوشته شده، کتاب در بخش های زیادی تاکید به گرفتن کمک از پدر و مادر و درخواست اختصاص دادن وقتی از طرف پدر مادر به شخص خواننده کتاب داره، که خب این واقعا برای خیلی ها عملی نیست، خیلی ها پدر و مادرشون در دسترس نیستن، سرشون شلوغه، ملاحظه بچه شون رو نمیکنن و....
از طرفی شاید برخی از بچه ها با خوندن این کتاب احساسات و نگرانی هاشون رو سرکوب کنن که میتونه در آینده منجر به مشکلات روانی خیلی بدتری بشه.
و البته به غیر از این موارد، متد های کتاب بر پایه رفتار درمانی شناختی هستن و راه حل های کتاب تقریبا مفید بودن و میتونن تو کاهش افکار منفی تو بچه ها و حتی بزرگسال ها کاربردی باشن. همچنین کتاب از تمثیل خوبی برای توضیح رشد نگرانی تو ذهن استفاده کرده بود (رشد گیاهان رو مثال زده بود) که اینطوری افراد کم سن میتونن بهتر متوجه قضیه بشن.
بعضی راه حل های این کتاب مثل تصور کردن شکل و ظاهر نگرانی ها و حرف زدن با نگرانی هاو.... که تو این کتاب ذکر شده بودن رو قبلا تو یه کتاب دیگه تحت عنوان "چه کسانی در سر تو زندگی می کنند" به شکل خیلی کامل تر و مفید تری خونده بودم.
Profile Image for Behzad.
644 reviews120 followers
October 24, 2020
یه کتاب بسیار مفید و کاربردی برای خانواده هایی که کودکان اونها دچار مشکل نگرانی هستند و همیشه استرس و اضطراب دارن. و البته همونطوری که در ابتدای کتاب میگه، این کتاب و روش ها و تمرینهایی که ارائه میده میتونه حتی برای بزرگترها هم مفید باشه.
کتاب زبان بسیار ساده و روونی داره و مملوئه از نقاشی ها و تصاویر بسیار جذاب و دوست داشتنی.
و تکنیک هایی که یاد میده کاربردی هستن و به کودک و به طور کلی فرد کمک میکنن که نگرانی رو برای خودش ملموس و فهمیدنی و قابل اندازه گیری کنه و با استفاده از ترفندهای عملی (مثل کشیدن نقاشی اون نگرانی، شکل واضح بخشیدن به اون، حرف زدن باهاش، منطقی کردن وضعیت، تعیین وقت مشخص برای نگران بود، گذاشتن نگرانی ها داخل جعبۀ قفل دار ذهنی و غیره) به مرور فرد رو قادر میکنه که بر نگرانی ها فائق بیاد.

همونطوری که در مقدمه اومده، نگران و استرس زده نبودن یکی از مهارت های زندگی هست که میشه با تمرین اون رو به دست آورد.

ترجمۀ کتاب به زودی در انتشارات ارجمند :)
Profile Image for Jaymie.
722 reviews2 followers
March 13, 2020
Having never read a book about anxiety and not having much experience with it myself. I thought this book was really good for kids. I read it with my daughter who tends to worry a little bit. I thought maybe we could help her get her focus and thoughts back on track and where she could manage her worries. I recommend it for any young person that tends to worry.
Profile Image for Gwen.
15 reviews
July 24, 2015
I never felt like I got my money's worth so quickly from a book I bought for work like this one! So simple, so practical. My child clients love it and so do I.
Profile Image for Sarah.
709 reviews2 followers
May 23, 2024
This is a gem of a book! If you have a grade-school child that has issues with anxiety and worries a lot, this book will really help. The simple principles taught in this book are rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy. This book guides caregivers and children in learning how to face and deal with worries.

I absolutely loved how the author made worries understandable and manageable for kids. The most effective tool for my child was having “worry time” and a physical “worry jar” where my child and I would sit down for 10-15 minutes daily and talk about worries she was having. I would take slips of paper and write down the worries after discussing them and put the worries in the jar so they are locked away until the next “worry time.” This gave my child time to focus on worries for a little bit without it consuming her thoughts all the time.

