Practical guide for parents and professionals: rituals, breathing techniques and grounding strategies to help anxious children
The stomach ache before going to school. The incessant questions about what might happen. The difficulty falling asleep because “what if…”. The tears at separation time. These manifestations, increasingly common in children, often reflect anxiety that deserves attention and support.
Childhood anxiety is neither a whim nor a lack of courage. It’s a nervous system response to a perception of danger, real or imagined. In some children, this alarm system triggers too easily, too intensely, or for situations that objectively present no risk. Understanding these mechanisms is the first step to helping these children regain serenity.
According to recent epidemiological studies, anxiety disorders affect approximately 10 to 15% of children and adolescents, making it one of the most common mental health problems in this age group. However, with appropriate support and concrete tools, the vast majority of these children can learn to tame their anxiety and fully live their childhood.
—
What is Anxiety in Children? Differentiating Normal Fear from Problematic Anxiety
Fear is part of normal child development. The infant who cries when their mother moves away, the toddler frightened by loud noises, the preschooler who fears monsters under their bed, the schoolchild stressed before a test: all these reactions demonstrate a properly functioning protection system.
Anxiety becomes problematic when it exceeds in intensity, duration or frequency what would be expected for the child’s age and the situation experienced. A child who refuses to go to school for several weeks out of fear of leaving their parents, who systematically avoids social situations, who spends hours worrying about unlikely catastrophes, or who presents recurrent physical symptoms without any identified medical cause deserves special attention.
Anxiety also differs from fear by its anticipatory nature. While fear responds to a present and identified danger, anxiety concerns future threats, often vague or unlikely. The anxious child lives in apprehension of what might happen, which prevents them from fully enjoying the present moment.
It’s important to note that anxiety is not a fixed character trait. The child’s brain possesses remarkable plasticity that allows it to learn new ways of responding to situations perceived as threatening. With the right tools and appropriate support, an anxious child can develop regulation strategies that will accompany them throughout life.
—
The Anxious Brain: Understanding What Happens in the Child’s Head
To effectively help an anxious child, it’s useful to understand the brain mechanisms underlying anxiety. This understanding allows for adopting a more empathetic posture and choosing relevant interventions.
At the heart of the fear system is the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure located in the emotional brain. The amygdala functions as an ultra-fast threat detector. It constantly analyzes sensory information and triggers an alarm response as soon as it perceives a potential danger. This response occurs before the prefrontal cortex, seat of rational thinking, has had time to analyze the situation.
In the anxious child, the amygdala presents increased sensitivity. It activates for stimuli that other brains would consider neutral or not very threatening. Once activated, it triggers a cascade of physiological reactions: accelerated heart rate, muscle tension, rapid and shallow breathing, release of stress hormones. These bodily sensations, often unpleasant, reinforce the perception of danger and fuel the vicious circle of anxiety.
The prefrontal cortex, which would allow relativizing and calming the amygdala, only reaches full maturity in adulthood. In children, this brain region is still developing, which explains why it’s more difficult for them to regulate their emotions through rational thinking alone. Effective interventions therefore work through the body as much as through the mind.
This neuroscientific understanding allows explaining to the child what’s happening to them in a guilt-free way. Their brain isn’t defective, it’s simply very vigilant. And the good news is that we can learn to send it safety signals that will help it calm down.
—
The Different Forms of Anxiety in Children
Childhood anxiety manifests in various forms that can combine in the same child. Identifying the predominant form(s) allows adapting support to the specific needs of each situation.
Separation Anxiety
Separation anxiety is characterized by excessive distress during separations from primary attachment figures, usually parents. The child may cry, plead, physically cling, present physical symptoms (stomach aches, nausea) or categorically refuse to separate. This anxiety may concern departures for school, nights at grandparents’, or even times when the parent is in another room of the house.
Social Anxiety
Social anxiety concerns situations of interaction with others or performance in front of an audience. The child fears negative judgment, is afraid of doing something embarrassing, avoids speaking in class or participating in group activities. This form of anxiety can considerably hinder the child’s social and school life.
