Fear and Anxiety Are Normal
Let’s be honest: fear and anxiety are not just part of childhood they’re part of being human. Every child, at some stage, worries about monsters under the bed, getting lost in the supermarket, or standing up to speak in front of the class. Fear is short-term, flaring up in the moment. Anxiety, on the other hand, is fear projected into the future… the “what-ifs” that grow louder in a child’s mind. As parents, our natural instinct is to reassure, to smooth things over: “Don’t be silly, there’s nothing under the bed,” or “You’ve got nothing to worry about.” We say this with love and the best intentions. But what our child actually hears is that their feelings don’t make sense. They hear that they shouldn’t feel what they’re feeling. The truth is fear and anxiety are normal. They’re signals from the brain designed to keep us safe. The problem isn’t that our children feel anxious, it’s that today’s world gives them far more reasons to worry and fewer opportunities to build the confidence to handle those feelings. When we help children name and understand their fears, they feel safer and less alone. This doesn’t mean indulging the anxiety or feeding the fear. It means standing beside them and saying, “I get it. Sometimes things feel scary.” From there, we can guide them toward tools that help them feel calm and in control.
Why Children Are More Anxious Today
Childhood has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today’s children grow up in environments that are far more stimulating, yet often less supportive of the experiences that build real confidence.
Less Time Spent Playing
For generations, children burned off worries and built resilience through free, imaginative play. Play helped them face small fears, practise problem-solving, and develop a sense of mastery. But today, screens have replaced much of that. Hours once spent outside with friends are now spent indoors, watching videos or playing games alone.
Overprotection in the Real World
Out of love and concern, many parents have become more protective than ever before. Children are driven everywhere, constantly supervised, and rarely allowed to take small risks. While this keeps them physically safe, it also limits the experiences that help them feel capable and self-reliant.
Under-Protection in the Digital World
Paradoxically, while children are overprotected in real life, they’re often under-protected online. The digital world brings four major harms each of which contributes to rising anxiety.
Even when younger children are “just watching YouTube,” they’re bombarded by fast-paced videos, recommendations, and pop-ups that constantly shift their attention. Their brains get trained to expect interruption. Over time, this erodes the ability to focus on longer, calmer tasks, such as reading, building Lego, or even listening to a full story.
Screens can connect children, but they also isolate them. Online communication lacks the emotional depth and nonverbal cues of face-to-face play – the shared laughter, the body language, the chance to practise empathy and repair misunderstandings. Without these experiences, social confidence weakens and loneliness grows.
Devices are designed to keep attention late into the night. Blue light delays the release of sleep hormones, and the lure of “just one more video” or “one more level” eats into rest. Even a small loss of sleep can make children more irritable, reactive, and anxious.
Games, videos, and apps are built with hooks such as; surprise rewards, streaks, or likes… the things that keep children coming back. For younger kids, it may be the autoplay of endless YouTube cartoons; for older ones, competitive games or social apps. The result is dependency: without that constant stimulation, many children feel uneasy, restless, or down.
An Overload of Choices and Information
Today’s children face a flood of decisions every day… which video to watch, which character to play, which channel, which app. A seven-year-old ten years ago might have chosen between two TV channels; now, they face hundreds of options. Each choice triggers activity in the brain’s glutamate system, which powers decision-making. At the same time, the dopamine system which is responsible for motivation and reward, is constantly stimulated by likes, wins, and instant feedback. These repeated bursts can deplete the brain’s baseline dopamine levels, leaving children less able to find pleasure in slower, everyday activities. Because the prefrontal cortex, which regulates impulses and emotional control, doesn’t fully mature until the mid-20s, children and teens are especially vulnerable to overstimulation. And when glutamate is chronically over-activated, it can lead to stress, hyperarousal, and even anxiety or depressive symptoms.
In short: today’s children are living in an environment that overstimulates their brains while under-nourishing their emotional development.
A Backdrop of Global Uncertainty
From climate change to wars to artificial intelligence, children are aware of immense challenges but powerless to influence them. This gap between awareness and control deepens their sense of insecurity. When the world feels unpredictable, the brain’s alarm system stays on high alert.
