When a child is anxious, most parents have the same instinct: make the anxiety go away.
We reassure. We explain. We fix. We remove the thing that feels scary. We remind our child that everything will be okay.
Sometimes that helps. But anxiety is more complicated than simply feeling bad, and trying too hard to eliminate it can unintentionally teach a child that anxiety itself is something dangerous.
On The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast, I spoke with Dr. Tracy Foose, a board-certified psychiatrist, Associate Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, and former Director of the UCSF Anxiety Disorders Program. Dr. Foose has spent much of her career studying fear and anxiety and helping people understand these emotions in a different way.
One of the most important ideas from our conversation is also one of the most counterintuitive:
Anxiety is not always the enemy.
Fear and anxiety developed to protect us. They alert us to threats, prepare our bodies to respond, and draw our attention to what matters. The problem is not necessarily that a child experiences anxiety. The problem can begin when anxiety becomes so powerful that it starts shrinking the child’s life or when everyone in the family becomes organized around preventing the child from ever feeling anxious.
That distinction can change how a parent responds.
Why Do Kids and Teens Experience Anxiety?
Anxiety is our brain and body’s response to something it perceives as uncertain, threatening, or important.
Sometimes the threat is obvious. A child may worry about a test, a friendship problem, performing in front of others, starting at a new school, or trying something they haven’t done before.
Other times the anxiety seems disproportionate to the situation. A child may desperately avoid something that appears fairly ordinary to everyone else.
This can be particularly confusing for parents of children with ADHD. A child may already be navigating executive-function challenges, inconsistent performance, difficulty starting tasks, social uncertainty, emotional intensity, or a history of feeling that they are falling behind. An upcoming assignment, conversation, practice, or school day may therefore carry much more emotional weight than a parent initially realizes.
What looks like, “Why are you making such a big deal about this?” may feel very different from inside the child’s experience.
Is Anxiety Always a Problem?
No. Some anxiety is part of being human.
Dr. Foose describes fear and anxiety as protective emotions designed to prepare us for potential threats. Her work encourages people to become curious about anxiety rather than immediately treating its presence as evidence that something has gone wrong.
Think about a teenager who feels nervous before an important presentation. Some anxiety may sharpen attention and signal, This matters to me. I want to do well.
A child who worries about entering a new social situation may be receiving information that belonging matters deeply to them.
Anxiety can tell us something.
That doesn’t mean severe anxiety should simply be accepted or ignored. Anxiety can become impairing. It can interfere with sleep, school, relationships, motivation, independence, and a child’s willingness to participate in everyday life. Dr. Foose’s work specifically addresses how anxiety affects areas such as avoidance, sleep, stress management, and motivation.
The goal is not to celebrate suffering. It is to become better at distinguishing between an uncomfortable emotion a child can learn to navigate and anxiety that is significantly limiting the child’s life and may need professional support.
Why Can Trying to Get Rid of Anxiety Make It Stronger?
This may be one of the most useful ideas for parents.
When we communicate that anxiety must disappear before a child can move forward, the child can begin to believe:
I can’t handle this feeling.
And once the feeling itself becomes frightening, the family may start working very hard to prevent it.
A parent emails the teacher. Changes the plan. Cancels the activity. Provides repeated reassurance. Answers the same worry for the tenth time. Makes sure the child never has to experience the feared situation.
Of course, parents usually do these things out of love.
But there is an important question to ask:
Am I helping my child through the anxiety, or am I helping my child avoid the anxiety?
Those are not always the same thing.
Dr. Foose’s approach asks us to become curious about fear rather than automatically trying to eliminate it. On her own website, she describes how repeatedly trying to rid ourselves of anxiety can make the emotion stronger, while becoming curious about why it is present can change our relationship with it.
For parents, that can mean resisting the understandable urge to solve every anxious moment immediately.
What Should Parents Say When a Child Is Anxious?
Parents often move quickly into reassurance:
“Don’t worry.”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“You’ve done this before.”
Those statements are well-intentioned, but they may miss what the child actually needs.
Sometimes a more useful starting point is curiosity.
What feels hardest about this?
What are you imagining might happen?
What is your anxiety telling you right now?
What would help you take the next small step?
This doesn’t mean agreeing with every fear or allowing anxiety to make every family decision. It means understanding the child’s experience before deciding what support is needed.
There is a meaningful difference between telling a child, “There is nothing to worry about,” and communicating, “I can see that you’re worried, and I believe you can handle feeling worried while we figure out the next step.”
The second response doesn’t promise to remove discomfort.