Generalized Anxiety
Generalized anxiety manifests through excessive worries that are difficult to control concerning many areas of life: health, school success, relationships, natural disasters, the future… The child asks many reassurance questions, constantly anticipates the worst, and struggles to enjoy pleasant moments because their mind is occupied by “what if…”.
Specific Phobias
Specific phobias concern intense and irrational fears of particular objects or situations: animals, darkness, storms, injections, blood, heights, airplanes… The child avoids at all costs the object of their phobia and may panic if unexpectedly confronted with it.
Performance Anxiety
Performance anxiety particularly affects perfectionist children or those under strong pressure to succeed. Fear of failure, of not measuring up, of disappointing adults generates intense stress before and during evaluations, sports competitions or presentations.
—
Manifestations of Anxiety: Body, Emotions, Thoughts and Behaviors
Anxiety expresses itself through four interconnected channels that are important to recognize in order to effectively support the child.
Physical Manifestations
The body of the anxious child sends numerous warning signals. Stomach aches are the most frequent complaint, followed by headaches, nausea, breathing difficulties (feeling of oppression, shortness of breath), palpitations, muscle tension, trembling, excessive sweating or sleep disorders. These symptoms are very real and should not be minimized, even if no organic cause is identified.
Emotional Manifestations
On the emotional level, the anxious child may express fear, worry, nervousness, irritability, sadness or discouragement. They may cry easily, be particularly sensitive to remarks or changes, or conversely seem frozen, as if paralyzed by their emotions.
Cognitive Manifestations
The thoughts of the anxious child are often invaded by negative anticipations, catastrophe scenarios, ruminations about the past or doubts about their abilities. They may express phrases like “I’ll never succeed,” “Something terrible is going to happen,” “Everyone will laugh at me,” “What if mom had an accident?”.
Behavioral Manifestations
On the behavioral level, anxiety frequently translates into avoidance: the child refuses to go to school, avoids social situations, doesn’t want to participate in new activities. We also observe repetitive reassurance behaviors (constantly asking the same questions), rituals (compulsive checking, organizing), motor agitation or conversely marked inhibition.
—
Anxiety and Hypersensitivity: A Frequent Link
Anxiety and hypersensitivity maintain close relationships. Many hypersensitive children develop significant anxiety, and conversely, anxious children often present hypersensitivity characteristics. Understanding this link allows adapting support.
The hypersensitive child perceives the world with increased intensity. This amplified perception concerns both pleasant stimuli and threatening stimuli. Their alarm system, naturally more reactive, can trigger more easily and more intensely than in other children. The sensory and emotional overload they experience daily constitutes fertile ground for anxiety development.
Furthermore, relational hypersensitivity makes the child particularly permeable to emotions and tensions in their environment. They pick up their parents’ anxiety, latent conflicts, unspoken things. This emotional absorption can generate or amplify their own anxiety, sometimes without them understanding its origin.
Supporting a child who is both hypersensitive and anxious requires a comprehensive approach that takes both dimensions into account. Sensory regulation tools (calm corner, sensory objects) usefully complement anxiety management techniques (breathing, grounding, cognitive restructuring).
—
Soothing Rituals: Creating a Secure Daily Framework
Rituals constitute temporal landmarks that structure the child’s day and offer them a feeling of predictability particularly precious when anxiety makes the world uncertain and threatening. Establishing soothing rituals at key moments of the day can considerably reduce baseline anxiety levels.
The Morning Ritual
Waking up sets the tone for the day. A gentle and predictable morning ritual allows the child to start serenely. This ritual may include a few minutes of cuddles upon waking, a song or soft music during breakfast, a moment of conscious breathing together, or a positive phrase to repeat for the day. The essential thing is that this ritual be consistent, offer connection time with the child and be experienced in calm rather than haste.
The Separation Ritual
For children suffering from separation anxiety, creating a departure ritual can transform this dreaded moment into a bearable experience. This ritual may include a special gesture (secret handshake, kiss on a specific part of the face), a transitional object the child takes with them, a reassuring phrase repeated each day, or a heart drawing on the child’s hand they can look at when thinking of their parent.