The first day we tried the worry jar, there were many, many worries. Now after a couple weeks, there are none currently in the jar. A worry may pop up here and there, but now I feel better equipped in coaching my child through anxious times. This book was a game changer in teaching great coping skills and I cannot recommend it enough!
Profile Image for Cheryl.
12.7k reviews480 followers
December 1, 2017
Great for worries about imaginary or trivial worries. I'll remember Containment (milk in jug instead of in puddle), Externalization (set time to open Worry Box, talking back to the ugly critters), logic, meditation, distraction of exercise or other wholesome involving activity.

But not good for specific real worries. I have good reason to worry that I'm going blind. Some kids have good reason to worry that their parents are likely to divorce. Etc. I'm just not feeling that setting aside or shutting down the anxiety is enough; it seems like a *positive* action, like planning how to cope should the worst happen, would be a good idea.
316 reviews11 followers
August 6, 2024
4.5 stars

This is the fourth of four children’s books on anxiety I’ve read. It’s my second favorite and of the two I really liked (the other one being Sissy Goff’s Braver, Stronger Smarter) this one could be useful for any child with anxiety symptoms.

4 The techniques in this book are based on three principles known as containment, externalization, and competing demands.
7. Most things [like worry] grow when you tend to them.
17 If you are reading this book, you are probably a kid whose worries get stuck. You probably have worries that other people don’t quite understand. And your worries probably last longer than other people think they should. People probably say, “Don’t worry about it” all the time, but it isn’t easy for you to just stop worrying.
25 Even worse, kids who worry a lot find that grown-ups get kind of mad at them.
Moms get ANNOYED when you ask the same worry questions over and over again.
Dads get TIRED and GROUCHY when your worries make it hard for you to sleep on your own.
Teachers get FRUSTRATED when you say you need to go to the nurse every day because your stomach always hurts.


20 anxiety runs in families
36 Worry Time
45, 49, 52 worry bullies, talking back
59 reset your system with activity and relaxation
78. review of methods to overcome worries
Profile Image for Laura.
364 reviews47 followers
November 16, 2019
Great introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy for anxious kids (and their parents—the book presumes a high amount of parental participation).
Profile Image for karenbee.
1,033 reviews13 followers
February 6, 2017
This is a book for young kids, but I got a lot out of it. It's a friendly, easy-to-access explanation of a few CBT techniques for managing generalized anxiety.

I initially borrowed it thinking it might help me in the parenting department, since at least one of my children deals with some anxiety, and it surpassed my expectations. While I have more or less used these techniques myself, I've never given much thought to what I was doing, exactly, and have had a hard time putting them into words. Reading Huebner's kid-friendly explanations helped me figure out how to explain these coping mechanisms to my daugthers if they need help, even if they aren't interested in reading this book.
39 reviews
June 11, 2022
The strategies are mostly around telling your worry monster to get lost and only allowing worrying thoughts during a 15 minute window each day. I greatly prefer Dr. Becky’s guidance to acknowledge your worrying part, listen to what it’s trying to tell you with compassion, and then letting other parts of you weigh in. I ended up not reading this to my kids.
Profile Image for Ellie  Flude.
41 reviews3 followers
October 16, 2020
A great blend of encouragement and reassurance for children who suffer from anxiety. I particularly like the use of language that provides gentle ideas for children to discuss and reflect upon, as well as the use of images guide the reader through the chapters. Throughout each chapter there are spaces for children to share their own worries, including ideas of how to overcome negative thought cycles.
Profile Image for Natasha.
64 reviews2 followers
January 24, 2024
I highly recommend this for parents of little worriers. This has been very helpful not just for my daughter but also for me in helping her and myself. Very practical and accessible for children.
Profile Image for Colleen Witte.
4 reviews1 follower
April 1, 2024
Reading some books with Hailey while she works out some worries & anxiety. This book is great for kids & I took away some parenting tips as well.
Profile Image for Cara.
Author 1 book1 follower
March 2, 2021
I feel like the analogies and skills taught in this book are very easy for kids to understand and parents to support.
Profile Image for Reading Adventures.
767 reviews6 followers
June 11, 2024
This book was such an amazing find for our family. This guide book helps to guide both parents and children with activities and ideas to help with anxiety. The book is packed with information for families with expert advice for everything from interacting, learning to understand and strategies to help us better understand anxiety. As a mom who deals with my own anxiety and having a child who is on the autism spectrum and deals with his own severe anxiety on a daily basis this book was a blessing. With so many ideas as well explaining in easy ways what anxiety is, what can bring it on and how we can deal with it this book is amazing. There are so many strategies that the book shows us to help create calm. I loved the strategies of talking back to worry, quieting the alarm, and doing the opposite. I love that it was easy enough for my child and me to understand and practice. The illustrations are straightforward and to the point, keeping the book very easy to follow. I highly recommend this book for any family who have to deal with anxiety.
We received this as an ebook ARC and can't wait to add it to our home library.
Profile Image for Christy.
Author 15 books67 followers
October 14, 2020
A Gold NAPPA (National Parenting Publications Awards) winner

