Helping Your Anxious Child with Storytelling
Do your kids enjoy stories???
Storytelling is a fantastic way to teach, to plant seeds and to connect with your children. You don’t have to be a novelist to tell a short engaging story. You can even rub your child’s back or if they like, use their name as the hero in your story.
The Rules
Have fun, be playful, and don’t worry about sounding silly.
Decide which Awesome Cognitive Pattern (ACP) is missing in your child and family.
You must also be practicing this skill in your own life.
The Goal
To have fun, to connect with your child and increase tolerance for uncertainty and discomfort.
Story Should Address one or more of these concepts:
Flexibility-Ability to shift/problem solve when something unexpected happens
Parts- The concept that something is not all good or all bad. Including ourselves.
Problem Solving- The ability to be confronted with a challenge and consider a variety of solutions. Including asking for help.
Temporary-That things are always changing and that change is a normal part of life, therefore nothing to be scared of.
External-The ability to consider other people and move out of our minds
Active-The need to go on offense and step into our lives including doing things that we are afraid of.
Bonus Concepts: Bravery, Kindness, helping others Self-compassion, grit/perseverance, doing joyful things, trusting your intuition or any other thing your family values.
The Ingredients
Pick One Concept (roughly based on your child’s experience)
Choose a Character (ideally an animal or fantasy character)
Choose a Guide (someone to teaches the character a better way)
Decide on how the problem is impacting the hero’s life
What is the solution that turns the character the Hero or what is the lesson that the hero learns.
Sample story About Perfection (Addressing flexibility)
A long time ago there lived a brave knight who needed to have everything just right. He needed everything in his room to be blue. He needed his sandwiches cut into triangles. He needed his clothes to be ironed with straight corners. He needed to use ONLY the red sword. He had to arrive at court (where he worked) at exactly 13 minutes before everyone else. And if these things didn’t happen……HE GOT MAD!!!
One day when he was only 9 minutes early and he didn’t get to pick the red sword. He starting stamping his feet and yelling really loud. Just then the King walked in and demanded to know why there was such a ruckus happening in his castle.
The brave knight felt terrible that he lost his temper and admitted it was him. He explained to the King what happened. It just so happens that the King knew exactly how the Knight felt and he decided to take him under his wing (that means help him).
So the King moved right in with the Brave knight because he knew how great he was and that he just needed to learn a few new skills before he could become the leader of ALLLL the kingdoms Knights.
First he showed him rooms that were made up of many colors. The knight saw that the rooms still looked nice…even though they weren’t blue.
Then he took him to lunch and covered his eyes. The king cut his sandwich into rectangles and had him take a bite. The knight thought it was the most delicious sandwich he ever had. When he took off the blindfold he saw the shape and was shocked to see it wasn’t in a triangle.
Next, the King took the knight to his closet and had him try on the wrinkliest shirt he owned. Then he had him put on his armor. The knight saw that NO ONE could tell that his clothes were wrinkled AND that he got dressed 20 minutes faster than he usually would have.
Now that he was dressed, they went down to the sword making factory and watched 100’s of swords being made. Some were red, some were blue, some were mixed colors. He was shocked that they were all made exactly the same way. He began to appreciate every kind of sword because they were all made of powerful metal. He chose a blue one and began to demonstrate his moves. He was amazed that he felt like he moved even better than he had yesterday.
He walked out with the King who said, I am so proud of you. You did something very uncomfortable and now you have the skills needed to be the Leader of the Knights. The Knight was so honored and he stopped needing to have everything done a certain way.
The End.
If you would like to get some guidance around helping your child become Anxiety-Proof CLICK HERE to learn more about my Anxiety-Proof Kids Roadmap.
About Jennifer Bronsnick, MSW, LCSW
Jennifer Bronsnick is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker & Anxiety Treatment Specialist. She supports women and teen girls who struggle with anxiety, self-doubt & perfectionism tap into their innate resilience, get to the root of their fears and implement custom healing strategies so that they can experience peace of mind, more self-confidence and be liberated from the suffering that living with anxiety causes. Jennifer uses a variety of treatment modalities including Human Design, Mindfulness-Based Therapy, Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis + Health Coaching, Energy Psychology tools, Heartmath and more! She believe that everyone's experience of anxiety is unique and the solution should be customized to the client’s needs and desires.