This book sets out therapeutic activities to help children aged 4-12 years and their families to better understand and manage anxiety. It explains how to work with anxious children, providing a framework for assessment and therapy that draws on CBT, ACT and narrative therapy approaches. Lots of practical tips for therapists are included and important developmental considerations are discussed, including adapting therapy for children with developmental difficulties, and working with families and schools. Over 50 playful therapeutic activities are included, which have been developed through the authors' extensive work with children, giving children an arsenal of coping strategies. They focus on key areas such as understanding anxiety, managing anxious thoughts, and building resilience and use readily available, inexpensive materials and downloadable templates which are provided in the book. This is the perfect tool for therapists looking for playful and purposeful ways to work with children with anxiety.

Help children to stay on top of "big" feelings like anger, sadness and anxiety with this ingeniously easy-to-use therapy toolkit. Focusing on making therapy for children both purposeful and playful, the book provides 47 activities to transform your sessions using everyday materials and a variety of tried-and-tested therapy models. The authors deliver sage advice on how to work with children, adapting your approach for different age groups and judging how and when to involve parents and teachers. The handy reference table allows you to quickly fish out the perfect activity for the moment, according to the emotion the child is experiencing, or the therapeutic method needed. With its winning mix of creative resources and clinical expertise, all wrapped up in a simple and practical format, this is the ideal companion for both new and experienced therapists working with children aged 4-12.

Support children to better understand and manage their anger with this practical guide of therapeutic activities. From exploring a child's first steps in therapy to helping parents and carers with their responses, this book provides practical advice for working with children aged 4-12 and families navigating issues of anger and emotional regulation. The book includes over fifty playful, practical, and purposeful activities to use in therapy. Grounded in theory and research around anger in children, the activities include clear therapeutic rationales for practitioners, considerations for older and younger children, suggestions for the inclusion of parents and carers, and adaptations for online practice. This is the ultimate tool for therapists looking to develop their clinical practice with creative ways to help children manage their anger.

Katie freezes when she's asked to perform. Jose is a clinger. Damian is terrified of animals. Felicia always worries that she's going to make a mistake. It's hard being the parent of an anxious child, watching your son's frustration grow, or seeing how your daughter tries to cope with her fears but gives up so quickly. Filled with solid information, a proven four-step program, dozens of engaging activities, and insightful personal vignettes, Your Anxious Child gives you easy, fun, and highly effective tools to help your child become a creative problem solver. Parents and teachers alike will find excellent strategies in this essential guide.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps clients to embrace their feelings and use their personal values to improve their lives. Its popularity has grown significantly in recent years, but the number of ACT resources designed to support children is still limited. The ACT strategies and activities in this guide have been designed specifically for use with children aged 5-12, with a particular focus on the uniquely delicate connection needed for a successful practitioner-client relationship. The approach is designed to fit children's stages of development and learning styles, allowing young clients to build skills in a way that suits their age and cognitive patterns. Built from the author's extensive experience in child psychology, this guide offers ways to tailor ACT for effective work with children. It includes specific and detailed guidance on tailoring ACT to specific presentations, including OCD and neurodivergent populations, as well as parenting.

As a parent it can often be difficult to know how best to support your child when they become fearful and worried. This guide offers ways to help you to help your child articulate how they are feeling and offers effective coping strategies and simple lifestyle tweaks to manage anxiety by building their resilience and self-confidence for life.

You: "How was your day?" Your child: "Fine." As a parent, you want to know what is going on in your child's life, how school and friendships are going, if they're feeling okay. As a kid you want to tell your parent what's going on, but it can be hard to find the words. This book is brilliant because it makes finding those words easy, and you discover incredible stuff about each other. How exactly do you make it happen? This accessible guide answers the million-dollar question by steering you, step by step through carefully supported and structured conversational platforms that encourage connection and strengthen relationship bonds. Written by two top clinical psychologists who have worked with families over many years they have, uniquely, designed it for you to read and experience, together. Inside this book you will find a range of fun, illustrated child-friendly conversation activities, organised around four key themes: who are you? how are you? what helps? what gets in the way? There is powerful evidence that building good parent-child communication skills improves emotional wellbeing, physical health, academic and employment success. It helps set up a trusting relationship so you can navigate adolescence and later life successfully. It's important to start early because it takes time to learn skills.

