When Fear Takes Hold: Dealing With High Anxiety in Young Children
When my six-year-old developed conjunctivitis, just plain old pink eye, I thought it would be a few drops, a few days, and done. But that tiny infection cracked something open that would take our whole family months to understand.
It started with a phone call. Friends with a child the same age postponed a playdate and even delayed coming to his sixth birthday after hearing we had pink eye in the house. For our sensitive middle child, that hit hard. His brain locked onto a single thought: If I get sick, my birthday will be ruined. That thought took root and grew quickly, spreading through his nervous system like wildfire.
Within a week, he was spiraling into fear. He refused to touch surfaces, asked constantly whether things were clean, and melted down at meals if something didn’t feel “safe.” It wasn’t just worry, it was panic. The kind that floods a small body and leaves it trembling. We were watching the early signs of OCD-like behaviour, and it was heartbreaking.
Understanding the Fear Beneath the Behaviour
As adults, we can tell ourselves stories that soothe us: This fear isn’t real. I’m overreacting. But a six-year-old doesn’t have that inner narrator. Their experience comes from the body first, what psychologist Sean Larsen calls bottom-up processing. The brain doesn’t reason its way out of fear; it feels its way through. So telling our son, “Don’t worry, you’re fine,” was useless. His body didn’t believe us.
Sean helped us reframe anxiety as something protective, not pathological. It’s the brain’s way of trying to keep us safe, just overshooting the mark. “Your body is doing its job,” he told us, “it’s just guessing wrong.”
That was an important shift for all of us. Instead of trying to eliminate anxiety, our job became teaching the brain when to stand down.
Re-Training the Brain
We built a small team around us: psychologist Sean Larsen, hypnotherapist Catherine Williams, and family therapist Erica Spink. Catherine suggested using story as a tool, because at six years old, narrative reaches the heart faster than logic. She helped us craft something simple we could repeat in moments of panic:
“Your brain did such a good job warning you about germs when there was pink eye in the house, that now it’s warning you even when it doesn’t need to. We can help your brain learn what’s safe again.”
We paired that story with gentle exposure therapy: washing hands once, not ten times; touching something “dirty” and sitting with the discomfort. Sometimes we used stickers or songs as encouragement, but the real medicine was presence. Showing up again and again, calm, steady, grounded.
The Emotional Weight on Parents
Here’s the part I didn’t expect: how much of the emotional weight would land on me.
Our son began looking to me for every moment of reassurance. I was his anchor, through bedtime, morning routines, every meltdown. I was proud of that role, but I was also burning out. When you’re constantly co-regulating another person’s nervous system, yours eventually runs dry.
One night, after a particularly hard day, I sat on the edge of his bed after he’d finally fallen asleep. The house was quiet except for his breathing. I remember thinking: How long can I keep this up? Co-regulation is a two-person dance, and it’s nearly impossible to offer calm when you’re empty.
That was our turning point. My partner and I had to rebalance the load. Her natural style, slower, more focused, connection over control, became essential. Our son needed both of us, differently but equally.
Reshaping Our Daily Life
We started making real changes:
Softer mornings: No rushing, no home-reading pressure, gentler voices.
Less school, more play: Two days of school a week, the rest spent outside. Skiing became therapy, movement, snow, joy.
Free play: Unstructured, independent time. One day he played on his own for eight hours straight. No meltdowns, just flow.
Looser structure: We dropped the push for academics and focused on nervous-system safety. The perfectionism he felt in his multi-age classroom, trying to keep up with older peers, had been feeding his anxiety. With a compassionate teacher, we adjusted expectations. Protect the child’s heart first; the rest can follow.
Erica reminded us that family systems need to flex. When one parent carries the emotional weight too long, burnout becomes inevitable. She encouraged us to create body-based resets: dancing, play-fighting, skiing, anything that gets everyone out of their heads and into their bodies.
What It Means to Be Child-Focused
We’ve always tried to be child-focused, not child-led. That distinction matters. It doesn’t mean saying yes to everything, it means leading with presence. We co-sleep when it helps. We drop reading when it causes stress. We make space for what matters most right now.
Sometimes that means saying no to outside expectations so we can say yes to our kids.
And that, to me, is the heart of parenting: tuning in, adjusting, trusting that this season, whatever it looks like, won’t last forever.
The Long View
When you’re in the thick of a child’s fear, it feels endless. But nervous systems are designed to heal when we meet them with safety and consistency. Sean once compared it to re-climbing a mountain trail over and over until your body stops panicking at the first steep section. That image stuck with me.
The truth is, there’s no quick fix. There’s just showing up. Again and again. Calmly, imperfectly, humanly.
So if you’re a parent holding space for a child whose fears have taken over, please hear this: it won’t always be like this. Your calm is powerful. Your presence is enough. The small, gentle changes you make today are building the foundation for their tomorrow.
