DEEP DIVE: Dr. Lisa Damour on Helping Kids Manage Anxiety

14:06Lisa Damour:And part of your offer needs to be like, how can we mitigate what is scary about this? So for example, like, okay, you don't even want to try going to the new ninja gym in town because it seems athletic, it's scary and things you don't like. Like, how about we try the class, we do a sign up class and we give it a trial class. Okay. Even with my anxious kid, like sometimes it takes three times, you know, and, but I often have to make some sort of trap door bargain where I'm like, okay, I want you to go to this place and try it. But if it's too loud, I'm going to bring a kind of headphones that blocks out the sound.

14:51Lisa Damour:Like I have to have a plan. It's not fair for me to be like, you have to try it. And if you get overwhelmed too bad, like he's saying, like, I'm worried about something that I'm actually really worried about.

15:02Heidi Raykeil:Right. It's real. It's real. And you're offering an accommodation that isn't just avoidance forever. So that sounds like exactly the right strategy. That's it.

15:11Lisa Damour:It's like accommodation within the anxiety is really important because I think the anxiety for my anxious guy and for myself is like, I don't want to just try it. Like what I might really get uncomfortable and be miserable there. Like I'm maybe not willing to just be like, I'll give it a try. I'll try chocolate. It's like, I've eaten in my whole life. I know I don't like it. Like I'm not, I'm don't want to try it again. And so like finding that accommodation that helps you. It's, I mean, we were talking about with picky eaters for my really picky eater guy. There are times where he's like, I cannot even have that on my plate.

15:49Lisa Damour:I am so grossed out by it. And our big accommodation sometimes is you have to sit through the meal with it on your plate without complaining.

15:56Heidi Raykeil:That's what Dr. Sweeney would say. I've talked to him about the sort of accommodations that you have to make for a kid who's anxious. And he would say that sort of metaphorically, like sitting with it on your plate, that that needs to exist because otherwise the picky eater can start moving the goalposts from, I can't have green beans on my plate to nobody can have green beans on their plate at this table because it's gross to, I can't eat anything green to, you know, if you accommodate, if you accommodate it, they just move the goalposts and it gets bigger and it moves from, I can't do the ninja camp to, I can't do any camp to, you know, I have to stay home all the time or whatever that you have to, you can't just allow the anxiety to take over.

16:37Heidi Raykeil:You have to pull the line. Right.

16:39Lisa Damour:So it's like you can make accommodations that make participating easier, but you cannot make the accommodation. You don't have to participate. You don't have to have green beans. We'll all not have green beans in the room because it bothers you. Like you have to find the right level of accommodation that gives the safety valve, but it's not like, okay, because you're anxious, you don't have to try anything.

17:00Heidi Raykeil:Right, even when it breaks our hearts as parents to see them struggling and you do wanna just make it all go away, that's not what's going to make the anxiety better.

17:10Lisa Damour:Oh yeah, that's almost never the right choice, parents. Almost never. All right, well, we have a lot of thoughts about anxiety, obviously, with our own anxious kids. So let's talk to Dr. Lisa DeMoor.

17:21Heidi Raykeil:Yep. She's the author of the new book, Under Pressure. This book is great. It's specifically about stress and anxiety in girls, but guess what? It's very applicable, whether it's girls or boys. And we'll talk to her right after this.

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18:09Lisa Damour:I just made my first Journey Print book, and I cannot tell you how easy it is. I did a look back at 2025 pictures, just grabbed all of the good ones, threw them in the app. And as Amy would say, bada bing, bada boom, I had a beautiful retrospective of my year in book form. The Journey Print app made it so easy. I have a fantastic looking book and I sent a copy to both grandparents winning.

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21:17Heidi Raykeil:So our guest today is Dr. Lisa DeMoor. She's a New York Times bestselling author with a doctorate in clinical psychology, and she's a regular contributor to CBS This Morning. Dr. DeMoor directs the Center for research on girls at the Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and her brand new book is Under Pressure, Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. Dr. DeMora, thanks for talking to us. Thanks so much for having me. So you call the anxiety and stress in girls an epidemic, and you say that the rates have spiked for girls in particular starting at about 10 years old?

21:51Margaret Ables:That's what we're seeing. We're seeing reports coming out from the research side that tell us that at this point, 31 % of girls are reporting anxiety symptoms compared to 13 % of boys. And there was another study that looked at the change in girls reporting the feelings associated with anxiety, nervousness, dread, and things like that. And for them, there was a 55 % jump between 2009 and 2014 and no jump for boys. So why do you think that is? There are a few ways we can slice it. One thing that we have long known as psychologists is that when children are distressed, girls are more likely to collapse in on themselves and boys are more likely to act out to get themselves in trouble.

