Tools for Kids to Manage Fear

I have been observing my 7-year-old kid reaction to situations that to her seem impossible to go through like when doing her homework and her handwriting is not up to her standards, she is afraid her teacher will not like it; or when her front tooth fell, she was afraid kids will laugh at her because the way she looked; or when having to read a book for school, she taught it had soooo many pages that she would never finish it.

In each of these situations, the fear she felt would not even allow her to start any of these activities. She would start to cry believing she could not go through with them and at the same time feeling somewhat disappointed because it was something she without the specific obstacles, those were activities she really wanted to do.

So while going through one of these situations, I talked to her and explained what it was she was feeling. Whenever we are encountered with a new situation, we feel frightened because we don´t know how to deal with it yet. This feeling is the same for kids, teenagers, adults, and older people. I wanted for her to understand that it wasn´t something that only happened to her so she would get curious as to how other people deal with it.

I described that fear is like a wall or a hologram, that, when we are afraid, comes up and gets bigger and bigger the more we think about it. We have to use this fear and transform it into courage so we can take the first step towards crossing the wall. When taking these steps, the wall crumbles down and the fear disappears. We then feel like super heroes.

I also explained that after doing this 2 or 3 times, we will know it very well so we will not be afraid of this activity any more.

We feel fear throughout all of our lives because we are constantly having new experiences, if not life will be very boring doing the same thing over and over again.

My 7-year-old is now capable of identifying when the emotion of fear shows up and even though it still takes her a while to overcome it, she knows that after she takes the first step toward the action that makes her so afraid, it will disappear.

When I ask her to explain to others what is fear, she says that after done 2 or 3 times it will go away.

It is important for them to understand the emotion they are feeling and to know the feeling is momentary, that with some practice, they can control it and transform it into another emotion. It is alright to have this feeling because it means we are doing something new and everything is always alright. We wake up every day and life and new experiences continue to happen in our lives.

Now, every time I have a new experience when I get really nervous and even a bit fearful about it, I tell the story to my kids so they will relate to me and see it happens to everyone. It always works out right and fear stops being this monster bigger than them but an emotion they can transform into courage and later laugh at it.

It is a very grateful experience when we see them dealing with emotions and how empowered they become.

21 Days Makes a Habit

It is said that 21 days of practicing something becomes a habit, so I decided to do it with my kids. I explained the exercise to them and printed out a calendar for each one of us so we could mark of each day that passed by while we practice it together. Since I didn´t want to name the calendar with a negative title like 21 days of no crying or 21 days of no screaming, I titled them 21 Days for a new Me. You could substitute Me with your name or your kids name.

One of the positive aspects of this exercise is that for 21 days we are paying attention to our behavior while creating awareness on our kids of the things they do or not.  Also, we are completing focusing (see post Focusing Attention) on a specific objective. Remember that kids believe everything we tell them, and when they start the exercise believing they can learn something new or become someone new, they will achieve it also because they don´t have the resistance we do towards changes.

This empowers children because they can learn to identify unwanted behavior and at the same time acquire a tool to change it.

When I did it with my 6-year-old (she used to cry all the time for everything), she made the effort to change while I controlled myself from screaming. Sometimes she cried and sometimes I screamed, but we kept the exercise throughout the 21 days.

Now, 6 months later, she remember those 21 days with a smile on her face and we both agree that she doesn´t cry like the way she used to and I barely scream anymore. We are both happier and enjoy each other so much more.

Gratitude Journal

Before going to sleep, write down things that happened during the day that you are grateful for (Minimum 3 for kids and 5 for adults). By doing this, you go over your day reviewing it and focusing on good things that happened that were not noticed before. Nothing is taken for granted.

Remember that you should not only remembering the situations, but the feelings associated with those situations, too.

We do not take time in our lives to stop and review our feelings and emotions to understand what triggers them, what sensations they cause in our bodies and to heal ourselves from emotions blocked in our bodies.

AFFIRMATIONS

 

Create the habit with your kids of repeating affirmations. At bedtime, when I go to say good night, after having our talks or reading a book, we say affirmations together.

• I am beautiful
• I am brave
• I am courageous
• I am intelligent
• I am lovely

Kids generally end up believing what they hear repeatedly from other people and other kids around them, and the truth is that they do not hear these words enough in a day from others.

This mantra or affirmations will stay in their unconscious. They will feel better with themselves and also will remind themselves of these qualities that they are.

Focusing Attention

We are constantly wishing for changes in our lives, but most of us stain in the same state without taking the actions towards them.

