Best Anxiety Books for Parents (19+ List)
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The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
This is a 20+ list of books on anxiety that are written to guide parents of anxious children. The items mentioned cover useful tools and strategies to help kids overcome their worries. They also present a lot of helpful information regarding the nature and causes of anxiety.
What are the Best Anxiety Books for Parents
We looked at a bunch of parenting books on the theme of anxiety and picked out the following best ones:
- Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents by Reid Wilson & Lynn Lyons
- Between Parent and Child by Dr. Haim G. Ginott
- Beyond Behaviours by Dr. Mona Delahooke
- Bloom by Lynne Kenney
- Freeing Your Child from Anxiety by Dr. Tamar Chansky
- Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking by Dr. Tamar Chansky
- Growing Up Brave by Dr. Donna B. Pincus
- Helping Your Anxious Child by Dr. Ronald M. Rapee
- Helping Your Anxious Teen by by Dr. Sheila Achar Josephs
- Helping Your Child Overcome Separation Anxiety or School Refusal by Dr. Andrew R. Eisen
- How to Parent Your Anxious Toddler by Natasha Daniels
- How to Talk so Kids Will Listen…And Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
- If Your Adolescent Has an Anxiety Disorder by Edna Foa & Linda Andrews
- Keys to Parenting Your Anxious Child by Dr. Katharina Manassis
- Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety by Dr. John Duffy
- The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids with ADHD, Anxiety, and More by Elaine Taylor-Klaus
- The Happy Kid Handbook by Katie Hurley
- The Opposite of Worry by Dr. Lawrence J. Cohen
- The Scaffold Effect by Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz
- The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel & Tina Bryson
- Why Smart Kids Worry by Allison Edwards
Books on Anxiety that Help You Parent Better
Anxiety is a growing phenomenon that is highly prevalent in today’s world. This is not only true for adults but also a large number of children and teenagers as well. A review of epidemiological studies reported on the prevalence of anxiety disorders in children.
It revealed that 42% of the younger population have some kind of anxiety disorder. Parenting in itself is a responsibility full of challenges. Anxiety disorders only make it harder for parents to ensure their child’s wellbeing.
Fortunately, there are plenty of books written to guide parents through this journey. In this blog, we will discuss over twenty such books that have been reviewed as extremely useful for dealing with anxiety.
Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents by Reid Wilson & Lynn Lyons
If your children have had anxiety for a while and your attempts to help aren’t really helping, read this book. Wilson and Lyons combine their knowledge from professional experience with current research to present effective and unconventional strategies.
This text will make you challenge the way you are approaching the problem. It will expose how traditional methods actually end up enhancing anxiety. Instead, it will offer 7 ways to stop the worry cycle and eventually change both child and parents’ ways of thinking.
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Between Parent and Child by Dr. Haim G. Ginott
This is the second edition of this bestselling classic written and edited by the Ginotts, a therapist couple. Anxiety often tends to strain the parent-child relationship since there is a gap in communication. This gap is never intentional but gets formed in spite of a parent’s best intentions.
That’s because anxiety disorders produce fear and apprehension that interfere with a child’s perception and interactions. Between Parent & Child addressed techniques that can improve this strained relationship. This handbook will show you how to discipline, provide feedback, acknowledge, and respond in ways that develop trust.
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Beyond Behaviours by Dr. Mona Delahooke
An internationally recognised paediatric psychologist, Dr. Delahooke’s book uses brain science and compassion to understand and solve children’s behavioural challenges. She helps readers realise that the visible anxious behaviour is only the tip of the iceberg.
To successfully resolve it, one must comprehend the underlying context. The book includes impactful worksheets, charts, tools, and techniques to reduce behavioral challenges. These methods aim to promote psychological resilience and satisfying, secure relationships.
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Bloom by Lynne Kenney
The complete title of this book is Bloom: 50 Things to Say, Think, and Do with Anxious, Angry, and Over-the-Top Kids. If that sounds like something you could use, go ahead and buy this book.
It introduces parents to a brain-based approach that helps you learn why your kids misbehave. When you begin to understand the developmental origins of behaviours, you look at the same problem situation in a fresh way. This book will help you address your child’s behaviour using skill-building techniques that produce real and lasting change.
