Supporting an Anxious Child: Rituals, Breathing, Anchors

Concrete tools to soothe anxiety in daily life

👨‍👩‍👧 Target audience Parents, grandparents, family caregivers, and relatives of anxious children who wish to understand the mechanisms of anxiety and acquire concrete techniques to help their child regain calm and serenity.

⏱️ Duration 2 to 3 hours of training divided into 5 progressive modules

💻 Format 100% online training, accessible from your computer or tablet. You progress at your own pace, whenever you want, without time constraints.

What you will learn

This training allows you to understand what happens in the brain of an anxious child and why they react this way. You will discover how to establish safety rituals that provide predictability and control, and you will learn effective breathing and anchoring techniques to help your child return to calm.

Through concrete explanations and immediately applicable strategies, you will know how to respond to anxious thoughts (“What if…”) and how to turn difficult moments into opportunities to strengthen your child’s confidence.

By the end of this training, you will be able to:

• Differentiating stress, anxiety, and anguish and understanding when to intervene
• Identifying symptoms of anxiety: physical (stomach aches, headaches), behavioral (avoidance, reassurance-seeking), and emotional (irritability, anger)
• Understanding what happens in an anxious brain: the role of the amygdala and why you cannot “reason” with a child in crisis
• Identifying the 5 typical anxiety situations: school, separation, homework, novelty, performance
• Establishing a calming morning ritual: gentle waking, stretching, positive phrase, visual checklist
• Managing transitions with the three-announcement rule: 15 min, 5 min, transition moment
• Implementing a protective evening ritual: tidying up, hygiene, quiet time, breathing, falling asleep
• Creating an anxiety-friendly environment: predictability, visibility, simplicity
• Teaching abdominal breathing (the balloon in the belly) and the 4-7-8 technique
• Practicing the 5-4-3-2-1 anchoring technique with the five senses to cut anxious thoughts
• Using the inner weather to help the child identify their emotional state
• Reacting appropriately to “What if…”: validating the emotion, gently questioning, limiting reassurances
• Applying the little detective method to examine anxious thoughts
• Transforming negative thoughts into softer and more realistic formulations
• Keeping a success and courage journal to strengthen confidence
• Knowing when to consult a professional and who to turn to

You will leave with concrete tools: rituals, breathing techniques, anchoring exercises, and strategies that can be applied as soon as tonight at home.

Bonus: Discovery of the COCO PENSE & COCO BOUGE application, with its calm mode (guided breathing exercises, soothing music) and its sports breaks to release tension.