Calming Your Anxious Child: Words to Say and Things to Do

by Kathleen Trainor

Ten million children in the United States—two million of them preschoolers—suffer from anxiety. Anxious children may be afraid to be out of their parents’ sight; they may refuse to talk except to specific people or under specific circumstances; they may insist on performing tasks such as brushing teeth or getting ready for bed in a rigidly specific way. For many children these difficulties interfere with doing well in school and making friends as well as with daily activities like sleeping, eating, and bathing. Untreated anxiety can have a devastating effect on a child’s future emotional, social, academic, and work life. And since most kids don’t naturally outgrow anxiety, parents need to know how to help. In Calming Your Anxious Child , Dr. Kathleen Trainor builds on cognitive behavioral therapy to provide practical steps for guiding parents through the process of helping their children manage their anxieties and gain control over their worry-based behaviors. Dr. Trainor’s method involves identifying the anxieties and the behaviors, rating them, agreeing on what behaviors to work on changing, identifying strategies for changing behaviors, noting and charting progress, offering incentives, and reinforcing progress. Combining family stories with practical advice and support, Calming Your Anxious Child teaches parents and caregivers how to empower their children to overcome their worried thoughts and behaviors. Children who have generalized anxiety, OCD, social anxiety, separation anxiety, phobias, or PTSD can all benefit from Dr. Trainor’s method, which also helps parents move from feeling controlled by their child’s anxiety to feeling that they are in control of their family’s future.

Genres: Parenting

325 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 26, 2016

Reviews

[Cathy]

I’m sure the info
Works but i found it a bit tricky to
Dip on
And out of. I was interested in the chapter about nose picking but that didn’t seem to have much advice apart from putting bandaids on… and the fussy eating seemed pretty harsh.
I also feel that with my kid the behaviours change but the anxiety doesn’t and at ages 7 he isn’t able to articulate what makes him anxious.

[Ollie]

I found this book clear and helpful, with specific, outlined strategies for helping families deal with anxiety.

[Melanie]

Recommended reading for parents of kids with anxiety.

[Teasa]

I really enjoyed this book, it talks about a huge range of topics and different branches of anxiety. I learned a lot of new information I didn't know before. The book discusses cognitive behavioral therapy and its ability to help combat anxiety disorders, also describes the areas of the brain affected by anxiety and how children/people can react because of that. The book discusses several cases that helped me with problems I was having.

[Karen]

Purchased for our parenting collection. First, the title is quite misleading. This book focuses on more of the phobia's rather than anxiety.

[Anne]

Trainor explains anxiety very clearly with brief descriptions and case illustrations. I have a better understanding of anxiety and how to support someone who is anxious after reading this book.

[Brenda C. Smith]

Useful Help

Some of the cases discussed in this book are exactly what we're experiencing. The TRAINOR method may just work and be the answer we've been looking for.