Calming your anxious child: words to say and things to do

Description

Fighting anxiety: applying CBT with a step-by-step approach -- Stepping up to the challenge: how the 7-step TRAINOR method works -- Daytime, bedtime, worry, worry: generalized anxiety disorder -- Silent Liza and Hidden Patrick: selective mutism and social anxiety -- Where are you, Mom and Dad? Separation anxiety -- Tap, check, count, wash, repeat: obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) -- Scared to death: specific phobias -- When bad things happen to good kids: post-traumatic stress disorder -- And there's more: hair pulling, skin picking, tics, picky eating, and the like -- Easier said than done: when more help is needed.;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.