From Reading and Other Learning Disabilities

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis

How to Reduce Anxiety: Yours and Your Child’s—Part II

In late March, we described three ways you can use relaxation strategies to reduce anxiety—yours and your child’s.  We described meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, and diaphragmatic breathing. And we quoted the research from 1990. Here’s a more recent statistical analysis:

The [literature shows] consistent and significant efficacy of relaxation training in reducing anxiety. (Manzoni et al., 2008, p. 9 of 12)

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From Reading and Other Learning Disabilities

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis

How to Reduce Anxiety: Yours and Your Child’s

Many parents of children with disabilities worry—constantly. They fear the future, they feel extremely anxious—constantly. So do their children. Often, extreme, constant anxiety—fear of the future, fear that “I can’t handle it” and the results will be awful— creates physical and emotional distress. Physically, it can cause or aggravate endrocrine, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular problems (Hanson & Mendius, 2009).  Emotionally, it can cause or aggravate depression as well as sleep, attention, learning, social, and behavioral problems.

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The Question

Recently, a tutor of a struggling reader sent us this question: “Do you have any advice on things to say to calm my student down? Sometimes my student gets in a loop of thinking. He cries and says he hates this tutoring, he can do harder stuff than this, his anger and sadness causes him to be in a place where he cannot learn. I plan to have a variety of activities and books available to have an option when one activity isn’t working. Two sessions ago I stopped the session, because my student could not calm down. We made an agreement that day to stop using the books he didn’t like. I continued the session yesterday, but I’m not sure how much he learned. I didn’t want him to think I’m going to give up.”

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