Helping Kids with Anxiety

One of my specialities is working with children, teens, and adults with anxiety. In this blog post I would like to share one of my favorite resources for helping kids with anxiety.
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A great book that you can use with your child at home is What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety (What to Do Guides for Kids). This book is recommended for children ages 8 to 12 years old.  I often recommend to parents that they get this workbook as a supplement to their child’s therapy and work on it with their child at home in between sessions.

The same author, Dr. Dawn Huebner, recently published another anxiety workbook geared towards older children called Outsmarting Worry: An Older Kid's Guide to Managing Anxiety. This is another great workbook to supplement therapy and may be more applicable if your child is older or at a higher reading level.

What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety (What to Do Guides for Kids) can help teach your child skills to manage and deal with their anxiety. It is an interactive workbook that allows your child to write, draw, and color throughout the book. It uses relatable metaphors and stories that the kids in my office have found helpful for understanding and dealing with their anxiety.  

The skills in this book are based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which is an evidenced-based treatment. This means that it has a significant amount of research supporting its effectiveness for helping treat anxiety. To learn more about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for children, check out this article by the Child Mind Institute or this handout from the University of Washington Harborview Medical Center.

I hope this was helpful, thanks for reading!