22:39Margaret Ables:So it's long been the case that we're more likely to see anxiety in girls than in boys. It's interesting to watch these rates start to change so quickly. So there's the kind of socialized, gendered expressions of distress explanation. But then the reality is there are a great deal, kind of a great number of things that girls are contending with that I think make their situations especially stressful. Okay. Like what? So for instance, we have put a lot on girls' plates without taking anything off. Girls are now crushing it academically. I mean, they are absolutely stellar students. And, you know, the expectations for them are high, the opportunities for them are tremendous.

23:24Margaret Ables:That has not diminished the pressure they feel to be cute, if not hot, to be engaged socially, to be, you know, agreeable to the people around them, to make themselves available to meet the needs of others. I do think it's the case that for boys, when they are really, really bringing it academically, they may not also be spending quite as much time worrying that they also must be gorgeous and fit.

23:49Heidi Raykeil:You know, my son attends an all boys high school and he would say that he's so happy to have that taken off the table. That it just does not matter what you wear or what you look like. It's not something he spends time thinking about.

23:59Margaret Ables:That's true. And I think there's no girl, very few girls, regardless of their circumstances, where the culture lets them off that hook. Yeah. Yeah. So there are things like that. I think there are also factors having to do with their relationships with boys that we're not really fully addressing as adults. So there's a lot of forces at play here, which also means there's a lot we can do.

24:24Heidi Raykeil:What I thought was so interesting about this book is you start from a place of stress and anxiety are not necessarily bad words. One, not always avoidable or even often avoidable. And two, not necessarily bad words. And we need as parents to get rid of the notion that erasing stress and anxiety from our kids' lives is possible or even desirable. But it seems like there are some things maybe for girls that we can help them. These are things you need to worry about and these are things you don't.

24:53Margaret Ables:I think that's right. And I think I would not underestimate the benefit of a reframing of what stress and anxiety are all about. On the psychological, sort of the research and the clinical side, we have long understood that anxiety is a normal and healthy protective function. It's sort of the alarm system that alerts us to threats on the outside or on the inside. So, you know, if you're driving and someone comes up really fast behind you, you should feel a little anxious. That's something that needs to be addressed. If you're supposed to be getting ready for a meeting or a kid's supposed to be getting ready for a test and instead they're messing around on social media, they should feel a little anxious, that that's anxiety telling them to make a change.

25:34Margaret Ables:So anxiety is part of life. It's part of what keeps us safe. And then we can also say the same of stress, that stress is what happens when we operate at the edge of our capacities, whenever we're doing something that requires adaptation. And those can be good things. It can be moving to a new city or taking on a new job or a student taking on a really hard class that they can do. And when we stop talking about all anxiety and all stress, as if it's pathological, what we do is we keep kids from being anxious about even being anxious or stressed about even being stressed. And that's a problem we have right now.

26:14Margaret Ables:And we can cut that in half.

26:16Heidi Raykeil:You talk in the book actually about unwanted first reactions and how you thought those were something that needed to be changed. but through your work kind of change your thoughts on that. Can you say a little bit more about that?

26:27Margaret Ables:I will say over years, I've cared for people whose, what I've come to believe is sort of hardwired first reaction, maybe kind of an anxious reaction. Maybe they get a clutch feeling in their chest from time to time, or, you know, when they have to face a new social situation, they're like, ah, I don't want to, you know, and it's just, I think it really does sort of get built in. And we have good research evidence that some of this may even be inborn. And I will say I wasted a lot of people's time trying to help them change their first reaction, you know, to not get that clutch feeling in their chest, to get excited about parties.

27:01Margaret Ables:And I've now decided that was not, not a good move. Grateful for the clients I've worked with who are sort of born with me as we figured out what didn't, didn't work. What I now say to people who have those, you know, really almost reflexive responses to things that are uncomfortable is I say, okay, that's your first reaction, right? Your first reaction is that you're always going to get that tight feeling in your chest. That's okay. You don't have to fight it. You can't fight it. So let's let that reaction happen. And then let's just wait a minute. Okay. Is there a second reaction? Is there another feeling that comes, you know, along after that one.

