Parental Anxiety: How Your Worry Affects Your Child (and What Helps)

What is parental anxiety?

Parental anxiety is excessive and persistent worry focused on your child or on how you perceive your abilities as a parent.

You might frequently find yourself asking, “What if?...” You may repeatedly seek reassurance about your child’s health or safety, check on them more than necessary, or find yourself constantly watching for potential dangers. If so, you might have parental anxiety.

Anxiety is incredibly common. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 30% of adults in the U.S. experience some kind of anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Based on the data from this past year, the prevalence is highest among ages 30 to 44 – the typical age range of most parents of younger children.

“Parental anxiety” is not a formal diagnosis. Rather, it may reflect an underlying mental health condition, most often generalized anxiety disorder or another anxiety condition showing up in the context of a parenting role.

Normal worry or something more? A quick self-check

There’s a big difference between normal worry and an anxiety disorder.

• Protective worry: The concern is tied to a specific situation, it leads to a sensible and appropriate response, and it switches off when the situation is resolved.
• Parental anxiety: Your worry is persistent, out of proportion to the situation, and interferes with your daily life and your responsibilities as a parent.
• Anxiety disorder: Along with the constant worry, you have symptoms like restlessness and being on edge, irritability, difficulty concentrating and sleeping, and unexplained aches and pains. A clinician can diagnose an anxiety disorder: it’s not a label you give yourself.

You can evaluate your level of anxiety by asking yourself these questions:

• Does my worry remain even after the anxious situation is resolved?
• Do I repeatedly check things or ask for reassurance over and over regarding the things I’m anxious about?
• Am I avoiding normal activities because they make me too anxious?
• Am I having trouble sleeping even when the kids are sleeping just fine?
• Am I rearranging my family life and activities around my fears?

If you answered yes to several of these questions, you might have parental anxiety. However, this is not a diagnostic tool. A licensed clinician can help you sort out what you’re experiencing.

Signs of parental anxiety

Watch out for these signs of parental anxiety.

In your thoughts

Catastrophizing, intrusive what-ifs, and racing worst-case scenarios are all internal signs of parental anxiety.

Catastrophizing is when you automatically think of or expect the worst possible outcome and react to that outcome as if it’s already happened, even if the issue itself is very small or insignificant.

Intrusive thoughts like “What if we get into a car accident on the way to hockey practice?” make it difficult to follow through on plans because you can’t let go of the idea that something bad will happen.

Similarly, a flood of worst-case scenarios might always accompany a new situation or problem. This can make it extremely difficult to carry out your responsibilities as a parent if you are constantly trying to avoid a negative outcome.

In your body

Anxiety can also manifest through physical symptoms.

You might notice that you have difficulty sleeping even when the house is quiet and there are no disturbances. You could also feel muscle tension and pain with no other explanation. Restlessness and fatigue are also signs of anxiety.

In your behavior

If you have parental anxiety, you might catch yourself in any of these behaviors:

• Overprotection: You don’t let your kids play on the playground for fear of them hurting themselves, or you bundle them up in full protective snow gear at the first sign of a flurry.
• Constant checking: You can’t trust that your kids are safe when you’re not with them, so during a playdate you call the parent multiple times to check on them.
• Seeking reassurance: You need to hear from anyone and everyone that the situation is safe and your kids will be okay.
• Avoiding normal activities: Your fear of putting your kids in danger keeps you from scheduling playdates, letting them play sports, or even driving with them to the grocery store.
• Accommodation: You rearrange family routines based around your fears. You don’t let your kids do chores because they might hurt themselves, or you never go out to dinner because you’re afraid of driving at night and getting into an accident.

What causes parental anxiety?

Usually, parental anxiety has a mix of causes rather than just one.

If you’ve always had a tendency to worry or if you were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder before you had children, those anxiety symptoms may continue or change once you become a parent. For some people, existing anxiety may become focused on the new roles and responsibilities of parenting. Others may experience significant anxiety for the first time after becoming a parent.

