Here are 6 ways you can be a good coach & help your child cope with anxiety.

1) Encourage and reward your child for their efforts to understand themselves and cope with their anxiety. It’s a challenging yet incredibly rewarding process. It takes strength and commitment to overcome anxiety and your child may benefit from positive reinforcement.

2) Help your child to make the connection between anxious thoughts, physical changes, and anxious behaviours so they can better understand what's happening when they feel anxious. If they can get a feel for these things they can serve as prompts to proactively begin to use coping strategies.

3. Avoid focusing on symptoms. Instead, help your child to focus on what they can do to cope. For example, don't try to stop them from crying. Crying may be a perfectly reasonable emotional state given their anxiety. Instead, help them focus on their coping skills like deep breathing or generating helpful thoughts.

4) Be aware of your parenting style and/or any personal anxiety issues that may affect your child’s ability to face fears. You can benefit just as much as they can from better understanding your anxiety and how to cope with it.

5. Develop a plan using proven evidence-based strategies with your spouse and/or partner so you can offer consistent and effective support to your child.

6. Don’t be hard on yourself. Remember, we may learn best from the mistakes we make. We can always improve our actions and our outcomes if we keep trying. So keep trying to be the best coach and supportive parent you can be.

Looking for help?

Explore our FREE virtual group program Facing Your Fears. Funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation Facing your fears is for kids 8-14 with autism and their parents.