Childhood anxiety is on the rise, and as a parent, it can feel overwhelming to know how to help. The good news is there are expert-backed books that offer practical tools, proven strategies, and comfort for both kids and parents. These top 5 parenting books will guide you through supporting your child, building resilience, and easing worry in a healthy way.
1. Freeing Your Child From Anxiety by Tamar Chansky
Book description: Childhood should be a happy and carefree time, yet too many children and teens are stressed-out and exhibiting symptoms of anxiety. Parents everywhere want to know: How can you recognize when stress has crossed over into a full-blown anxiety disorder? How can you prevent anxiety from taking root? And how do you help your child break patterns of fear, worry, and avoidance and lead a happy, productive life? Fortunately, anxiety is very treatable, and parents can do a lot to help get their children’s emotional well-being back on track.
In Freeing Your Child from Anxiety, childhood anxiety expert Dr. Tamar Chansky shares easy, fun, and effective tools for teaching children and teens to outsmart their worries and take charge of their fears. You’ll find scripts for explaining anxiety to children of different ages, creative strategies for navigating common phobias, and “Do It Today” activities that help them implement the book’s advice right away. This revised and updated edition also prepares children to buffer themselves from the pressures of our competitive, test-driven culture and build resiliency skills.
These simple solutions can help parents protect their children from needless suffering—and ensure they have the tools to thrive today and for a lifetime.
2. What to Do When You Worry Too Much by Dawn Huebner
What to Do When You Worry Too Much, Second Edition, guides children and parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of anxiety. Now revised and expanded, this groundbreaking bestseller has helped millions of children around the world.
An updated edition of the world-wide bestseller What to Do When You Worry Too Much, the second edition combines everything that worked so well in the original―the conversational tone, interactive elements, clear and actionable strategies―with new tools, new illustrations, and expert advice based on current understandings of anxiety. Lively metaphors and humorous illustrations make the concepts and strategies easy to understand, while clear how-to steps and prompts to draw and write help children learn new skills. This interactive self-help book remains the complete resource for educating, motivating, and empowering kids to overcome their overgrown worries. Includes a note to parents and caregivers by psychologist author Dawn Huebner, PhD.
This book is part of the Magination Press What-to-Do Guides for Kids® series and includes a “Note to Parents and Caregivers.” What-to-Do Guides for Kids® are interactive self-help books designed to guide 6–12-year-olds and their parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques most often used in the treatment of various psychological concerns. Engaging, encouraging, and easy to follow, these books educate, motivate, and empower children to work towards change.
3. Helping Your Anxious Child by Ronald Rapee, Ann Wignall, Susan Spence & Vanessa Cobham
With more than 150,000 copies sold, this fully revised and updated edition of the classic self-help guide for parents offers cutting-edge, proven-effective techniques for helping your child overcome anxiety and thrive.
Most children are afraid of the dark. Some fear monsters under the bed. But at least ten percent of children have excessive fears and worries―phobias, separation anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder―that can hold them back and keep them from fully enjoying childhood. If your child suffers from any of these forms of anxiety, this book offers new, practical, and evidence-based proven tools that can help.
Now in its third edition, Helping Your Anxious Child has been expanded and updated to include the latest research and techniques for managing child anxiety, and includes new information on helping very young children and adolescents; as well as anxiety in children with behavioral problems, learning difficulties, or medical conditions. The book offers proven-effective skills based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure therapy, and mindfulness and relaxation techniques to aid you in helping your child overcome intense fears and worries. You’ll also find out how to relieve your child’s anxious feelings while parenting with compassion.
Parents will learn:
- How to help your child practice “detective thinking” to recognize irrational worries
- What to do when your child becomes frightened
- How to expose your child gently and gradually to challenging situations
- How to help your child learn important social skills
Also included are links to a free downloadable workbook for parents, and an activity book for kids. The kid-friendly, illustrated activity book will help your child take an active role in learning to manage their anxiety, as they learn and practice the skills outlined in Helping Your Anxious Child.
4. The Opposite of Worry by Lawrence J. Cohen
“The most helpful book on childhood anxiety I have ever read.”—Michael Thompson, Ph.D.
Whether it’s the monster in the closet or the fear that arises from new social situations, school, or sports, anxiety can be especially challenging and maddening for children. And since anxiety has a mind of its own, logic and reassurance often fail, leaving parents increasingly frustrated about how to help. Now Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D., the author of Playful Parenting, provides a special set of tools to handle childhood anxiety. Offering simple, effective strategies that build connection through fun, play, and empathy, Dr. Cohen helps parents
• start from a place of warmth, compassion, and understanding
• teach children the basics of the body’s “security system”: alert, alarm, assessment, and all clear.
• promote tolerance of uncertainty and discomfort by finding the balance between outright avoidance and “white-knuckling” through a fear
• find lighthearted ways to release tension in the moment, labeling stressful emotions on a child-friendly scale
• tackle their own anxieties so they can stay calm when a child is distressed
• bring children out of their anxious thoughts and into their bodies by using relaxation, breathing, writing, drawing, and playful roughhousing
With this insightful resource of easy-to-implement solutions and strategies, you and your child can experience the opposite of worry, anxiety, and fear and embrace connection, trust, and joy.
5. Outsmarting Worry by Dawn Huebner
Worry has a way of growing, shifting from not-a-big-deal to a VERY BIG DEAL in the blink of an eye. This big-deal Worry is tricky, luring children into behaviours that keep the anxiety cycle going. Children often find it hard to fight back against Worry, but not anymore. Outsmarting Worry teaches 9-13 year olds and the adults who care about them a specific set of skills that makes it easier to face – and overcome – worries and fears. Smart, practical, proven techniques are presented in language immediately accessible to children with an emphasis on shifting from knowing to doing, from worried to happy and free.
Final Thoughts
Parenting an anxious child can feel overwhelming — but these books really can change the way you and your child navigate worry. They give you the language, strategies, and confidence to handle tough moments. Pin this post for later, grab a book or two to get started, and remember: you’re not alone in this.