Why Promoting Independence Helps Your Anxious Child

Parents can lower childhood anxiety by encouraging independence. Independence activities should involve some level of risk, feel adult-like or potentially dangerous, and be directed by the child. Parental involvement should be absent during the activity so the child practices handling scary thoughts and situations. Children and teens tend to enjoy these independence activities. Safety concerns can be addressed by recognizing that many perceived dangers are statistically rare, including abduction and interpersonal crime. Outdoor independence, participation in sports practice, and time with other kids in public settings can be safer than expected. Independence training aligns with research showing that children, teens, and young adults thrive with opportunities to practice resilience.

"Parents can decrease childhood anxiety by promoting independence. Independence activities must involve risk, be child-directed, and include no parental involvement. Children and teens enjoy independence activities."

"The good news is that there is-and it costs nothing. It involves being willing to set the stage for your child, teen, or young adult to practice being independent by learning to do things that feel risky, adult, or potentially dangerous. This might sound crazy to you. Isn't it a parent's job to keep their child safe and emotionally attached? The answer is an obvious "Yes," but how you keep your child safe and emotionally well-adjusted hinges on what you consider dangerous and how you believe you should help your child build resilience."

"If you check the statistics about the typical dangers parents believe they must protect their children from, such as child predation, kidnapping, and interpersonal crime, then you know the news is good. The risks for interpersonal crime against children are so low that it would take 750,000 years of standing alone outside for a child to be abducted in the United States. In fact, your child's safety is much higher than when you were a child or when your Boomer parents were children."

"Studies about what helps children, teens, and young adults thrive show that the best way to achieve this is to do what seems counterintuitive: independence training. Ortiz et al. (2024) created a program in which children did activities that seem dangerous to today's parents. Kids were instructed to do one thing a day without any parental instruction,"

Read at Psychology Today