Customer Reviews

What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety (What to Do Guides for Kids)

5 star:		(90)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When your child's anxiety overtakes and consumes their joy, you'd buy 200 books if they'd help your child to feel better. Don't buy 200 books... BUY THIS ONE for your child.

My daughter is 9, but reads at 8th grade level, so I was a bit apprehensive about getting this book for her; fearing she'd think it was too baby-ish. Much to my surprise and delight, she loves the book! She says "I love the pictures. It's kind of funny and I like that it has activities to do. The book has good ideas about how to fix my worries."

The book does have great kid-friendly concepts like: Worry Time and Worry Bully, with places to draw and write down thoughts. It not only addresses how worries can take over, but empowers kids to fight back and reassures them that when they do, the worries will get smaller and smaller, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY...LOSE THEIR POWER OVER YOUR CHILD.

The book talks about the positives of getting rid of worries, like giving kids more time to play with their friends instead of worrying. Simple concepts perhaps, but written in a way that kids relate. The concepts are ones that both kids and parents can easily remember and refer to, which also helps when the Worry Bully shows up unexpectedly.

Other books that have helped my daughter:
Worried No More Worried No More - Second Edition: Help and Hope for Anxious Children by Aureen Wagner, PHD (this is an excellent resource for Cognitive-Behavioral therapy support; workbook pages in the back...) and the meditations books for children by Maureen Garth: StarbrightStarbright--Meditations for Children, Moonbeam Moonbeam: A Book of Meditations for Children, and Earthlight Earthlight (read together before bedtime to help your child visualize a safe, quiet place before they fall asleep...).

As any mental health provider will tell you, Anxiety disorders are one of the most frequent problems children face. Trying to help a frightened child talk about the problem and address their fears is often difficult. Children fear that even talking about the problem will make it worse. Dawn Huebner's book provides the solution. In developmentally appropriate and engaging scenarios, Dr. Huebner puts the problem in perspective and introduces interventions and activities which are fun and effective! The book provides a child friendly means of understanding how anxiety disorders can grow and affect a child's life. Cognitive and behavioral skills are than introduced in a manner in which the child can understand and practice. There are even workbook style pages for documenting progress and skills achieved! All of this is presented in a gradual, friendly, manner which is invaluable for the anxious child. This book is a must have for mental health professional, teachers, guidance counselors and parents of anxious children.

This book is great! Written at a child's level and it works! I asked doctors for this help and they just wanted to medicate or acted like I was being unreasonable. It really helps children get more in touch with what is going on in their heads and empowers them to defeat it. Empowers parents to be able to help them. For children old enough and with verbal skills enough to discuss what they think and feel. Really opens communication. Children often don't even know how to express their worries.

The idea is a good one -- to explain anxiety at a level that most kids can understand and give them some steps to take to help them overcome their worries. Unfortunately, at one point in the book, the author makes the point that worries pick on weak people. What? If you purchase this book, you're trying to help your child cope with worry, not scold them for being too weak to conquer it.

We began working with this book a year ago, when my daughter was 5. When school counselors and psychologists couldn't help, I had to find a way to help my daughter myself. This book is our worry-bible! We go back to it time and time again, to remind her that she is the one in control of this thing that is trying to take over her brain. It includes wonderful activities and practical solutions that she can put into practice. Because that's the hardest part of anxiety - the child is the one who ultimately has to fix it. As parents, the only thing we can do is help them learn how and support them every step of the way. I don't know what we would do without this book!

This book is well done and easy for younger kids to understand, while not too immature for 10-12 year olds. Provokes good discussion.

Towards the end of Kindergarten, our happy easy going son began to fear he that I would forget him. I'd pick him up from school to find him in tears, and as summer came on, the anxiousness only got worse. Never being forgotten once, he suddenly had this unexplainable fear that I would. Reasoning with him didn't work, he'd get "stuck" on this fear.

I bought several books, and this one has been great for the most part. Here are the reasons why:
1. Large, easy to read font, my almost first grader can follow along with while I read.
2. Interactive learning. There are sketch pages with the sections and my son loves to draw.
3. The analogy of a growing a tomato plant was great. My son grew some plants in Kindergarten and the knowledge of the life cycle of a plant and how to take care of it was fresh in his mind, so learning that your worries grow similarly when you water them and are attentive to them was a good way of approaching it.

Now for the bone I must pick. The section in this book about "talking back to your worries" has a downfall. Other than this new separation anxiety he is having, he has only one other anxiety that he has had since he was a baby. Anything with a mean face frightens him. Every kid's movie with a bad character in it, he absolutely hates. He is sensitive to fighting, anger, pain- he doesn't like people (or cartoons even) to experience these at all. This section decides to give faces to the worries, mean ugly demonic/monster-like little creatures that sit on your shoulder. My son is literal. Extremely so. He was now sure that he had these little icky creatures pestering him and he became really anxious while we were reading it. I had to then do damage control, which was difficult. How to explain to a six year old that those creatures just REPRESENTED worries, and weren't actually what a worry looks like. How to explain to him that he wasn't really possessed or tormented by little devils, as the book made it look like. It was a hard moment that almost outweighed the benefits from the rest of the book. Fact of the matter is that worries are just thoughts. Don't give them monster faces to yell at, or your child will start appearing to be more schizophrenic than anything. Don't make them feel they are being tormented. If your child isn't sensitive to scary stuff (or is older and can understand it is an analogy, not fact), than this is probably a fine way to approach it.

I gave this 4 stars, because the book has been helpful otherwise. It's an easy to understand book and has some great points.

Dr. Huebner's new workbook for children, "What To Do When You Worry Too Much" is a clear, helpful resource for elementary age children and their parents. The book offers practical strategies which are easily used at home. My 7 y.o. child states, "This book is great! Now when I worry I know what to do."

A truly child-friendly (and parent-friendly) book that goes well beyond anything I have seen on the market. This book immediately engaged my daughter, helping her learn about her anxiety and, even more importantly, what to do about it. Using language, metaphors, and humor that elementary school age kids can easily relate to, this book teaches a set of specific skills to reduce unproductive worrying. And it actually worked! A unique book. I'm glad I found it.

As a parent I found this book to be a wonderful resource and tool. It's hands-on, workbook style approach is excellent. Parents come away with a set of tools and strategies on how best to help their children overcome their anxieties. Children, in a comfortable and 'fun' format, can explore different ways to understand and manage their 'worries'. The writing style and illustrations compliment each other and can easily be understood by young children through pre-teen. While written by a clinical psychologist I didn't come away feeling intimidated. Dr. Huebner has done a wonderful job encouraging parent and child to work together to overcome the issues around anxiety in a way that is fun and empowering.