How Parents Can Help Children Feel Safe and in Control
Understanding the problem is only half the battle. The good news is that we can help our children manage anxiety, not by removing all fear, but by teaching them how to navigate it with confidence.
The first step is connection, not correction. When your child feels afraid or worried, resist the urge to fix it right away. Instead, name what they’re feeling: “You’re feeling worried about going to school” Or “That noise really scared you, didn’t it?”
This helps their brain register safety. Once the feeling is named, you can gently move to: “What can we do to make this feel better?”
Avoid “Why are you worried?” – even adults struggle to answer that question. The goal is to help children move through the feeling, not analyse it.
For younger children, talk about fears and worries rather than “anxiety.” For older children, help them see that anxious feelings are just signals, not permanent traits.
Saying “You’re anxious” or “You’re a worrier” can unintentionally make children believe that’s who they are. Instead, describe what’s happening in the moment: “You’re feeling a bit anxious right now.” This reminds them that emotions come and go, they’re experiences, not identities.
Anxiety thrives on a sense of danger and lack of control. Help your child feel safe and capable by reminding them that the brain’s job is to protect them: “Your brain is just trying to keep you safe it’s doing its job. But right now, we can tell it that everything’s okay.”
Then help them focus on what they can control: taking a deep breath, asking for a hug, talking about their worry, or trying again tomorrow. This builds a sense of mastery and resilience.
Anxiety lives in the body. When we help the body calm down, the mind follows. A simple, science-backed tool is the physiological sigh, which acts as a natural reset for the nervous system:
The hum activates the vagus nerve, a long nerve running from the brain down through the chest and abdomen. The vagus nerve is closely tied to our “calming system” (the parasympathetic nervous system) and plays a central role in regulating anxiety. When it’s overstimulated, we can feel tense or on edge. This breathing pattern gently resets it, sending the body a signal of safety.
You can practice this together, showing your child how to slow their breathing when they feel scared. We also share a short, guided video of this practice — and a complementary “Vagus Nerve Reset” exercise — in the Anxiety & Fears Toolkit.
Children learn from what they see. When you share your own experiences of worry and how you handled them, you teach emotional resilience: After an event, reflect aloud: “I worried so much about that, and it wasn’t worth it at all”. This helps children realise that most fears don’t come true, and that even when things don’t go perfectly, they can handle it.
When your child fixates on a worry, guide them through this:
This helps their brain rebalance and see that the worst case is rarely the most probable, and that positive outcomes are often just as likely.
One of the most powerful ways to help children understand anxiety is to learn about it together. The Anxiety & Fears Toolkit includes inspiring videos where children share their own fears, worries, and moments of anxiety, showing that everyone feels that way sometimes. These videos also feature our in-house Professor explaining what happens in the brain and body when we feel worried or scared, using language that children easily understand. After watching together, parents can simply ask: “Now that we’ve seen this, how can I best support you when you feel like that?” That’s where the magic happens…because children often come up with their own solutions. This shared learning not only normalises anxiety but builds empathy, connection, and lasting confidence.
A Final Thought
Fear and anxiety are part of life but they don’t have to define our children’s lives. When we help them understand their emotions, name them, and use simple tools to regulate them, we’re giving them lifelong skills for calm and confidence. We can’t protect our children from every worry but we can show them that they are safe, capable, and never alone in learning how to handle life’s ups and downs.
Summary: The Key to Raising Confident, Calm Kids
When children feel seen, safe, and supported, anxiety loses its grip and confidence begins to grow.
It’s amazing what a state our children can sometimes get into when faced with homework. In fact the spectre of homework can cast a grey cloud over the whole family. But however tempting it might be for us to do the homework for our children, just to get it ‘out of the way’, it is not something we’d ever recommend. Better by far to ease your child into a homework friendly state of mind by following the rules below.
All siblings squabble, often driving their parent’s crazy in the process. However when they squabble over possessions they are also learning the art of negotiation and sharing. Which is why it is best not to get involved when the squabbles are underway. Best to try and anticipate these ‘sharing’ issues by setting house rules in advance. Having done this try to sit back and avoid getting involved (however, do be ready to ‘steer’ if the going gets rough or if if a rule reminder seems to be needed).