The Return Ritual
The return from school also deserves a ritual that allows the child to transition between the outside world and the family cocoon. A reconnection time (a few minutes of exclusive attention), a shared snack, a moment of free play before homework offer the child the opportunity to decompress and “empty their emotional bag.”
The Bedtime Ritual
Evening often concentrates the child’s anxieties. Darkness, solitude, racing thoughts: so many elements conducive to anxiety. An elaborate and consistent bedtime ritual creates a decompression chamber between the day’s agitation and sleep. This ritual may include bath, story, song, discussion about pleasant moments of the day, breathing or relaxation exercises, and a time of reassuring parental presence.
—
Breathing Techniques: The First Regulation Tool
Breathing constitutes the most accessible and powerful lever for regulating anxiety. When the amygdala triggers the stress response, breathing automatically becomes rapid and shallow. By consciously regaining control of breathing and slowing it down, the child sends their brain a safety signal that helps deactivate the alarm.
Belly Breathing
Belly breathing, or diaphragmatic breathing, constitutes the basis of all breathing techniques. The child learns to make their belly inflate on inhalation like a balloon, then slowly deflate it on exhalation. To facilitate this learning, we can suggest placing one hand on their belly and one on their chest, making sure only the belly hand moves.
Candle Breathing
This playful technique consists of breathing deeply through the nose, then exhaling very slowly through the mouth as if to make a candle flicker without extinguishing it. Slow exhalation is particularly effective for activating the parasympathetic nervous system and inducing relaxation.
Square Breathing
Square breathing offers a structured rhythm: inhale counting to 4, hold breath counting to 4, exhale counting to 4, hold breath counting to 4, then start again. This regular rhythm helps focus attention and calm the agitated mind.
Bee Breathing
This technique adds a soothing sound component. The child breathes deeply, then exhales producing a humming sound (mouth closed, like a bee). The vibrations created have a calming effect on the nervous system and help prolong exhalation.
Cardiac Coherence Adapted for Children
Cardiac coherence consists of breathing at a precise rhythm that synchronizes heart and brain. For children, we can simplify by using visual supports (a shape that inflates and deflates) or dedicated applications that guide breathing in a playful way.
Learning these techniques must be done in calm moments, not in the midst of an anxiety crisis. Once well integrated through regular practice, they can be mobilized in moments of stress.
—
Grounding Techniques: Returning to the Present When the Mind Races
Grounding techniques aim to bring the child’s attention back to the present moment and into their body, rather than letting it wander toward anxiogenic future scenarios. These techniques are particularly useful when anxiety takes the form of ruminations or catastrophic anticipations.
Sensory Grounding: The 5-4-3-2-1 Technique
This technique uses the five senses to bring attention back to the present. The child is invited to identify 5 things they can see around them, 4 things they can touch, 3 things they can hear, 2 things they can smell (odors), and 1 thing they can taste. This sensory exploration occupies the mind and prevents it from getting lost in anxious thoughts.
Body Grounding: Feet on the Ground
The child is invited to focus their attention on their feet, to feel the contact with the ground, to imagine roots departing from their feet and sinking into the earth. This visualization creates a feeling of stability and connection to something solid and permanent.
Object Grounding
A transitional object or “resource object” can serve as an anchor. It may be a smooth stone, a small toy, a bracelet or any object the child can hold in their hand and manipulate. Contact with this familiar and reassuring object helps to center in the present.
Movement Grounding
Physical movement constitutes powerful grounding. Jumping in place, squeezing fists hard then releasing, doing stretches, walking while feeling each step: these actions bring attention back to the body and allow evacuating stress energy.
Temperature Grounding
Intense temperature sensations immediately capture attention. Holding an ice cube in the hand, running cold water on the face or wrists, or conversely holding a hot cup can help exit an anxious spiral by creating a strong physical sensation that brings back to the present.
—
Dialogue with Anxiety: Teaching the Child to Talk to Their Fear
A particularly effective approach consists of helping the child establish a different relationship with their anxiety. Rather than fighting it or seeking to suppress it, the child learns to recognize it, talk to it and tame it.
