First Aid for your Child's Mind (ePub)

Designed to help parents, teachers and caregivers manage children’s fears, worries and anxieties with confidence and ease. Author Alicia Eaton is a Harley Street therapist who specialises in children’s emotional wellbeing and behavioural issues.

The number of children seeking help for anxiety and mental health issues has risen sharply, recent data from the NSPCC’s Childline service has suggested. Even those as young as four years old are said to be displaying signs of panic attacks, eating disorders, anxiety and depression.

Most parents will readily admit that when it comes to helping children deal with feelings of anxiety and worry, they feel inadequately prepared and quite simply ‘lost for words’.  It’s not surprising - after all:

 *What is the best way to explain the regularly reported terrorist attacks and bombings without alarming your child?

*What should you say to a child that’s witnessed a tower block fire or disaster on TV and is suffering from nightmares as a result?

*How do you handle a child that’s petrified of dentists, injections, dogs, spiders or even eating vegetables?

*How can you talk about keeping ‘safe’ without frightening the living daylights out of your child?

*Or help the child who is convinced the only thing they ‘know’ for sure is they’ll forget every single word of their revision, the minute they step into in an exam room?

The good news is that anxiety is a very treatable condition. Enlightened psychologists will now refer to anxiety as something that’s often the result of an emotional ‘injury’ to the mind rather than a ‘disorder’ - for that word immediately suggests it’s part of a long-term problem and something to ‘suffer’.  But in reality, it’s now possible to heal an emotional wound rather than leaving it to fester allowing it to turn into something much bigger.

So just as our children acquire bumps and scrapes on the outside of their bodies, we shouldn’t be surprised to discover it’s also possible to acquire a few on the inside too.