When Worry Takes Over: Childhood Anxiety & Big Feelings
Anxiety in children doesn’t always look like “worry.” Adults might expect kids to say things like, “I’m nervous about school,” but more often, anxiety shows up through reactivity, tantrums, meltdowns, and BIG feelings. A child might cry before leaving for soccer, suddenly “feel sick” before a playdate, or explode with irritability when asked to do homework.
How Anxiety Shows Up in Kids
Here are some common ways anxiety sneaks into daily life:
Physical complaints: “My stomach hurts.” “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
Tantrums or meltdowns: Screaming, refusing to get dressed, or throwing toys when it’s time to leave the house.
Irritability: Snapping at siblings or parents, looking “defiant” when really they’re overwhelmed.
Avoidance: “I don’t want to go to school.” “Please don’t make me go to the party.”
Big feelings that spill over: Crying at bedtime, begging for reassurance, or clinging to parents.
Verbal worry (especially in older kids): “What if you forget to pick me up?” “What if I mess up?”
Anxiety often hides behind behavior. What looks like “misbehavior” may actually be a child’s way of saying: “This feels too scary. My feelings are too big. I don’t believe I can handle it.”
Practical Tips for Parents
Parents often build routines designed to avoid meltdowns—skipping the sleepover, bringing an iPad everywhere, leaving early from activities. While this makes the short-term smoother, it can unintentionally send the message: “This is too big for you, so we’ll avoid it.” Over time, that avoidance reinforces anxiety.
Instead, small, supported steps toward facing fears help kids feel capable. Here are some starting points:
1. Revisit Routines
Look at your child’s day. Are you structuring things to prevent reactivity—like always staying home from crowded events or letting them skip activities? While understandable, too much avoidance teaches kids they can’t handle big feelings.
Try shifting routines to include gentle exposures. For example:
If a child avoids birthday parties, start with attending for 15 minutes and leaving early.
If bedtime is full of tears, build in a “check in” every 5 minutes instead of staying the whole time.
2. Use Validating Language with Boundaries
Kids need both empathy and limits. Borrowing again from the ACT method (Acknowledge the feeling, Communicate the limit, Target acceptable alternatives), (and yes, seriously, we use this for everything) here are some scripts:
Leaving the park:
“It’s hard to leave when you’re still having fun. It is time to go now. Do you want to hop like a bunny or walk backwards to the car?”
At bedtime:
“You’re feeling worried about being alone. I can check on you in five minutes. You can choose to look at books or snuggle your stuffed animal while you wait.”
School drop-off:
“I know saying goodbye feels really big right now. I’ll give you a hug and then your teacher will walk with you inside.”
Tantrum over homework:
“This feels like too much. You don’t have to finish it all at once, but we do need to start. Do you want to do the first problem or the second one first?”
3. Normalize Big Feelings
Let kids know that strong feelings are not dangerous—even when they feel overwhelming. Saying things like:
“Your worry is telling you this is too big, but your body can handle it.”
“Big feelings come, and then they go. Let’s breathe together until they start to pass.”
These scripts both validate the fear and remind the child of their ability to cope.
How Play Therapy Helps Kids Handle Anxious Feelings
You might have heard your pediatrician recommend CBT for your child's anxiety. Traditional talk-based CBT is too abstract for younger children under 12 because although they can sometimes sound reasonable, their brains are not yet wired for logic. Research shows that Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy (CBT-PT) is more effective than traditional CBT for kids because it uses play, role-play, and creative activities to help children face fears in developmentally appropriate ways.
In CBT-PT, children might:
Act out a feared situation with puppets.
Learn coping skills like “bubble breathing” or drawing out their worry monsters.
Rehearse bravery in small, playful steps.
Across approaches like this, parents tend to notice consistent outcomes: children become more regulated (with fewer meltdowns and less reactivity), develop a richer emotional vocabulary to put words to their big feelings, pause and reflect instead of reacting immediately, and grow in self-confidence as they experience themselves handling hard things. Together, these changes reduce anxiety and help kids see themselves as capable and resilient.