FEARless

A course for parents/carers of children aged 6-14 years.

This course helps where you have a child who has anxiety which might be causing them to miss school or social events. This course helps you to understand your child's anxiety, recognise when your child is anxious and develop skills and techniques to help your child cope with their anxiety.

Sessions run for two hours a week over six weeks.

Sessions

Session 1: Anxiety - what is it and how does it develop?

This session will help you to understand anxiety by looking at how anxiety impacts your family and how you react to anxiety. You will learn about why your child started to feel anxious, and why they still do.

At the end of the session, you will set goals to focus on throughout the sessions.

Session 2: Promoting emotional resilience in children

You will learn strategies to help your child cope with their emotions. These will help you encourage your child to express and manage their upsetting emotions more effectively. You will also learn to use a tool that helps to track how anxious your child is feeling.

Session 3: Modelling and the way children think

You will learn how parental modelling can help you understand your child's emotional reactions.

You will look at how thoughts can affect anxiety, and learn how to encourage your child to use flexible thinking to manage their anxiety.

Session 4: The way you behave - avoidance and exposure

You will look at avoidance, the most common response to anxiety, and learn how exposure and the use of the Fear Ladder can gradually confront anxiety.

Session 5: Parental strategies for responding to children's anxiety

We will discuss common responses to children's anxiety, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each. You will be encouraged to reflect on which responses are relevant to you, and what you might want to change.

We will help you to develop a parenting plan to encourage your child to confront and overcome their fears using a Fear Ladder and to start using it with your child at home.