Our minds have over 60,000 thoughts per day so just by thinking or wishing on something will not be enough to make it real because our attention is disperse with everything else in our minds.

When our attention is on a specific matter, our minds filter everything else so that is when we get filled of great ideas and find great solutions to accomplish that task we have set out minds to do.

It is very important to keep focused and to make a plan. Whatever it is we should like to do, it has to be divided into small steps all the way to the one we are to start with. Then, focusing our attention on that first step until it is achieved, then to the next on and so on.

Get a small notebook and write it all down, your objective, and the steps that you will be taken to obtain them. Look at it every day; focus your attention on each step at a time without losing perspective of the vision. When going over your notebook you will notice how your objectives are being met and how changes are actually taking place towards your objective. You will feel excited and renewed when focusing on an objective and obtaining positive advances. You will also soon realize how the process of achieving objectives will become part of your essence and how each time they come to past faster.

By having your attention focused, minutiae will no longer be part of your life and more and more information related to your interest will reach you. Your objectives will expand into new ramifications then it will be clear to you all the changes happening and the path towards where you will be going. Life will become full of excitement and your mind won´t stop getting new ideas. You´ll know anything is possible.

When my kid gets all frustrated about something she can´t change, I explain to her that she is unhappy because she is thinking only about one thing. She knows, even though is difficult, that as soon as she changes her focus to something else, she will stop been unhappy and frustrated because that initial matter, won´t be important anymore.

Focusing your attention on specific matters/interests will clear all doubts and clutter in your mind and get you on the path of the change and excitement you´ve been longing for a long time.

Managing Emotions

Just like our hearts, lungs and kidneys, emotions have a specific function in our daily lives. They are there to communicate the type of thoughts we are having at all times. Thoughts manifest in our bodies through emotions that can make us feel good and excited, or uncomfortable. That is why we ought to be aware and observe our emotions.

When observing our emotions, we can be certain whether our thoughts are positive and guiding us in the right direction, or they are just simply consuming us and taking us somewhere that deep inside we know we do not want to go.

Emotions like happiness, excitement or joy, should be recorded in our mind to later use them to make the habit of visualizing and creating situations with those good feelings. However, when we become aware that the feelings we have are uncomfortable like anger, fear or anxiety, we ought to stop and recognize the thought that triggered those feelings. Generally these feelings arise out of thoughts based on personal judgment.

We are repeating in our heads a thought and even making a story out of that thought that is causing us to suffer and it shows through our emotions. Changing that thought will change the way we feel. An even more important is changing our perception about that specific judgment. Our minds are not in congruence with who we are so it is creating conflicts between the way we think and the actions we are taking.

Show your kids to pay attention to the way they are feeling. When you see they are upset or angry, ask them if they are feeling that anger in their hearts or in their stomach. They will start recognizing the communication between thoughts and emotions and develop mechanisms to control their minds.

Practice it yourselves and you will clearly see the relationship between thoughts and emotions. You will be able to anticipate your behavior and change it by changing the way you think about a specific situation.

Gratitude

We teach our kids to be polite and always say please and thank you to other, but being grateful is much more than that. Being grateful is appreciating what we have at a particular moment.

 It seems we are always wishing for something, and once we get it, it´s very difficult to enjoy it because our minds have move right to the next item on the wishing list. Our minds are more addicted to wishing than to actually wanting or needing an item and enjoying it.

 The lack of gratitude and appreciation towards what we have or what is at a particular time, keeps us away from focusing on the present moment. Also we look over little details in our lives like the kindness of someone, the beautiful weather, the delicious food we ate or the love we receive from people around us.

 A way to practice gratitude is keeping a Gratitude Journal. At the end of the day, before going to bed, a minimum of 5 things that happened during the day that we are grateful for should be written down. This exercise only takes 5 minutes and will change life´s perception. Keeping a Gratitude Journal is a simple exercise with great benefits. A few of them are:

• We will start focusing more on the goods things that happened to us each day instead of the not welcomed ones. We start paying more attention to the positive experiences than the negative ones.
• Our happiness increases because we realize that everything that occurred during the day wasn´t so bad.
• We will go to sleep with another state of mind, more calmed and relaxed, after reviewing the day and having the sense of gratitude sinking in our bodies.

 I got cute little notebooks for my kids and got them started on their journals writing at least 3 good things that happened to them during their day. Also they can paint on the rest of the page those things they wrote about. My 7 year old was always complaining about how some days were the worse ever, or how bad things always happened to her, or how she never had anything like any of her friends.