Did you know that worries are like tomatoes? No, you can't eat them, but you can make them grow, simply by paying attention to them. If your worries have grown so big that they bother you almost every day, this book is for you.What to Do When You Worry Too Much guides children and parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of anxiety. Lively metaphors and humorous illustrations make the concepts and strategies easy to understand, while clear how-to steps and prompts to draw and write help children to master new skills related to reducing anxiety. This interactive self-help book is the complete resource for educating, motivating, and empowering kids to overcoming their overgrown worries.

Engaging, encouraging, and easy to follow, this book educates, motivates, and empowers children to work towards change. Includes a note to parents by psychologist and author Dawn Huebner, PhD.

From the Note to Parents:

If you are the parent or caregiver of an anxious child, you know what it feels like to be held hostage. So does your child. Children who worry too much are held captive by their fears. They go to great lengths to avoid frightening situations, and ask the same anxiety-based questions over and over again. Yet the answers give them virtually no relief. Parents and caregivers find themselves spending huge amounts of time reassuring, coaxing, accommodating, and doing whatever else they can think of to minimize their child's distress.

But it doesn't work. The anxiety remains in control. As you have undoubtedly discovered, simply telling an anxious child to stop worrying doesn't help at all. Nor does applying adult logic, or allowing your child to avoid feared situations, or offering reassurance every time the fears are expressed.