27:43Margaret Ables:And it is amazing how much relief that provides and also how much of an opening that provides to then do something different. But as long as people are entrenched in fighting their reflex, they're not really able to move forward. If they say, oh, that's my first reflex. Okay. It passed. All right. What am I going to do about this situation? things can change quickly.

28:08Heidi Raykeil:So I have, you know, I have kids for whom stress is sort of a motivational force and like, oh my gosh, how am I going to get all this done? But then they do and they kind of maybe secretly like it a little and they may have gotten that from me. And then I have other kids for whom stress is conservative, be a little bit immobilizing, it seems, or just almost paralyzing. And I'm realizing that it might be because some kids have this first reaction thing that they're getting a little stuck in and some kids don't. Anyway, it's giving me a new way to approach my kid for whom stress is not a welcome visitor.

28:42Margaret Ables:But you're saying two things I think that are really worth underscoring there. So one is that stress really can be a moment where people get amped, you know, where they're like, okay, I'm gonna take on this new thing. And it feels really big. And I feel a little overwhelmed, but I'm not frightened of it. Like I'm sort of marshalling my resources to tackle it. That can be exactly happening side by side with feeling a bit stressed. So I think that's an important thing for us to embrace. The other that you're describing, and this is one of my favorite things in the research on stress, stress is a transactional process.

29:16Margaret Ables:There's no single yardstick of what constitutes a stressful event, because what matters is to whom the stressful event occurs. So something that stresses me might not stress you, or something that stressed me last week might not stress me this week. And one of the ways we can be most helpful to people is to appreciate, well, what stresses you and under what conditions and then to help them with coping. Once people are stressed, there's still a lot we can do, even under very difficult conditions.

29:47Heidi Raykeil:Well, you talk in the book about the glitter jar as a sort of metaphor, and I found that actually very helpful for understanding my anxious kids. So can you talk about that and how you help the sort of glute a jar moment or do you not help it? I guess maybe I'm thinking of it the wrong way that I need to help it.

30:01Margaret Ables:Well, I think actually we help by not doing anything, which we forget sometimes is a really useful thing. So the way I tell the story in the book is how it went down, which is I was in Texas. I was in Dallas and I was consulting with some terrific colleagues of mine at a girl school in Dallas. And we got talking about girls sort of falling apart during the school day, you know, girls who become really, really overwhelmed. And I consult two days a week to a girls' school in my community. So I sort of have a familiarity with the life of a school day. So one of the counselors says, well, that's when I get out a glitter jar.

30:37Margaret Ables:So she leaves and she comes back with this little jam jar, clear, no label, and it's full of water and the lid is glued on and it has like two tablespoons of sparkling purple glitter in it. And so then she starts shaking it like a snow globe, you know, really fiercely. And she says, when a girl gets to my office like that, I do this, you know, and suddenly like there's this storm of glitter, like you can't even see through the jar anymore. And then she says, she puts it down on the table between us. And then she says, and then I say to her, honey, this is your brain right now. Right. And all of a sudden I'm catching on, right.

31:15Margaret Ables:I'm catching on that. This is genius. And then she says, and then I say to her, so first We're going to settle your glitter. Okay, this is great. This is brilliant because this is a perfect model of the adolescent brain. This is the adolescent brain in action. This is the brain on emotion. And what we know is that when the brain is changing in the course of adolescence, as it does, it remodels, it becomes faster and more powerful. it remodels in the order in which it developed, which is from the emotion centers, which are more primitive to the higher order reasoning centers, which are more sophisticated.

31:52Margaret Ables:And so there is a juncture for every teenager when their emotion centers haven't been upgraded and are very, very powerful. And when those emotion centers get going, they can hijack the entire system and crash it down. And so we sat there and just watched the glitter settle. And first of all, It's like a meditative experience. And it was so powerful. And what I have come to appreciate, what is so powerful is that it actually issues instructions to the adult, which is just be calm, appreciate that your child's brain has had a hijack experience and that it will reset itself automatically if you are patient.

32:32Margaret Ables:And it's not a fire that needs to be put out. emotions are more like a wave that rise and crest and then flow away. And there is something so powerful about transmitting the message to our kids that a big feeling is one of those things that you can ride and the only way out is through. And once you get through it, you'll feel better. And this has changed how I do practice. This has changed how I take care of my own children, which is this confidence that it'll be okay. And it'll be okay if we just sit here and let this pass.