Kids today are growing up in a fast-paced world where information and opportunity overload can be overwhelming. Teaching Kids to Manage Anxiety offers parents and teachers simple strategies that can make a massive difference to a child's ability to cope. Based on many years of clinical experience as an Occupational Therapist, Deb Hopper has been using her Just Right KidsTM Model to teach children to communicate and manage their stress and anxiety by: - Identifying their "body speed," - Understanding their stress triggers, and - Implementing simple strategies to reduce anxiety and stress. Deb unpacks a comprehensive look at anxiety from a refreshing perspective. This includes understanding what happens in the brain when children are anxious, the role of memory, how to identify stress and anxiety in children through their clues, the impact of gut health on anxiety a new perspective of the extent of anxiety in children including the concepts of occupational anxiety sensory overload and screen time as contributing factors. Deb steps through practical strategies for how to support children with the 5 types of 'occupational anxiety', or anxiety in a child's occuption, including Learning anxiety Sensory induced anxiety Social anxiety Emotional anxiety, and Transitional anxiety. The final section outlines both body/ physically based (bottom up) and cognitive/ thinking strategies (top down) approaches to supporting children to reduce anxiety and thrive from day to day. Both parents and professionals will be refreshed and empowered to help their children/ the children they work with.

ANXIETY SUPPORT BACK-TO-SCHOOL ANXIETY RESOURCES ANXIETY IN KIDS STRESS RELIEF MANAGING STRESS TRANSITION TO SCHOOL CHILDHOOD ANXIETY Are you and your child feeling anxious about the upcoming back-to-school season? Don't worry, Managing Back-To-School Anxiety is here to help! This comprehensive guide is designed to empower parents with effective strategies to ease the transition and support their children in overcoming school-related stress and anxiety. Managing Back-To-School Anxiety will equip you with a comprehensive toolkit to address and alleviate back-to-school anxiety in both children and parents, fostering a nurturing and supportive environment for your child's academic and emotional growth. Managing Back-To-School Anxiety will help you: Learn practical techniques to help children manage and overcome back-to-school anxiety. Gain a deeper understanding of the emotional needs and challenges children face during the transition to school. Discover effective strategies to establish a solid emotional foundation for your child. Explore breathwork and grounding exercises to promote calmness and relaxation. Learn how to create a safe space for your child to express and navigate their emotions. Acquire practical tips for managing anxiety in a school setting. Understand the importance of familiarising your child with the school environment before the first day. Establish routines and structure to provide stability and reduce anxiety triggers. Discover creative techniques, such as chewing gum and utilizing essential oils, to manage anxiety on a daily basis. Access a wealth of practical tools and resources to support your child's emotional well-being throughout the school year. Empower yourself as a parent with knowledge and strategies to create a positive and stress-free back-to-school experience for your child. What's Inside Managing Back-To-School Anxiety? In Section 1, you'll learn how to create a solid emotional base for your child. Explore techniques such as feeling grounded, utilizing breathwork, and granting permission to acknowledge and manage emotions. By establishing this foundation, you'll help your child develop resilience and emotional intelligence. Section 2 offers practical advice tailored specifically for the school environment. Discover the power of role-playing to familiarise your child with potential scenarios, organize recess activities to promote social interaction, and arrange a preschool classroom tour to reduce first-day jitters. Additionally, learn the value of sending a familiar item to school, establishing routines, and other effective strategies to foster a sense of security and stability. In Section 3, you'll explore a range of tools and techniques to incorporate into your child's daily routine. From chewing gum, creative outlets, and tapping exercises to essential oils, wellness regimes, and puppet play, this section provides an array of options to soothe anxiety triggers. Gain a deeper understanding of the amygdala, the brain's fear center, and learn how mindset shifts can empower your child to navigate anxiety with confidence. This book is a valuable resource for parents seeking practical and accessible solutions to mitigate back-to-school anxiety. Equip yourself with the knowledge and tools to create a positive, stress-free back-to-school experience for your child. With Managing Back-To-School Anxiety, you can be the anchor your child needs as they embark on this exciting new chapter. Embrace the journey with confidence, and help your child thrive academically, emotionally, and socially.

From the bestselling author of Living with IT and Taming the Black Dog comes a practical guide for parents of anxious children. If your child is too often: seeks reassurance, invents illnesses, avoids interactions, avoids trying new things, becomes emotional over minor upsets, or is clingy, afraid to sleep alone, reluctant to go to school or scared of numerous things ... then anxiety could be an issue for them. Commonly, a child experiencing anxiety doubts themselves, lacks confidence and becomes easily overwhelmed. So how do you best help them? From Australia's bestselling anxiety expert, Bev Aisbett, comes an essential guide for these anxious times. Worry-Proofing Your Anxious Child is a calm, clear and, above all, reassuring book to help parents (and teachers) of anxious children. Filled with simple explanations and practical advice, this book will assist everyone who wants to help a child overcome their anxieties and learn to live more confidently. Bev Aisbett is Australia's leading author in books around managing anxiety. In 1993, after recovering from severe anxiety and depression herself, Bev turned to her artistic talents to create the first of her ground-breaking illustrated self-help books Living with IT: A Survivor's Guide to Panic Attacks, which rapidly became a national bestseller, with over 200,000 copies sold. In 2013, HarperCollins published the fully revised and updated 20th anniversary edition of this classic book.