You know the feeling. Tears at drop off. The tummy aches that crash into your world on a Sunday night. The party, the play date that’s meant to be fun, but fills the air with worry instead.

You do what any loving parent would do. You stay close. You listen. You reassure. You remove the things that send them spiralling.

All of it comes from the right place — from watching your child suffer and wanting, more than anything, to make it stop.

And it does make it stop. For now. For today.

But the anxiety keeps getting bigger.

You’re doing what any loving parent would do, but sometimes, the very thing that feels like it’s helping your child, is actually making it worse. Anxiety can be tricky like that. the things that relieve it in the short term are often the things that grow it in the long term. 

The good news is that you also have a profound capacity to strengthen your child through it – now and for life.

Why avoidance makes anxiety bigger.

Anxiety isn’t a sign of breakage, and it certainly isn’t a statement of what your child is capable of. It’s the nervous system doing exactly what it’s meant to do – scan for danger, sound the alarm, mobilise the body to fight or flee or freeze (hide).

The problem isn’t their nervous system. It’s working beautifully. The problem is that it’s started treating ordinary things as dangerous – a classroom, a social situation, a test, a goodbye, a change in routine. The body responds as though the threat is real, because to the nervous system, it is.

This matters because it changes what help actually looks like.

If anxiety was a choice, the answer would be willpower. If it was purely emotional, the answer would be comfort and reassurance. But it’s physiological – which means the most important thing you can do isn’t to talk your child out of it, and it isn’t to remove the trigger. It’s to help their nervous system learn that it can move through the thing it’s afraid of and come out the other side. 

This learning only happens one way: through experience.

The part of the brain responsible for anxiety – the amygdala – works like a fierce, protective warrior. Unless it’s certain something is safe, it treats that something as a threat and organses the body to fight (anger), flee (avoidance), or hide.

Here’s the part that matters: All brave, new, hard, important, growthful things will register as ‘threat’ because they al carry the possibility of failure, humiliation, judgement, shame, missing out on something important, perhaps separation from someone they care about – but they aren’t dangerous. Even if these things are so unlikely, the brain doesn’t care. Any chance of threat’ counts as threat, and the most certain way to stay safe is avoidance.

Helping children understand this is critical. It will make the anxiety feel less frightening, so they will be more able to move with – feel anxious and do brave. It’s why I wrote ‘Hey Warrior’.

Here’s what that means over time: every time something is avoided, the brain becomes more convinced that avoidance was the right call. The intention is to help, but it sends a message that was never intended: that the ‘threat’ was real, that your child couldn’t have handled it, and that avoidance was the only way to stay safe. You don’t mean to send that message – you’re just trying to get through the day – but that’s the meaning that gets sent.

Avoidance ‘fine-tunes’ the brain’s filter to notice things that confirm avoidance as the best option, and ignore the things that might be ambiguous or neutral or which might signal that this thing is actually safe enough.

When this happens, the anxiety doesn’t stay contained – it expands. What starts as distress at school drop-off can slowly bleed into distress at any separation at all.

Think about the things you would have missed out on if you avoided the because they made you anxious – a job interview that lead to your job, a driving test that lead to you getting your license, a first date that lead to your person. All of these things come with anxiety. They all drive distress. And they’re all things that grow us and expand our world. The anxiety isn’t the problem. It’s what we do next that matters – facing or avoiding.

The reassurance trap.

When a child is anxious, most parents reach for reassurance.

It’ll be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen. IYou’re okay. You can do this.

It helps – for about as long as it takes for the anxiety to return with the same question. Because reassurance answers the thought, and anxiety isn’t really a thought. It’s a body state. And a body state doesn’t resolve through being told it’s wrong.

Over time, the child’s nervous system learns to outsource its regulation – to your words, your presence, your certainty. Which means when you’re not there, or when the reassurance doesn’t come fast enough, the anxiety spikes. The child becomes less able to tolerate uncertainty, not more. The reassurance has to come more often, go longer, be more convincing, to have the same effect.