33:10Heidi Raykeil:Yeah. I like this a lot. And I was actually explaining this to my own daughter about the brain and how it developed. I loved this part of your book and was reading it to her. She didn't really get that, of course, so much because she is a child. But then I got to the glitter jar part and she's like, oh, it's like my phone. And she has a like a phone cover and the back of it, you know, has the glitter that settles and it's just for decorative purposes. But I was sort of like, oh, you know, the next time you're feeling stressed about something, you should turn that phone over and then turn it right side up and then don't take any action.

33:44Heidi Raykeil:Just take a couple deep breaths and watch the glitter settle. Settle your glitter. You should put that on t-shirts is what I'm saying. Isn't that hysterical?

33:50Margaret Ables:Yeah.

33:50Heidi Raykeil:It's brilliant.

33:51Margaret Ables:It's absolutely brilliant.

33:52Heidi Raykeil:So at the end of the book, you sort of say like, what we need to teach our kids to do is to ask themselves, to get curious, I guess, about what's the source of the stress? You know, why am I anxious? Where is this coming from? And that in the answer to those questions, they're going to find their path forward, sort of out of this stressful situation. How do you suggest for parents that can't, you know, take their kids to a therapist or a psychologist to tell their stress and anxious kid this, and the kind of kid who rejects everything the parent says is completely ridiculous. You know, they're rejecting the source.

34:28Heidi Raykeil:How do parents help their kids sort of do this gently? Not while they're in glitter brain, I suppose. That's not the moment to bring up new approaches. But how does a parent sort of put this in their child's path?

34:40Margaret Ables:The beauty of stress and anxiety is they come up every day for everybody. Right? I mean, they really do. I mean, you don't have to go looking for them. They find you. So a huge amount of it will come through modeling just how we lead our own lives and how we react to our own stress and anxiety. And truly in parenting, what we do is a lot more powerful than what we say. So we can start to do things like say, hey, OK, I'm driving. There's a car behind me that's making me hugely nervous. This is really helpful. I'm changing lanes. Right. To talk out loud about nerves and tension and anxiety as useful.

35:17Heidi Raykeil:I mean, you don't interview for problems, but you don't ever assume that a kid isn't dealing with stuff. Of course they are. Kids today have a lot on their plates.

35:26Margaret Ables:They do. And they're mostly incredibly graceful about it. Right. And they do have meltdowns at home, but usually it's because they held it together all day at school. And I think it's helpful for us to remember that, you know, they bring tremendous strength to school and they can and should use home as a place to let their hair down or let off some steam. Yeah, I guess so. Thank you.

35:49Heidi Raykeil:The glitter gets messy at home, right? It does. It's not always the most fun way to be with your kid. Lisa, tell us about your book and where we can find it and where we can find you.

35:58Margaret Ables:So Under Pressure, Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls, it's available everywhere. And then I have a website, which is drlisademour.com. So D-R-L-I-S-A-D-A-M-O-U-R.com.

36:11Heidi Raykeil:I found this book so useful and I do have a daughter, but I have sons as well. I think this book is so useful. Every kid has stress and anxiety. Every kid has times they handle it and times they kind of don't. Every parent worries about how they can be fixing it. And this book I found really helpful in sort of resetting my perspective on when to help and when to step back and what's okay to let happen a little bit. And I just found it really useful.

36:38Margaret Ables:I'm thrilled to hear that. I really, I became a psychologist to be useful. And if I can be useful at scale, then that makes me feel even better about it.

36:49Heidi Raykeil:Thanks, Lisa. It was so nice talking to you. Thank you. For some of us, tax season is one of the only times that we look at our finances fully. And once it's over, well, that was terrible. And it is completely understandable not to want to think about it for another whole year. But using Monarch and being intentional with your finances in an ongoing way helps you see where your money is going and how you can put your refund to best use.

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39:18Lisa Damour:Sure, you could go through your day just doing things you enjoy without a second thought. But with random bouts of anxiety, your days are transformed into an exciting journey through time. as you revisit small insults of the past and fret about perceived dangers from the future. Riding in the car, listening to the dulcet tones of total eclipse of the heart. With random bouts of anxiety, your simple sing-along transforms into a lengthy revisit of the time in eighth grade when Becky Agnotti told you you were a freak in front of your crush, Bobby Martinez. Oh, I should have said her dress looked like a burnt wedding cake.

39:52Lisa Damour:It totally did. Why didn't I think of that at the time? A long walk provides the perfect time

39:57Heidi Raykeil:to binge a favorite podcast. or with random bouts of anxiety, a good time to think about our crumbling national infrastructure. How do bridges work anyway?