Giving Anxiety a Name
Personifying anxiety allows creating a healthy distance. The child can choose a name for their anxiety (“Mr. Worry,” “the Worry Bug,” “Panic”…) and visualize it in a concrete form. This externalization helps the child understand that anxiety is not what they are, but something they feel and with which they can interact.
Understanding Anxiety’s Message
Anxiety has a function: it seeks to protect the child from dangers. The problem is that it’s often wrong about what constitutes a real danger. We can explain to the child that their anxiety is like a very zealous bodyguard who sees threats everywhere, even where there aren’t any. The child can learn to tell their anxiety: “Thank you for wanting to protect me, but there’s no danger here. I’ve got this.”
Questioning Anxious Thoughts
Older children can learn to question their anxious thoughts. “Is it certain that will happen?”, “Has it happened before?”, “What else could happen that’s good?”, “What would I tell my best friend if they had this fear?”. These questions help gain perspective on automatic catastrophe scenarios.
Welcoming Rather Than Fighting
Paradoxically, the more we fight against anxiety, the more space it takes. Teaching the child to welcome their anxiety (“I see you’re there, it’s okay, you can stay a moment”), to let it pass like a cloud in the sky or a wave on the sea, often proves more effective than seeking to make it disappear at all costs.
—
Progressive Exposure: Confronting Fears Gently
Avoidance constitutes anxiety’s fuel. Each time the child avoids an anxiogenic situation, they deprive themselves of the experience that would show them they can cope and that the anticipated danger doesn’t materialize. Progressive exposure consists of confronting fears gradually and in a controlled manner.
Building a Fear Ladder
With the child, we build a list of situations that frighten them, ranked from least frightening to most terrifying. This “fear ladder” will serve as a roadmap for progressive exposure.
Starting with Low Rungs
We always start with the least anxiogenic situations. The child experiences it, observes they survive it, and gains confidence. This success encourages them to move to the next rung. Skipping steps by confronting the child too quickly with overly anxiogenic situations risks reinforcing avoidance instead.
Accompanying Without Overprotecting
The adult’s role is to accompany the child in their exposure, not to do it for them or overprotect them. We encourage them, recognize their courage, remind them of their regulation tools, but let them live the experience. Overprotection, even well-intentioned, sends the implicit message that the danger is real and that the child cannot face it alone.
Celebrating Victories
Each successful exposure deserves to be recognized and celebrated. This recognition reinforces the child’s confidence in their ability to confront their fears and encourages them to continue the work.
—
The Family Environment: How Parents Can Help
Parents play a determining role in supporting their child’s anxiety. Their attitudes, words and behaviors can contribute to soothing anxiety or, unintentionally, reinforcing it.
Validating Emotions Without Validating Fear
The child needs to feel understood and accepted in what they’re experiencing. Validating their emotion (“I see you’re very afraid,” “What you’re feeling is difficult”) doesn’t mean validating the object of their fear. We can acknowledge the emotion while helping the child put the situation in perspective (“You’re afraid, and at the same time, what tells you it will go badly?”).
Avoiding Excessive Reassurance
Faced with an anxious child who constantly asks the same questions (“Are you sure it will go well?”, “You’re coming to pick me up right?”), the natural reflex is to reassure. But excessive reassurance maintains anxiety: the child becomes dependent on this reassurance and doesn’t develop their own ability to tolerate uncertainty. Better to help the child find answers to their worries themselves.
Modeling Stress Management
Children learn a lot through observation. A parent who manages their own stress in a healthy way (by naming their emotions, using breathing techniques, putting things in perspective) offers their child a precious model. Conversely, a very anxious parent who avoids stressful situations or catastrophizes unintentionally transmits these patterns to their child.
Maintaining Routines
Routines offer a predictable framework that reassures the anxious child. Maintaining regular schedules for meals, bedtime, activities contributes to reducing baseline anxiety levels. During periods of change or stress, pay particular attention to maintaining these landmarks.
Taking Care of Yourself
Supporting an anxious child can be exhausting. Parents need resources to sustain over the long term. Taking care of their own emotional balance is not a selfish luxury but a necessity to be able to effectively help their child.
