The Anxiety Buster

Anxiety is hard, seeing anxiety in your child is even harder. All we want to do is take their pain away. I have tried so many different strategies to reduce anxiety in both of my kids. So far social stories have been the most helpful, but there often isn’t time to just whip one of those up when plans change. And they don’t always work out as hoped. 

I’ll never forget the day when my daughter was heading off on her first excursion. Anxiety was at an all-time high for both of us in the lead up to the big day out. Working with the school we came up with a fantastic, albeit very long and detailed social story that we read together every night. It was the bedtime story for quite a while – I was determined to make this excursion a success. At this time my daughter was at a mainstream school and the desire to have her ‘fit in’ was still very important to me.  So, the day rolls round and the kids and the parent help (me) get ready to pile into the big white bus. Yes,white bus. Every evening we cuddled together on the bed and readabout the exciting bus trip, accompanied by a photo of a bright orange school bus. Cue: meltdown. ‘Why isn’t the bus orange mummy?’ Fortunately, after a lot of negotiation, the excursion was a success, and a great time was had by all. I can laugh about it now but for all my preparing the social story actually did more harm than good.

Which leads me to the Anxiety buster. A quick A4 template where you sit down with your child and talk about the upcoming event, using the prompts in the tool to discuss what they can expect, who can help, how will they get there, etc. They can draw and decorate the sheet and you can refer to it as often as you need in the lead up to the event or just fill it in when you are getting ready to head out the door. Its quick, simple and for us has made a huge difference. 

I hope you find it as useful as we have. If you have any ideas for resources that you think could help your child, please reach out. We are all about the visual supports in this house, they can make the world of difference for our kids and helping our All Stars community in any way we can is at the heart of All Stars for Autism!