40:06Lisa Damour:Like, how come I literally never see anyone checking on these bridges when I'm out walking? Shouldn't someone be making sure these bridges are still working right? I mean, God, there sure are a lot of bridges on this route.

40:16Heidi Raykeil:Movie night with the kiddos is a great time to relax and unwind from a tough week.

40:20Lisa Damour:Or maybe in your case, an ideal time to contemplate the future in the darkest possible way. I can't believe I have to send all three of these kids to college.

40:29Heidi Raykeil:Seriously, what was I thinking? I really don't think I can afford to have three kids. But I guess it's a little late to figure that out now. I wonder if we can sell one of our cars.

40:39Lisa Damour:Bedtime is the time to unwind after a day and settle down for seven to eight hours of rest while dreamless sleep. Oh, just kidding. You'll be up at 3 a.m. revisiting a cavalcade of perceived slights and ways you're pretty sure you've unwittingly humiliated yourself throughout the past year. Oh my god, why was I talking so much at book club?

40:59Heidi Raykeil:I should not have had that second glass of wine. I always talk too much after a second glass of wine. I'm pretty sure Cindy is never like me, and now she must think I'm a total blabbermouth. This is just like that time in 11th grade where I was going on and on about the prom decorations.

41:12Lisa Damour:Random bouts of anxiety. Keeping your mind occupied since, well, forever. And then I made that weird comment to the driver's ed teacher that one time I could just tell my space in the middle of the song.

41:29Lisa Damour:She's pretty smart, Dr. Damore, don't you think? Oh, thank goodness for her. Thank good someone smart came into the conversation to help us out.

41:36Heidi Raykeil:It's important to keep in mind like, okay, we're not supposed to get rid of this. This is not our job as parents to smooth away every bump in our kids' lives. And I keep relearning this, but particularly when it comes to stress and anxiety, it's going to be there. It's going to happen. We arm them with tools. We don't make it all go away.

41:53Lisa Damour:And it's such a good reminder for me with my own anxious guy. Don't worry about it. Like, it's just a useless phrase. Like, stop trying to fight the truth of a person's anxiety and start trying to figure out ways to help with it, but cut out the entire part of the story that is like, you

42:12Heidi Raykeil:shouldn't be anxious. She has an idea in her book that actually is exactly what you were saying before. Deliberate underscheduling, she says. She says we can ease the stress that we and our kids feel by deciding to know, do and spend less. And I thought that was when you were just saying like you've gotten more last fall, you got more specific about what your kids are going to do outside of school and that it worked.

42:37Lisa Damour:it has been so great for us to pull away from that heavy schedule like it's just at some point I really was in that mode where I was like my whole life was like I've got to drive her to ballet and then leave her there with the teacher and wave and be like don't forget she's here so I can peel out and make violin lessons in time and at some point my kid in the back of the car was like wow mom this is really hard for you getting everyone everywhere and like you seem really unhappy. I was like, uh, yeah, you know what? You make a good point. Like maybe you're learning violin is not as important as us not spending all of our time screaming and yelling and like peeling around in the minivan, like maniacs.

43:16Lisa Damour:It helps mom's anxiety. It helps mom's anxiety, but also like there's nothing worse for anxious kids than everything always feels like you're like dancing on the knife's edge to try to get to the next thing. Like the stress was not worth it.

43:31Heidi Raykeil:So let's talk about some strategies that work for younger kids to manage anxiety. Because I think as usual, there's like a slightly different approach for younger and older kids. Yeah. And takeaways are going to be good because like we know what the problem is. We got the takeaways. So these are Dr. Michael Sweeney, who I mentioned before, who is a psychotherapist who works specifically with kids with anxiety. These are the strategies that he suggests that work for younger kids when they're expressing anxiety. The first one is proximity. I mean, this is an obvious one. Like the first couple of days of preschool, you stay in the classroom and then you move further towards the door.

44:08Heidi Raykeil:But this is a strategy that's very effective. You have to deploy it effectively, right? You can't always never leave the nursery school classroom, but it is something that helps if your kid is very anxious about something. If your kid really doesn't want to go to this ninja class, then maybe you're saying, look, I'll stay. I'll stay the whole time and I'll be there. And if you, you know, you need to come take a break, I'll be there. That would be a way to get your kid through the door the first time.