—
Training to Better Support: DYNSEO Resources
Supporting an anxious child benefits from being supported by specific training that allows understanding anxiety mechanisms and mastering intervention tools.
DYNSEO offers the training Supporting an Anxious Child: Rituals, Breathing, Grounding which offers concrete and immediately applicable tools to help children tame their anxiety.
This training covers in depth breathing techniques adapted to different ages, effective grounding strategies, establishing soothing rituals, and supporting progressive exposure. It’s intended for parents, teachers, early childhood professionals and anyone wishing to help anxious children regain serenity.
For children who also present hypersensitivity, often associated with anxiety, the training Managing Emotions of a Hypersensitive Child offers complementary tools focused on emotional and sensory regulation.
These trainings allow building a complete toolkit adapted to each child’s specific needs, while benefiting from a solid theoretical framework to understand the mechanisms at work.
—
COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES: Calm Mode for Anxious Children
The COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES application developed by DYNSEO integrates functionalities specially designed for anxious children, complementing the trainings and tools presented in this article.
The application’s calm mode offers a soothing environment, with reduced visual and sound stimulation, particularly adapted to moments when the child needs to relax. Activities offered in this mode promote gentle concentration and return to calm, without generating performance stress or sensory overload.
The mandatory sports breaks every 15 minutes constitute another major asset for anxious children. Physical movement represents one of the best natural regulators of anxiety. By alternating cognitive activities and physical exercises, COCO helps the child evacuate accumulated tensions and maintain an optimal activation level. These breaks also prevent overload that occurs when the child stays too long on a demanding activity.
COCO’s educational games work on essential skills (attention, memory, logic) in a caring framework that values efforts rather than performance. For an anxious child, often perfectionist and fearing failure, this encouraging approach helps develop a more serene relationship with learning.
Regular use of COCO can be integrated into the anxious child’s daily rituals. A moment of educational play followed by a sports break, at a fixed time, offers a reassuring landmark in the day and constitutes a pleasant activity to anticipate rather than dread.
—
When to Consult a Professional?
The tools presented in this article can help many children better manage their daily anxiety. However, certain situations require intervention from a specialized mental health professional.
It’s recommended to consult when the child’s anxiety persists for several months despite support efforts, when it significantly interferes with their daily life (schooling, social relationships, family life), when it’s accompanied by depressive symptoms or negative thoughts about themselves, when it generates recurrent panic attacks, or when it leads to generalized avoidance that considerably restricts the child’s activities.
A psychologist or child psychiatrist can precisely evaluate the nature and intensity of anxiety, propose appropriate treatment (cognitive-behavioral therapy, play therapy, EMDR…), and support parents in their educational role. In some cases, medication may be considered in addition to psychotherapy.
Consulting a professional is not an admission of failure. It’s on the contrary a responsible approach that offers the child the best chances of developing effective strategies to tame their anxiety and flourish fully.
—
Conclusion: Supporting Anxiety with Patience and Confidence
Anxiety in children, although difficult to live with for them and their entourage, is not inevitable. With a fine understanding of the mechanisms involved, concrete regulation tools and caring support, the vast majority of anxious children can learn to tame their fears and regain childhood’s lightness.
Soothing rituals, breathing techniques, grounding strategies and dialogue with anxiety constitute as many resources the child can progressively appropriate. Gradual exposure to dreaded situations allows them to discover they possess unsuspected resources to cope.
The trainings offered by DYNSEO provide parents and professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively support these children. The COCO THINKS and COCO MOVES application complements this approach by offering adapted activities that respect the specific needs of anxious children.
Supporting anxiety requires time, patience and perseverance. Progress isn’t always linear: there will be advances and setbacks, easier periods and more difficult moments. But each small step counts, each victory over fear reinforces the child’s confidence in their ability to face life’s challenges.
Today’s anxious child, well supported, can become tomorrow’s resilient adult – an adult who knows their vulnerabilities, who knows how to take care of themselves and who has learned that fears, however impressive they may be, can be overcome.
—
Did you find this article helpful? Discover our trainings to go further in supporting anxious and hypersensitive children, as well as our COCO program with its calm mode adapted to children with special needs.