This book is part of the Magination Press What-to-Do Guides for Kids(R) series and includes an "Introduction to Parents and Caregivers." What-to-Guides for Kids(R) are interactive self-help books designed to guide 6-12 year olds and their parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of various psychological concerns. Engaging, encouraging, and easy to follow, these books educate, motivate, and empower children to work towards change.
222 reviews1 follower
January 6, 2025
Super ksiazka dla dzieciakow, ale włącza w proces też rodzica :)
Profile Image for Allison Salmon.
46 reviews1 follower
February 4, 2019
This is an excellent workbook for helping an elementary school child with their anxiety. It has a great mix of text and activities that help to build a mental tool set that you can reference long after you have completed the workbook. It does a fantastic job of making CBT techniques approachable to kids. I worked through this workbook with my daughter and a year later we are still using the techniques. It's not a cure to anxiety, because there is no cure, but it definitely help with openly talking, understanding and building successful techniques to moderate anxiety.
Profile Image for Adam Arzberger.
41 reviews
August 19, 2019
This book does have some useful frameworks for helping children to manage their anxiety but many of them are too open to the interpretation that worries can and perhaps should just be pushed aside, ignored or forced to the back of the mind which, of itself is unhelpful and can make the child feel more desperate when they ‘fail’ to do so. There are some useful exercises and analogies in this book but each require some careful thought as a parent/carer to ensure that the child has some help with their interpretation.
Profile Image for Randie D. Camp, M.S..
1,197 reviews
January 14, 2012
Huebner has created a guide for children to overcome their anxiety through the usage of cognitive-behavioral techniques and explaining anxiety in a way that children can relate to. I love the suggestions of daily activities children can do to help them with anxiety, like talk time, worry time, and using logic. While the book is a guide for children, parents could use this book as a guide for children who are not able to read or for children who need the extra support.
Profile Image for Kathy.
451 reviews9 followers
January 8, 2019
I love this book! I am thinking of getting one for my adult children and one for myself! It has very easy ways to approach and deal with worry. I love the story about how worry is like a tomato plant and the more you tend it the more it grows. Everyone, no matter the age should read this book or even have one to lend out to someone who worries too much.
Profile Image for Maria Mendoza.
400 reviews17 followers
January 3, 2023
Es un libro sencillo y práctico, con consejos lindos, ideal para niños y adultos, salvo por los capítulos en los que la autora sugiere solicitar el apoyo de los padres, que para muchos adultos esa opción ya no existe y se queda la duda de, a quién sería posible acudir en caso de necesitar ayuda y no contar con recursos para contratar a un profesional.
Profile Image for Jessica.
229 reviews3 followers
August 4, 2017
I'm loving this series of books - cognitive-behavioral techniques in kid-friendly language. I'm hoping I can find a way to make use of them at school, but I'll certainly recommend them to any parents I know.
Profile Image for Carina.
12 reviews
September 1, 2021
It's a helpful book. It helped me very much. ☆☆☆☆☆ stars
Profile Image for Robyn.
2,048 reviews
January 6, 2025
Coastline Library | For a very specific type of worrier child | I really had high hopes for this, which makes my disappointment worse, so I'll try to be extra generous to be fair. This is for quite a young audience, I would say 5-8 probably. Get much older than that and the kids will feel the language is babyish. The book is not for a child who has legitimate worries that they either can't stop ruminating over or can't keep in perspective. The language is all about how you shouldn't be feeding the worries by thinking about them, how you should ignore them and lock them away and not talk about them other than your 15 minutes of daily allotment. A child who is, for example, chronically ill, may find that they can't stop worrying about actual things that are going to happen in their future that are frightening. Telling that child that they are worsening that worry by thinking about it, vocalizing it, not hiding it in a box in their mind, is not good practice. A child who is being bullied at school and has therefore become too anxious to participate in activities where the bully isn't even present doesn't need to be told that their worries are additional bullies inside their own mind who think of them as weaklings and to whom they need to stand up. Additionally, this is not for a child with amorphous worries, aka Generalized Anxiety Disorder. You cannot tell a nonspecific worry and constant overall feeling of dread and menace to "go away", or only think/talk about/allow its presence for 15 minutes per day. That's the point. You can't logic or contain your way out of generalized anxiety, and being told you should, or that you've had your allotted time for it and need to move on, is a great way to turn an anxiety disorder into a phobia or a compulsion. These techniques are great for a child who has a tendency to "what if" on lots of scenarios that are unlikely to occur. "What if our house is hit by a meteor?" "What if I suddenly become allergic to strawberries?" "What if nobody at school ever plays with me again?"
I'm also not excited about the continuous "your mom and dad will" phrasing. There are so many easy ways to include kids being raised in other scenarios, like grandparents or older siblings raising them, single parent homes (from birth, due to divorce or death, as a result of incarceration of a parent, or when a parent is deployed with the military), kids being raised by a parent and step-parent, kids in foster care, same-sex parents, etc. Using such very narrow terms when addressing children who are already anxious can increase their sense of not being seen. "Your grown ups" is a common alternative, but there are lots of options.
At any rate, if you have a young child who spirals on "what ifs", you may find some valuable techniques here. If you have a child facing big challenges or one with an anxiety disorder, look elsewhere.
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