44:33Lisa Damour:Absolutely. And for kids with like extreme anxiety who have any kind of like spectrum type issues, proximity can be really hard. Like sometimes it's like they don't, like kids don't want you in the room hovering, holding onto them and stuff. There is still a way to make this work, which is just to sometimes be in the side of the room. Like proximity doesn't have to mean like I'm grabbing onto you and hovering over you to make it work. Right.

44:58Heidi Raykeil:Right. But it is something, you know, like, yeah, it's something you can use. And then of course, planning, which is what you were saying, like with going ahead of time with a plan for managing the emotions that will come. Don't be afraid of that first reaction that your anxious kid is going to have or that you even might have. Plan for it. And when I feel that way, I'm going to, when I walk into that party and I don't know anybody and I find it really stressful to meet new people, I'm going to walk up to somebody and I'm going to say, hey, you know, what are you drinking? That looks good, right?

45:30Heidi Raykeil:Or, hey, I just heard you talking to this person. You come up with a plan of the first couple of things you're going to do that gets you over the doorstep.

45:39Lisa Damour:And especially when we're talking about younger kids, although I still use it every day, this is where my whiteboard comes in. Like I write out 3.05, walk in the door from school, 3.05 to 4 o 'clock, free play, including screens, 4 o 'clock, start homework, 4.30, homework break, reading, playing. I write everything out like my anxious guy. It helps him so much. And also we don't devolve into like homework. I can't. It's like you only have a half an hour. Get as much done between 4 and 4.30. If you don't get it finished, oh, look, there's another slot coming up from 6 to 6.30 where you can finish.

46:17Lisa Damour:It helps so much to manage the anxiety for the kids to know that it's planned. It helps my anxious kids to know, hey, Monday night is meatloaf and mac and cheese. Tuesday night, the menu's on the board. So that there's not like, what's for dinner? What if I don't like it? What if it's got green beans? They smell so weird. I can't stand it. It's all set. You don't have to worry about it. We've got it.

46:40Heidi Raykeil:I have a story related to this because that is exactly, I mean, it's terrific advice. I was talking to Dr. Sweeney about my anxious child and said like, in the morning, I'm like, what do you want for breakfast? Just tell me what you want for breakfast. And like, I can't even get an answer to that, let alone like get the shoes on. And Dr. Sweeney said, you like choices. I like structure. And so does your anxious kid. Why are you asking your anxious kid what they want for breakfast? Just give them something. And like the heavens part of like, what? I don't have to ask them if they want cereal toast.

47:14Heidi Raykeil:I can just hand them toast. And guess what? That was really good advice. Yeah. They don't, and anxious kids, if you can take away the smaller decisions for an anxious child, like what's for breakfast, then do it. It's, it's, I don't know why I fought that battle that I had to help them make better decisions. Just make the decisions.

47:34Lisa Damour:Absolutely. And I have a nephew who stays with us a lot and we always joke because he's like, what's next? And then where are we going? Who's driving? What's next? Like his anxiety manifests in, he has to know every step of what's going on. And it kind of sometimes comes off as like, listen, I'm the adult, I got this, relax. And I find myself saying that to him. And it's your thing of like, what's wrong with this kid? What's wrong with this kid is that he is, for whatever reason, very anxious about like, who's in charge and what is happening next. And so rather than my initial approach, which was like, could you chill out and let me handle this?

48:13Lisa Damour:I've been raising three kids for 10 years. I'm pretty good at it. Like, I got this. Stop asking questions. Like, what's wrong with this kid? He needs these answers. So what do you need to know? Let's write it out. Okay, let's figure it out. Do you want to be in charge of making sure everyone has their socks on? Like, lean into the anxiety. Whatever is wrong, it's wrong already. You're not going to fix what's going on underneath it. So help them deal with it, you know? And if that's okay, you can take a little control of some of the decisions. You can look at the whiteboard and know everything that's happening for the rest of the day.

48:44Lisa Damour:You can sometimes be in charge of X, Y, Z.

48:47Heidi Raykeil:Like, lean in. Dr. Sweeney says that anxiety lives in the future. And I thought that that was kind of a mind-blowing. That's exactly what I'm saying with this kid, right? Yeah, that's what I mean.

48:57Lisa Damour:What's going to happen? Who's going to drive? Who picks it up? How do you know you get the right thing? It's all like what is going to happen is a very anxious question for him.