 Now she sees how things are not that bad. She is grateful of things that happen to her that do not happen to other kids her age. She feels special and fortunate because she pays attention of the great things that happens to her each day.

 Try this for yourself and with your children. It doesn´t take up a lot of time and is one more thing to share with your children.

Dream On

I never watch an animated movie as an adult until I became a mother and I have to admit, most of them are very good, even better than regular movies. This type of movies helps our imagination to run free and open a door in our heads that allow us to dream.

It is important to train our brains to dream, to create new stories in our imaginations, otherwise we keep repeating/thinking the same experiences in our heads thus believing those are the only experiences we will live.

Until recently, I personally did not know what it was I wanted to do in life. I have also come across a lot of people contemporary to me in the same situation. Although I was happy with my job and with my family, I knew that there was something more to life than that.

It´s a feeling like life becomes monotonous and repetitive. It seems like we have lost passion in life, being that it was ever there to begin with, or that while growing up we put all our energy into acquiring financial independence and stability, looking for happiness in the external world. That is when we shut down internally and forget who we really are and the dreams we had.

We have to encourage our kids to dream, to constantly create new adventures in their heads so they can open the possibilities of living those dreams and make them reality. They still have the ability to go to different worlds in their heads believing anything is possible and are not embarrased about what people will think about them because they are playing. I tell mine that children can never be bored so they have created what they call “Imaginary games”. Every day after school, the first thing they do is play by themselves. It seems like is it a way of reorganizing their experiences and making them different.

They believe in fairies, Peter Pan and obviously the Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause. In the end, all these fantastic stories are somehow represented in live, but they are what make each our lives different. Living our dreams or passions is what will make us happy at the end of the day, keeping us connected with ourselves  while creating new things.

Meditation

We have all heard that it is very beneficial to meditate, but when we finally put ourselves to it, we realize that it is very difficult so we tell ourselves: This is not for me. Meditation is not for everybody. Well, practice makes perfect!

By meditating, or sitting in silence, we connect to our internal world which to some people may be a totally unknown place.

It is necessary to spend more time observing our internal world. We are constantly importing internally what we observe and perceive externally: chaos, destruction, endings.

Our internal world has an effect in our external world. When we are observing, our external world shuts down and this observation becomes real to our brain changing our reality and allowing us to create new experiences in our lives.

I explained to my kids that we have two persons inside of us. One is in our heads, and one is in our hearts. The one inside our heads never, ever stops talking, and when we need to get answers to important questions or when in doubts, it is difficult to know if we are listening the person in our heads that is full of reason, insecurity, fear; or to the one in our loving, intuitive hearts.

This is why every day they have a set time to sit down in silence, in separate rooms, for 5 minutes to allow their heads to disconnect from the outside world and create the habit of listening to and observing their internal world. Kids should sit in silence for as many minutes as their age, 5 years – 5 minutes, and so on. Ten years old can sit for longer times.

They already understand the purpose of Sitting in Silence. Their minds stop resisting instead of making them feel anxiety, they feel more calm and in peace, especially after a day in school full of emotions and activities.  When in the middle of stress situations at home, I send them to sit in silence and it clicks to them that it is what they need to get calmed and to change their situations. It is a tool they will always have to get closer to who they really are.

 Encourage them to make the habit. The benefits will be good in the short and long term for both the kids and the adults.

Name Calling

Once when arguing with someone close to me, I told her “you´re so stupid!” She answered back telling me that she was not, and explained to me why. When listening to the explanation, I became aware the impact that those meaningless words had on her. That moment really stuck to me and I realized then that some people could take our words literally, even if we don´t mean them, and that we can really hurt them, making them believe they are what we say.

Ever since, I choose my words carefully making it a purpose to express my ideas and thoughts for what they really mean. It is also interesting and fun to use languages properly increasing our vocabulary.

Of course, this is something I practice with my kids too. I talked to them about my experience and how we hurt others not on purposely. I tell them that every one of us have a proper name and let them know the meaning of theirs. All of our names are beautiful, and that´s how we should call each other. No one is allowed in our house to call anyone names.

One day when picking up my 6 year-old from school, I saw a friend of hers who was very upset and I asked what had happened. He told me that other kids were calling him names so I whispered, “I have a super power that I will share with you. It is the Wind. Next time someone calls you names you call on it and it will blow all those words away.” Then he asked, “Do I call on it in my head or out loud?” I told him to do it in his head, that way he won´t listen to others.

That was another prove that children listen to us and truly believe in what we say. Let´s take advantage of that while we can and use it to impregnate them of positive thinking and affirmations.