This isn’t anyone’s fault. Reassurance is a completely natural human response to a child in distress. But it’s one of the most important things a parent of an anxious child can un derstand: reassurance relieves anxiety in the short term, and grows it in the long term.

Anxious children don’t need less from us. They need something different.

Anxious children need an adult who is more certain than the anxiety. Not dismissive of it, and not distressed by it. Certain in spite of it.

The parent who can hold the anxiety without being destabilised by it, sends a message that no reassurance can: I can see this is hard for you, and I am not worried about you. I’m here for you. I know you can do this. W

That confidence, held warmly, does something that words alone can’t. It lands in the nervous system as safety, not because the threat has been removed, but because the most important person in the child’s world isn’t afraid.

Our children need us to be the ones who don’t rescue and don’t abandon. The ones who stay – in the hard moment, at the school gate, through the spiral – not to fix it but to witness it and to make sure they aren’t alone in it, or to hand them lovingly to another adult who can do this when we leave. 

That warm, confident presence is the intervention. Not the words. Not the solution. Not the avoidance. 

That experience – of moving through something hard with someone steady beside them – is what slowly, over time, teaches the nervous system that the storms are survivable, and rarely as bad as they seem.

What it actually sounds like.

Scenario 1. Your child refuses to go to a swimming lesson. They’re crying, clinging, insisting something terrible will happen.

Not this: ‘You’re fine. Nothing bad is going to happen.’ True, probably. But it answers the thought and bypasses the body. And it puts you in the position of having to convince them – which means the anxiety is now in charge of the conversation. During anxiety the rational part of the brain is benched. The amygala has taken charge. Your rational words – though true – will never convince an upset amygdala that this is actually safe. 

Also not this: ‘Okay. Stay home for today. We’ll try again tomorrow.’ The relief is immediate and real. And tomorrow will be harder.

Instead, try this: ‘I know this feels really tough right now. We’re still going in. I’ll walk you to your teacher – she’s waiting for you and I know she’s going to take such good care of you. You don’t have to feel okay about it. But I’m not taking you home, and I’m not changing my mind.’

You’ve named what’s happening in their body. You haven’t argued with the feeling or tried to talk them out of it. You’ve held the expectation – the lesson is happening – and you’ve done this warmly, clearly, and without apology. You’ve held the boundary. By having a deliberate handover to an adult they feel safe with, you’ve also made sure they won’t go through this alone. 

Small steps. Warm tone. Clear about your intention. The goal isn’t getting them in the pool. It’s feeling your certainty through the anxiety, so eventually they can feel that certainty too. It’s okay if this takes time. Sometimes we have to go slow to get there quicker.

Scenario 2: Your child gets anxious before an exam, and refuses to get out of the car.

Not this: ‘You’ll be fine once you get there.’ True, probably. But it lands as dismissal. 

Instead, try this: ‘I can see this feels big. I’m going to stay here until you’re ready to hop out of the car. Take your time. You’re not in trouble, and I’m not driving you home.’

No argument. No rescue. Just presence and a held expectation.

The goal in both cases isn’t to get them into the pool or through the door. It’s for them to feel your certainty move through the anxiety – so that slowly, over time, they can find that certainty in themselves.

We don’t beat anxiety. We outlast it.

And finally …

When your child is in distress, your nervous system responds to theirs. This isn’t a parenting failure. It’s attachment working exactly as it should. You are wired to want to make this better.

But making it better and making it easier are not the same thing.

The parent who helps an anxious child isn’t the one who clears every hard thing from the path. It’s the one who walks beside them through it – who stays warm when the anxiety says run, who stays certain of their capability when it says they can’t, who holds the expectation gently when every instinct says give in.

That parent, over time, becomes the evidence that the world is survivable. Not because they said so, but because they were there, steady and warm, while the child found out for themselves.