49:05Heidi Raykeil:Not being able to control the variables. And right, right. Yeah, you're right. Write it down. The whiteboard thing is like, do it for your whole life. I still, with my anxious child, will say, make sure that this kid knows, okay, tomorrow after school, don't forget that you usually go here, but tomorrow you're going there,

49:25Lisa Damour:right? We call that priming the pump. And it is so important. And if we forget to do it, like I will occasionally send an email to the school. I forgot to remind him that he has to go to the dentist after school today. Like you've got to tell him in the morning because if I pick him up at three o 'clock and he's like, oh, great. I'm coming home to watch screens. And I'm like, oh, surprise, you're going to the dentist instead. Like we will have a nightmare scenario.

49:49Heidi Raykeil:Yeah, the drums beat. But then on the other hand, I with an anxious kid telling them about the, you know, tooth being pulled two weeks ahead of time is not a good strategy. You can't spring it on them, but nor do you give them two weeks to worry about it.

50:03Lisa Damour:That's a no win. We just had that with shots at the doctor. And for my anxious guy, it was like, wait, when do we break this news? Like, is it better to just go and be like, we're going to the lollipop factory and be like, no, just kidding. You're getting a shot at the doctor and just like take all the pain at once or try to tell them in advance and just have it be like, is there going to be a shot or not? I can't stand it. and so we wove it in we wove it in and we were like you're going to the doctor i'm not sure that there's a shot let's say this if there is a shot afterwards we'll take you for a milkshake if there isn't a shot you'll just get to come home and play so like there's good in both outcomes let's try it it worked fine and he took the shot i might my anxious kid just had to have

50:43Heidi Raykeil:a flu shot and that shot anxiety i mean that exists in all kids and in anxious kids to a special degree. And he had to have a flu shot and the very nice young doctor who gave this kid the shot said, I'm just going to show you what it's going to feel like. This was a genius technique. I'm just going to show you what it's going to feel like. It's going to kind of just be a little pinched like that. I haven't done it yet, but that's what it's going to be like. And then she puts the bandaid on and the shot was over with. Oh my God. What a genius.

51:09Lisa Damour:Kind of a dangerous game, but I like it. It's genius. Yeah. And this kid, you would think the kid might be mad that they were lied to, but they were just like so thrilled it was over. No, no, that's genius. Well, when I was a kid, we would have our physicals in September when we went back to school. And I, all summer long would be like, I'm kind of enjoying summer, but I cannot believe I have to go get a shot in two months. Like I was crazy. I look back and if my kid does it now and I'm like, oh, why are you ruining summer thinking about a shot that's not happening for, and I often say like, my kid will literally wake up and be like Christmas this year.

51:47Lisa Damour:Do we, I'm like, it's February. Like, can I get first place on the stairs coming down in the morning? And it's like, wait, are we really going to fight about this in February? And I do find myself constantly saying like, I'm not having a fight about what's for dinner on Thanksgiving in February, but we do it. Yeah. Cause anxiety lives in the future. That's it. Oh my God. I was guilty of it. And now I have the parents, Kurt.

52:10Heidi Raykeil:So you have a kid who's just like me. Right. Exactly. All right. Older kids. Let's talk about that because when they're, as they get older, we have to help them put sort of pillars in place to manage a little bit of this on their own.

52:23Lisa Damour:Yes. And let me go back to my favorite point. You need to be doing this from the time they're little kids. You can't start attacking this with teens. So yes, all of this advice that we're going to give you is true, but you've got to seed it from the time they're littler.

52:35Heidi Raykeil:You're right. I mean, these are, these are things that the little kids should be doing. And then you to sort of hand responsibility over to the adolescent that like, don't you feel better when these things are in place? You need to do them. These are the four pillars that Dr. Sweeney suggests that you sort of task your adolescent with having in place. The first one is sleep. Getting enough sleep for kids who are anxious is crucial. And Dr. DeMoor actually says in Under Pressure, she talks at length about how when she starts to treat somebody for anxiety, the first question that she will ask is how much sleep does this child get at night?

53:10Heidi Raykeil:And if the answer isn't, you know, eight hours consistently, she's basically like nine hours consistently. Well, this is, this is for a teenager, but yeah, eight to nine. It's sort of, you know, like, okay, go fix that and come back.

53:23Lisa Damour:I find the same thing with little kids. I have a lot of people who ask me for advice about their, any kid, any age, the first question I always ask is how much sleep are they getting? I mean, I will occasionally see my kids on six hours of sleep and I'm like, this isn't my child. This is a Frankenstein monster. And it is amazingly transformative. Sleep is amazingly transformative. If you're not getting enough sleep, it is like the foundation of a lot of problems.

