Childhood Anxiety Has Doubled Since 2019, and Child Psychologists Share What Actually Helps

My 6 year old went through a phase of not wanting to go upstairs alone. Then not wanting to sleep without me. Then not wanting to go into a room where the door was closed. Each stage seemed to grow out of the last, and every reassurance I gave her seemed to make her need more reassurance the next day.

I was doing the parenting I had been taught. Comfort. Reassure. Protect. Make it okay. Except I was not making it okay. I was quietly, kindly, making it worse. And I had no idea until I read the research on childhood anxiety and realised almost everything I was doing was reinforcing the very thing I was trying to relieve.

Why reassurance makes it worse

Here is the part that surprises every parent I tell. Reassurance, given repeatedly, is one of the most documented mechanisms by which childhood anxiety grows rather than shrinks. This is not intuitive. It goes against every parenting instinct. But the clinical evidence is consistent.

Dr. Eli Lebowitz, director of the Yale Child Study Center's Program for Anxiety Disorders, has spent years studying how family responses shape childhood anxiety. His research identifies something called "family accommodation." When parents consistently modify family life to accommodate a child's anxiety (letting them sleep in your bed, avoiding the thing they are afraid of, answering the same worried question over and over), the anxiety grows rather than shrinks.

The child's brain learns: the feeling of anxiety gets relieved by the parent's reassurance. So the brain produces more anxiety, because it works. The pattern is not the parent's fault. It is the deeply loving response that nearly every parent makes. It just turns out to make anxiety worse over time.

Why reassurance makes it worse

Here is the part that surprises every parent I tell. Reassurance, given repeatedly, is one of the most documented mechanisms by which childhood anxiety grows rather than shrinks. This is not intuitive. It goes against every parenting instinct. But the clinical evidence is consistent.

Dr. Eli Lebowitz, director of the Yale Child Study Center's Program for Anxiety Disorders, has spent years studying how family responses shape childhood anxiety. His research identifies something called "family accommodation." When parents consistently modify family life to accommodate a child's anxiety (letting them sleep in your bed, avoiding the thing they are afraid of, answering the same worried question over and over), the anxiety grows rather than shrinks.

The child's brain learns: the feeling of anxiety gets relieved by the parent's reassurance. So the brain produces more anxiety, because it works. The pattern is not the parent's fault. It is the deeply loving response that nearly every parent makes. It just turns out to make anxiety worse over time.

The SPACE approach (what actually works)

SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. It is a parent-based treatment for childhood anxiety developed at Yale, and it has become one of the most evidence-backed approaches in the field. Critically, the child does not have to do the treatment. The parent does.

The core idea is that you stop accommodating the anxiety while simultaneously increasing your expression of confidence in the child's ability to cope. Both parts matter. Remove accommodation without the confidence, and you have cruelty. Add confidence without removing accommodation, and you have lip service.

1. Identify what you are accommodating

Make a list of every family accommodation you currently make for the anxiety. Sleeping with them. Answering the same question repeatedly. Avoiding certain places. Not leaving them alone. Being in the bathroom with them. These are all data. Most parents are shocked by how long their list is.

2. Pick ONE accommodation to reduce, not all

Do not try to change everything at once. Pick one. For my daughter, we started with the repeated question-asking. Every other accommodation stayed in place for now. Small, sustainable change is what works.

3. Tell your child in advance, not in the moment

Calmly, ideally not at a stressful time. "I have noticed you ask about pickup time a lot, and I can tell your body is feeling worried about it. I love you and I know you can handle this. Starting tomorrow, I will tell you pickup time once in the morning, and that is the plan for the day. I will not answer the question again during the day. This is because I know you can do this."

4. Hold the boundary with warmth, not coldness

When they ask the question anyway (and they will), you respond with the pre-agreed phrase. Something like: "I love you. I already told you this morning. You can handle this." Not angry. Not cold. Warm and steady. This is the hardest part. Your child may escalate in protest. This is the anxiety trying to re-establish the accommodation. Hold steady.

5. Add explicit confidence

Regularly, not just in anxious moments, express your confidence in their ability to handle hard things. "I saw you were worried this morning and you went anyway. That was brave." "I know you can handle this, because I have seen you do hard things before." The research on this is clear. Children believe what their parents believe about them.

Scripts: what to say and what to avoid

The pattern is clear. Dismissive language ("there is nothing to be scared of") invalidates real feelings without helping. Over-reassuring language ("I promise nothing bad will happen") creates a dependency on the parent's guarantee. What works is language that acknowledges the feeling, names it as survivable, and expresses confidence in the child's capacity.

When to get professional help

Getting professional help is not a failure. It is not an indictment of your parenting. Childhood anxiety responds well to evidence-based treatment, and the earlier you intervene, the shorter the course tends to be. A few months of work with a good child psychologist can resolve something that, left alone, can extend through adolescence.

Frequently asked questions

The permission to step back

When my daughter went through her anxiety phase, what helped most was not any specific script. It was the internal shift from "I must make my child feel better" to "I must help my child trust that she can handle feeling bad sometimes." These are completely different projects. The first exhausts both of you. The second builds something durable.

Your child can handle uncomfortable feelings. They need you to believe it. That belief, radiated calmly, is worth more than any reassurance you could offer.

What's the accommodation you might be making without realising? Tell me in the comments.