Sleep deprivation and the sheer load of being a parent can also contribute to anxiety. When you don’t feel your best and your defenses are down, it’s much easier to fall into the trap of severe anxiety.

Anxiety is also greatly affected by real external stressors like health, money, and even the news. You might be worried or anxious about getting sick or dealing with your child’s or your own illness, supporting your family financially, and avoiding all the distressing events happening in the world. And it’s easy to migrate those fears over to protecting your kids.

When your child has a diagnosis

If your child is dealing with a mental health condition, that’s enough to make any parent’s anxiety go through the roof.

A diagnosis of ADHD, autism, anxiety, or a learning concern may bring up worry or uncertainty about their needs and future. This is a very common reason that parents seek therapy not only for their child, but for themselves: so that they can learn to support their child and manage their own fears and anxious feelings around their child’s diagnosis.

How your anxiety affects your child

No parent purposefully chooses to displace their anxiety onto their children, and raising an anxious child does not mean you have failed as a parent. But there are several factors that make passing on anxiety to your children more likely.

Genes load the dice

If you have anxiety, that makes it more likely that your child will develop anxiety as well. A 2019 meta-analysis of children of parents with anxiety demonstrated that children were about 1.8 times as likely to also have an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety running in your family is not something you chose. Instead of feeling guilty, empathize with your child. Let them know that you understand what they’re going through, and tell them you will work on it together.

Kids learn threat by watching

Children look to you as a parent to learn how to calibrate what is dangerous and what isn’t. They learn by reading your facial expressions and body language and by listening to what you say, and by noticing when those two things align and when they don’t.

This means children of anxious parents can be more likely to read a situation as dangerous if their parents see it as dangerous.

Overprotection removes the practice

It makes sense that you would do anything to protect your child, but part of growing up is experimenting and taking risks. Kids build confidence through age-appropriate risk-taking and exploration, and risky play guided by the knowledge that they are safe is an important part of children’s development.

By removing every perceived threat (or trying to), you also remove the opportunity for your kids to practice taking risks and making decisions and mistakes they can learn from.

Accommodation feeds the loop

When you change family routines to try and prevent any and all distress, this teaches your kids that avoidance is the answer.

One way to interrupt this cycle is SPACE: Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. SPACE is an evidence-based, parent-led treatment for childhood anxiety. Parents learn strategies to respond supportively to their child’s anxiety while reducing behaviors that may unintentionally accommodate or reinforce it. The change starts with you, not your child.

None of these things are an indictment of you or your parenting. Rather, they are a map of what you are experiencing and what would be good to alter. Many of these patterns can be addressed through evidence-based treatment and changes in how families respond to anxiety.

How to manage parental anxiety day to day

There are practical skills and strategies you can use to become aware of and manage your anxiety.

Regulate yourself first

Think of this as the oxygen mask rule: take care of yourself before you take care of your child.

If you are agitated and try to deal with the situation in a heightened emotional state, chances are you’re reacting with anxiety and fear, which doesn’t do anyone any good. Try this to calm yourself down:

• Close one nostril and breathe in for four counts through the open one.
• Hold your breath for four counts.
• Close that nostril and open the other one, then breathe out for four counts.
• Repeat these deep breaths until you feel calmer.

This deep breathing exercise tells your nervous system that it’s safe to relax. Then, you can move on to dealing with the situation at hand.

Learn your triggers and plan ahead

If you understand what triggers your anxiety, you can identify potential anxiety-inducing circumstances and work to approach them differently.

Track the spikes in your anxiety for a week, noting what makes you the most anxious and how you tend to respond in the moment. That way, you can recognize the patterns and prepare for them ahead of time, rather than relying on willpower in the moment.

Model coping out loud

Demonstrate for your kids what healthy coping skills look like and model other ways to respond to anxiety. A great way to do this is by explaining out loud what you’re going through and how you plan to cope.