53:46Heidi Raykeil:And of course, sometimes anxious kids have trouble falling asleep. So it is, I understand it's a little easier said than done if you have a kid who has trouble falling asleep, but put things in place.

53:55Lisa Damour:And put all your eggs in the getting more sleep. I just had my husband this week, I was walking around and like, you know, just having problems. And I was like, you know what, I'm putting you in bed at 9.30 tonight. No question. Like you've got to get 10 hours of sleep. And he woke up this morning and he feels better.

54:11Heidi Raykeil:More sleep. Exercise. An hour of exercise. I definitely see this like when my kids move their bodies, like, you know, things feel better. Things just don't seem as serious. They go out, especially if they can go outside and use their big words and their big voices and, you know, and throw their limbs around a little bit, it really helps with anxiety. Right.

54:34Lisa Damour:And that doesn't have to be like, you know, take an exercise class. It can be like, hey, let's go out and throw a football for a while. Let's go out and take a walk.

54:42Heidi Raykeil:Right. Or walk the dog or anything. Socializing. My kids were tasked with socializing and not on your phone, like have an actual in real life conversation with somebody every day, face to face.

54:56Lisa Damour:Super important. could do a whole show about this, but like the narrowing of kids' lives to like staring at a screen and feeling that the whole world is these like interactions that are happening on their screen, hugely problematic, causes depression, ratchets up anxiety.

55:13Heidi Raykeil:It's all bad. There's a real proven link. I didn't even quote that study in our notes for today, but I'll put it on our show page on whatfreshhealthpodcast.com because the more time kids spend on screens, the more likely they are to be depressed and or anxious. The final pillar of that older kids need to put in place to help manage their own anxiety is structure, is, you know, the whiteboard, literal or metaphorical, have a plan in place, know what's going to happen. So you don't wonder what's going to happen.

55:43Lisa Damour:I think it's very easy to let this go when you have older kids. Like it makes a lot of sense with like six, seven, eight year olds, but I will be doing this with my high schooler, I'm sure. All roads lead back to structure, the whiteboard, lots of information, the date book, planning, the date book. It helps us all, that kind of structure that it always seems like, oh, we can never get it done. And it's like, let's make a list. If we do half an hour a night, can we get it done? We have to read this whole book. What if we do a chapter when you get home and a chapter before bed every day for a week?

56:18Lisa Damour:Look, that's how we'll read the book. Like breaking stuff down, planning and giving structure, always the right thing.

56:24Heidi Raykeil:And the offline, like written down date book and lists and things like that, of course, digital natives like our kids are a little bit less likely to do that stuff, but it helps. My oldest high school really just drills into them, like use the planner, write it down. And so this kid who has a lot of homework to juggle, high schoolers these days have a lot of homework, but this kid knows he has two tests next week and then a paper the Monday after that. And so this kid has gotten really so much better in high school at looking way out. Like I have to do, I have to do half an hour tonight, an hour tomorrow night.

56:58Heidi Raykeil:So I'm not like scrambling on Sunday night with a stomachache because I can't get it all done. And yeah, so as your kids get older, you, you know, you hand that over to them and hopefully they do it. And you know, where I am And now with my adolescence, I'm still sort of like, did you remember to do this thing? But structure.

57:14Lisa Damour:Yeah. But you're helping. You're building the pieces in. Amy, we could talk about anxiety for 10 years. Let's be honest. There's so much to say.

57:22Heidi Raykeil:But I think today was, I think we solved it.

57:26Lisa Damour:I think we solved it. We definitely solved it. And lots of resources available from this one on the website. So go to whatfreshhelppodcast.com and Amy will have references for you guys who want a deeper dive into this. You anxious folks.

57:40Heidi Raykeil:And we also want to thank Dr. Lisa Damore. Her book is Under Pressure, Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. Like I said, guys, I thought this book was really applicable to girls and boys, and I really recommend it.

57:53Lisa Damour:And you guys can always find us in our usual spots. We're on Facebook at WhatFreshHellCast, and you can find our Facebook community there as well. We're on Twitter at WFH Podcast.

58:04Heidi Raykeil:We're on Instagram at WhatFreshHellCast, And I'll put up the links to all the resources that we talked about on today's episode on our show page at whatfreshhellpodcast.com. Thanks for listening, guys. We'll see you next week. Thanks.

58:27Heidi Raykeil:Close your eyes. Focus.

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