It communicates capability.
How Much Should Parents Accommodate a Child’s Anxiety?
This is where parenting can get particularly difficult.
Children need support. They also need opportunities to discover that they can survive uncertainty, discomfort, mistakes, embarrassment, and fear.
Sometimes accommodation is appropriate. A child may need scaffolding, preparation, therapy, school support, a smaller first step, or temporary adjustments.
But if life becomes increasingly organized around avoiding anything that might trigger anxiety, the child’s world can gradually become smaller.
This is why the question isn’t simply, Should I push or should I back off?
A more helpful question may be:
What support helps my child move toward life rather than away from it?
That answer will look different depending on the child, the severity of the anxiety, their developmental level, and what else is happening.
For some children, progress may mean walking into school independently.
For another, it may mean emailing a teacher.
For another, it may mean attending the first twenty minutes of something they have been avoiding.
The goal isn’t to force bravery. It is to help a child gradually discover that feeling anxious and being capable can exist at the same time.
What Does ADHD Have to Do With Anxiety?
ADHD and anxiety can overlap in ways that are difficult for parents to untangle.
A child might avoid homework because they are anxious about getting it wrong. Or because starting is difficult. Or because the assignment feels overwhelming. Or because they have repeatedly struggled with similar work and now expect another painful experience.
A teenager who procrastinates may look unmotivated while feeling overwhelmed inside.
A child who refuses to participate may be protecting themselves from embarrassment.
And sometimes a child has both ADHD and an anxiety disorder.
This is one reason I encourage parents to become detectives rather than immediately deciding what a behavior means. Behavior tells us that something is happening. It doesn’t always tell us exactly what.
Understanding what is underneath the behavior gives us much more useful information than simply asking, How do I make this stop?
How Can Parents Keep Their Child’s Anxiety From Becoming Their Anxiety?
This may be one of the hardest parts of parenting an anxious child.
Your child’s fear can become contagious.
Suddenly, you are thinking three weeks ahead, researching, emailing, planning, worrying, and trying to prevent every possible difficulty.
It is understandable. We love our kids.
But when parents become frightened by their child’s anxiety, the child can receive another message:
Maybe this really is too much for me.
Sometimes the most powerful thing a parent can offer isn’t the perfect solution, but steadiness.
You can take your child’s anxiety seriously without becoming consumed by it.
You can acknowledge fear without treating fear as an emergency.
You can help without taking over.
And you can believe your child is capable, even in moments when they don’t feel particularly capable themselves.
When Does a Child’s Anxiety Need Professional Help?
Anxiety exists on a spectrum, and parents don’t have to diagnose where their child falls on that spectrum alone.
It may be worth talking with a qualified healthcare or mental-health professional when anxiety is consistently interfering with school attendance, sleep, eating, friendships, family life, activities the child previously enjoyed, or normal developmental independence. Significant or increasing avoidance is also worth noting.
Treatment for anxiety may include approaches such as psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral strategies, gradual exposure work, lifestyle support, and in some cases medication. Dr. Foose describes anxiety treatment as individualized and notes that therapy, medication, exercise, and other health factors may all be considered depending on the person and situation.
The important point for parents is that support doesn’t have to mean trying to make sure a child never feels anxious again.
The larger goal is helping a child develop the capacity to live a meaningful life even when anxiety occasionally comes along for the ride.
What Do Anxious Kids Need Most From Their Parents?
They need us to remember that discomfort and danger are not always the same thing.
They need us to listen before we rush to fix.
They need appropriate support without having every challenge removed.
They need adults who stay curious about what lies beneath the fear.
And perhaps most importantly, they need us to communicate something that children with anxiety can have difficulty believing themselves:
You can feel anxious and still be okay. You can feel afraid and still take the next step.
That is a very different message from “don’t worry.”
It teaches a child that anxiety is an emotion they can learn to understand rather than an enemy they must spend their life trying to escape.
Listen to Dr. Tracy Foose on The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast
In this episode of The ADHD Kids Can Thrive Podcast, I talk with Dr. Tracy Foose about anxiety and fear in kids and teens, why these emotions exist, what happens when families become anxious about anxiety itself, and how parents can help children develop a healthier relationship with uncomfortable feelings.
Learn more about Dr. Tracy Foose:
https://www.drfoose.com
Learn more about ADHD parent coaching with Kate Brownfield, ACC:
https://adhdkidscanthrive.com
Get The ADHD Parent Reset: 7 Things to Do Differently When What You’re Trying Isn’t Working:
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/IUVgRZz