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Freeing Your Child from Anxiety by Dr. Tamar Chansky
The author of this book believes that childhood should be a happy, carefree time. Unfortunately, given the rising prevalence of anxiety in children, that isn’t how things are in most households. If that’s the case for you, this book will help you develop resilience in your young ones.
This new competence will allow them to overcome their anxiety. Dr. Chamsky provides easy, fun, and effective tools for teaching children to outsmart their worries and take charge of their fears. These tools will also prepare them to withstand the pressure of overly competitive environments.
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Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking by Dr. Tamar Chansky
Anxiety is a thought disorder and develops when someone forms maladaptive patterns of thinking unhelpful thoughts. If negative thinking styles stay unaddressed, they can even lead to depression and more serious mental illnesses.
In this publication, Dr. Chamsky offers clear, concise, and compassionate guidance in equipping children and teens to overcome negativity. She even addresses the complex challenges that come with raising kids in a digital age. This is something that has exacerbated ever since the pandemic induced lockdowns.
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Growing Up Brave by Dr. Donna B. Pincus
Mental illnesses impact us differently with onset in childhood as compared to that in adulthood. When a child or teenager develops a psychological disorder like anxiety, it shaped the personality they develop as an adult.
Dr. Pincus’s book teaches parents to identify and understand anxiety in their children. She outlines effective and convenient parenting techniques for reducing and to promote bravery for long-term confidence. The text addresses common issues like trouble sleeping, separation anxiety, social anxiety, and panic attacks.
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Helping Your Anxious Child by Dr. Ronald M. Rapee
This is a step-by-step guide for parents to train their children in useful skills that can overcome anxiety, worries, and fears. It offers practical, scientifically proven tools that help reduce these impairing behaviours.
The topics covered help with a variety of psychological conditions like phobias, separation anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety, or OCD. This second edition has been expanded and updated to include the latest research and techniques for managing child anxiety.
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Helping Your Anxious Teen by Dr. Sheila Achar Josephs
The complete title for this work is Helping Your Anxious Teen: Positive Parenting Strategies to Help Your Teen Beat Anxiety, Stress, and Worry. These strategies are thoughtful tools for helping young people help themselves.
By implementing them, you can teach your kids to become independent and competent in overcoming their negative thoughts and perceptions. This book will teach you how to sensitively respond to your child’s worries and redirect their nervous energy. It will also train you to proactively address common triggers of stress and anxiety.
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Helping Your Child Overcome Separation Anxiety or School Refusal by Dr. Andrew R. Eisen
If your child tends to cling to you, hates being alone, and displays separation anxiety, this book will be helpful. This anxiety is a normal part of your child’s developmental process. They’re meant to overcome it as they grow older.
But for quite a few kids, this fear stays way past its appropriate duration. Dr. Eisen helps you identify when your child’s separation anxiety or school refusal is more than just a phase. Using real-life stories, he offers effective tools that you can use to manage your child’s anxiety
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How to Parent Your Anxious Toddler by Natasha Daniels
Talking about anxiety with older children is slightly easier because they have developed the ability to think in abstract terms. But for children under the age of 5, this can be very challenging.
It’s hard to explain to them the nature and causes of their anxious behaviours. Thankfully, this accessible guide demystifies the difficult behaviors of anxious toddlers. It offers. tried-and-tested practical solutions to common parenting dilemmas. You’ll be able to relate to the real life stories opening each chapter.
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How to Talk so Kids Will Listen…And Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
The Boston Globe mentioned this book to be the ultimate “parenting bible”. Not surprisingly, the authors internationally acclaimed experts on communication between parents and children.
Their book includes fresh insights and suggestions as well as the authors’ time-tested methods to solve common parenting problems. These techniques will help build foundations for lasting relationships between you and your children. As a result, your family will be able to deal with anxiety far more efficiently.
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If Your Adolescent Has an Anxiety Disorder by Edna Foa & Linda Andrews
Especially written for parents of teenagers, this book will help you untangle the negative thoughts behind your adolescent’s anxiety. It presents clinical information and practical advice you’ll need to understand this condition.
You will learn about different mental disorders like social anxiety, generalized anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Each chapter will give you treatment information and case studies based on a real family’s own experience. Knowing the right information about anxiety disorders is the first step towards helping your child deal with them.
