Parenting Teenagers with Anxiety During Challenging Times
Parenting teenagers is a journey filled with joys, challenges, and learning curves. When your teenager struggles with anxiety the path can become complex at times, especially during transitions, academic pressures, friendship dramas and family upheavals. Anxiety may manifest as excessive worry, fear of failure, or avoidance behaviours, difficulty concentrating, and struggles with executive functioning. For parents understanding how anxiety impacts your child is the first step, then there is the ever-evolving, seemingly paradoxical balance of how to be there for your young adult, help them become independent and stay afloat yourself!
Structure and Freedom - Structure provides a sense of security for teens with anxiety as routines help mitigate the chaos they may feel internally and externally. Some ways to do this can be:
• Create Predictable Schedules: consistent wake-up times, meals, and homework hours.
• Break Down Tasks: Help your teen tackle overwhelming assignments by breaking them into manageable steps.
• Use Visual Aids: Calendars, checklists, and reminders can keep your teen on track without constant parental intervention.
Yet too much structure can have the opposite effect, and make your teenager feel overwhelmed or suffocating and panic. Which requires you to also learn how to be in flow and attune to your teen, to feel into when you need to let go a little. There is no right here, and no therapist can give you the ‘correct formula’ but having the support of a therapist when raising a teenager with anxiety can be helpful.
Discipline and Compassion
Discipline is necessary, but it’s important to approach it with understanding that teens with anxiety may struggle to meet expectations, not out of defiance but due to genuine challenges. Instead of viewing discipline as punishment and serving it out harshly, can you reframe it as bumper rails, like at bowling…
• Clear Consequences: make sure your teenager is aware of any consequences if boundaries are crossed, and then if they are, implement them but with compassion rather than anger.
• Positive Reinforcement: Reward efforts rather than outcomes to build confidence.
• Calm Corrections: Avoid reactive discipline; instead, wait until YOU are calm, even if your teenager is not, and then explain what went wrong and how to improve.
Building Emotional Resilience and Still Being Supportive.
We cannot avoid our teenager feel hard emotions - including anxiety - so wrapping them up in cotton wool will do them a disservice. Teaching your teen to manage their emotions is a cornerstone of parenting. You may not want to hear it but the most influential action you can take is
• Modelling Emotional Regulation: Show how to handle stress constructively. I know, it is much harder if your teenager is screaming at you, refusing to go to school, completely disregarding rules you put in place about screen time. Therapy for parents of anxious teenagers not only benefits the parent, by flow-on effect, it also helps the child.
• Encouraging Problem-Solving Collaboratively: Guide your teen in brainstorming solutions rather than solving problems for them.
• Practicing Mindfulness: Introduce relaxation techniques done together, like deep breathing or meditation. These are tools your teenager can then use when alone to help manage anxiety.
Adolescence is a tricky period, where both teen and parent are adjusting to a new dynamic between each other. If you want to support you teenager, even if you cannot relate to their ways of coping, or what they are placing their attention on, still attempt to listen without judgment and validate your teen’s feelings. For example, acknowledge their struggles, “I see how hard this is for you,” There is no shame in choosing to find a therapist near you and collaborate with professional who has experience working with anxious teenagers and who can help provide emotional support and practical tools to help you and your teenager.