You can say, “I’m nervous about this, so here’s my plan.” Then talk the situation through together. Talking through healthy coping can help children see that uncomfortable emotions are manageable.

Swap catastrophic language

The way you talk to your kids can easily indicate anxiety. Try swapping out some of these anxiety-induced (and inducing) phrases:

• “Be careful!” can turn into a specific instruction: “Make sure you keep a firm grip on those monkey bars!”
• “That’s dangerous!” can turn into preparation: “Remember to look both ways when you’re riding your bike.”
• “That test is going to be really hard!” can turn into practical support: “Let’s go through the material together so that you’re prepared.”

Shrink the checking and reassurance loops

When trying to break free of constant checking and seeking reassurance, try to “delay and halve.”

This is a cognitive trick to manage anxiety. When something triggers your anxiety, wait two minutes before you respond. This gives you the time to reflect on the trigger and recognize how it’s affecting you. Also, try to halve the amount of attention you’re giving to the trigger. Focus on other things in the room and name them out loud, do a task like folding laundry, or watch a funny video on your phone.

This technique takes practice, but it may help you recognize that anxious moments are simply made even more anxious by reacting to them out of fear, and that not everything is a crisis.

Protect sleep and support

When you’re running on empty, worry can inflate dramatically. Making sure you are rested, as much as you can be as a parent, is one way to take the wind out of anxiety’s sails. Prioritize going to bed at the same time every night and putting screens away for a more restful sleep. Even if you can’t do this every night consistently (because kids are kids and routine isn’t always possible), trying your best is a great step.

Asking for help is also important. If your plate is brimming over with responsibilities, it’s easy to start feeling anxious and to let that anxiety take over.

Find a way to get outside support. For example, maybe you have a big presentation at work this week but also know that you also need to get your child to swim practice tomorrow. Having to balance those two things is stressing you out. So, try asking another parent on the swim team if your kid can carpool with them. This protects you and your feelings while also making sure that you’re caring for your child.

If anxiety is becoming difficult to manage on your own, consider talking with a licensed mental health professional. Together, you can determine the type and frequency of support that best fits your needs.

Therapy for parental anxiety: what actually helps

Therapy can help parents manage anxiety and develop healthier ways of responding to worry.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has the strongest evidence for treating anxiety in adults. With CBT, you learn to identify negative thoughts and behaviors that are fueling your anxiety; then you learn to react differently to those thoughts and counter them with newer and healthier ones. This can help reduce anxiety symptoms and give you practical tools for managing worry in everyday situations.

For someone with parental anxiety, this could involve recognizing parenting moments that consistently trigger your anxiety (like fearing your child will hurt themselves on the playground), gradually retiring checking and avoidance (like taking your child to the playground anyway), and using coping skills to manage your anxiety when your child experiences a minor injury or setback.

By changing your own thoughts and behavior, you can actually help shape your child’s inner world for the better as well.

This is where Emora comes in. We’ll match you with a licensed clinician who specializes in treating parental anxiety. All our sessions are completely virtual, and we’re in-network with a wide range of insurance plans. If medication may be appropriate, your therapist can also help connect you with a qualified prescriber for an evaluation.

If your child is already anxious

As an anxious parent, you might be afraid of your child developing childhood anxiety. If your child is experiencing anxiety and it’s making it difficult for them to function at school or in relationships, it’s not proof that you failed as a parent. Instead, see it as a reason to act.

Parent-led approaches like SPACE and treating your own anxiety with CBT can help you support your child between therapy sessions and during everyday situations when anxiety arises. This means that your steadiness is actually a part of tackling your child’s anxiety and maintaining your child’s health, and it lowers the chance of it carrying forward. Look at this as good news rather than as more pressure: you now have professional support for both yourself and your child.

Emora treats kids and teens as well as parents, so the whole family unit can get care in one place.