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Keys to Parenting Your Anxious Child by Dr. Katharina Manassis
Dr. Manassis is an experienced child psychiatrist. In her book, she helps parents recognise signs of anxiety and describes how to guide the recovery from it. The solutions discussed cover the contexts of both family and school environments.
She explores the issues of growth anxiety, mid-adolescents and peer pressure, and late adolescents facing career decisions and drug use. In addition to these, the book also includes warning signs that indicate a need for professional counseling.
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Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety by Dr. John Duffy
This is a complete guide to your child’s stressed, depressed, expanded, amazing adolescence. Dr. Duffy’s book is a guide to navigate the complicated experience of parenting teens in today’s world.
The context of the book is that children today have nearly unlimited access to social media and the internet. This exposes them to unprecedented academic, social, and familial stressors. His advice will help you sort through these overwhelming circumstances and raise your teens to fight anxiety.
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The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids with ADHD, Anxiety, and More by Elaine Taylor-Klaus
The author of this book is a parenting expert at ImpactADHD.com. Her book acts as a resource for a reality-based recipe for raising complex kids. It helps you set effective and realistic expectations for your kids so that it becomes easier for all of you.
This guide is for parents of children with anxiety, ADHD, learning disabilities, autism, depression, ODD, or attachment issues. The strategies mentioned reframe the way you look at daily life problems to find more successful solutions.
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The Happy Kid Handbook by Katie Hurley
As you can see from the many books already listed, there is an abundance of parenting techniques and advice out there today. How does one choose the best method to ensure their child’s wellbeing?
This book lets parents realise that it is not the method that makes your child happy, but the uniqueness of each individual. Hurley explains to parents that the secret to raising a happy child is to learn about their idiosyncratic needs and preferences. This will be an excellent aid to help you get to know your anxious child better.
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The Opposite of Worry by Dr. Lawrence J. Cohen
This book has been reviewed by Dr. Michael Thompson as “the most helpful book on childhood anxiety I have ever read”. It provides parents a special set of tools to handle childhood anxiety.
These simple and successful strategies build connection through fun, play, and empathy. The book is packed with easy-to-implement solutions that will help your child experience the opposite of worry, anxiety, and fear. Instead, they’ll learn to embrace connection, trust, and joy.
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The Scaffold Effect by Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz
For children suffering from anxiety disorders, emotional fragility is a usual experience. The author of this text is the president of the Child Mind Institute. He trains parents to prevent and counteract the impact of anxiety using a new parenting philosophy.
His book introduces the powerful and clinically tested idea that parents need to act like scaffolds. They must first build-up and then gradually loosen their support to encourage their kids to climb higher. This book will help you raise resilient, self-reliant, and secure kids in the age of anxiety.
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The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel & Tina Bryson
Learn 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind by reading this book. Written by a neuropsychiatrist and a parenting expert, this book will change how you look at your child’s growth. It teaches readers about the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures.
Through this information, it helps you select age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles. It also contains illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child.
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Why Smart Kids Worry by Allison Edwards
People think smarter children have it easier since they don’t struggle with academics but that’s not entirely true. They may not have the same challenges as their peers, but no child exists who doesn’t have issues.
With smarter children, the difficulties lie in more existential questions that cause them to worry too much. This guide educated parents about the things that make smart kids worry and what they can do to help. It contains fifteen specially designed tools to help smart kids manage their fears, anxieties, and become more worry-free.
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Conclusion
This was a 20+ list of books on anxiety that are written to guide parents of anxious children. The items mentioned cover useful tools and strategies to help kids overcome their worries. They also present a lot of helpful information regarding the nature and causes of anxiety.
FAQs (Best Anxiety Books for Parents)
Can anxiety be passed down from parents?
Like most mental illnesses, anxiety too can be caused by genetic factors. However, environmental factors play an equal role too. Children may pick up anxious behaviours through observational learning. However, when the environment is conducive to healthy development, it’s not necessary that the child of an anxious parent will be anxious too.
Is it normal for a 12 year old to have anxiety?
Anxiety is a part of normal development in children but healthy development allows them to come out of it. Life for a 12-year old can be pretty overwhelming. There are so many transitions happening in their peer groups, their priorities, as well as their bodies. The sudden changes make it typical for pre-pubescents to develop anxiety.
Citations
Take Control of Your Anxiety Today: Personalized Counseling with BetterHelp
