Saying 'Calm Down' To An Anxious Child Doesn't Help. Do And Say These Two Things Instead

Have you ever felt anxious and scared, and someone told you to "Calm down"? Did you feel better or worse?

How much more when it's our kids, who are still learning how to get hold of themselves?

For moments when your child is facing a difficult situation for the first time, no matter what their age, an education expert says telling them to "Calm down" is one of the worst things you can say.

What can help your anxious child instead of saying 'calm down'

In the podcast Opportunity Divide, Rachel Romer, CEO and founder of the education assistance benefits company Guild, and organizational psychologist Adam Grant talked to Brené Brown about calmness being contagious and how it's a good leadership skill to practice.

"Anxiety is a very contagious emotion," said Brown, a renowned professor and author of six #1 New York Times best-sellers.

"We're starting to understand now that calm is also contagious," she added.

Speaking in the context of leadership in organizations, Brown said that when a person can make a space for another to calm down and breathe, that's better than telling them to do it.

1. Turn their anxiety into excitement.

Grant, New York Times Best-Selling author of 'Think Again,' couldn't agree more. He cited a 2014 published dissertation of researcher Alison Wood Brooks on managing anxiety.

"What she found was, when you ask people, ‘What do you do when you’re anxious and what do you tell other people to do?’ About 94 percent of people said ‘calm down,’ but they couldn’t do it because we all know anxiety is an intense, highly activated emotion."

He continued, "So what Allison found was, instead of trying to calm down, it's easier to reappraise anxiety as excitement and say, 'Look! Anxiety involves uncertainty, yes, it's possible something bad may happen, but it's also possible that something good may happen.'"

Citing research, instead of saying, "I gotta calm down," Grant recommends saying, "I'm excited," and it was proven to improve people's performance.

Grant's next point is applicable to parents, "If you have a leader who's creating that space and who serves as a calming agent, maybe calm is a better place to go than excitement." Yup, ICYMI, we are the leaders of our fam.

Brown, who has been studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy for more than 20 years, emphasizes, "How we label emotion often dictates how our body responds to it. Language doesn't only describe emotion; it tells our body what to do to respond to it."

She added, "As a leadership skill, and even as an internal skill, I think we need both the language in our toolbox and the calm practices in our toolbox."

2. Make space for your child to breathe during stressful situations.

Romer, who is a parent of two little four-year-olds, added that when her kids are anxious, saying "Calm down" is about the worst thing you can tell them.

What she prefers is creating a safe space for them to breathe together.

"Sometimes without even telling them you're doing it, if you start to sync your breathing with them, it feels like that system that can take a different approach where if you are all breathing together, you create that space versus the language amplifying."

If you are a parent who feels like being calm is out of your league, Brown revealed how she learned to be calm through her husband, a pediatrician who's been taking calls from his patients for 25 years.

"I am nouveau calm... but he is wired for calm," she shared.

"He would never match tone; he would get really quiet," she added.

What Brown recommends is doing breathing exercises, particularly tactical breathing, which is proven to "damp down the body's sympathetic nervous system," according to Harvard Health.

How to do it? Take a deep breath in for a count of four, hold for four, exhale slowly for four, and hold again for four, repeating the cycle for a calming effect.

Helping your kids to calm down versus telling them will make a lot of difference!