The five-step framework to help kids stay calm

In the past few years, they’ve encountered a spike in inquiries from families needing support managing technology use, tuning out the 24-hour news cycle, and adjusting to post-COVID life as kids who were toddlers during the pandemic move through elementary school. Evans is based in Los Angeles, where many kids are coping with the trauma of wildfires and losing their homes. Meanwhile, access to therapists is a barrier for so many people.

“Everybody seems to be worrying right now, and we really wanted something that was accessible, and that means accessible to anyone. We wanted a way for people to get the tools that we’ve been teaching — which we know that we didn’t have as kids,” Graber says.

That’s just it: Our generation of parents, who likely came of age in the 1990s, didn’t grow up with as much social-emotional awareness. I didn’t get a diagnosis for panic disorder until college. Until then, I just used workarounds (obsessive behaviors, writing down my ruminations) to try to manage feelings that didn’t have words.

Meanwhile, “There’s so much more pressure to parent correctly now,” Evans says, recalling the 2024 Surgeon General’s warning that framed parental stress as a crucial public health issue. Gentle parenting, sharenting, free-range, who knows — it’s too intense, if you’re just trying to get through the day before collapsing in front of “White Lotus” at 10 p.m.

It doesn’t have to be that hard.

“We want parents to understand that they can create a sense of emotional safety in the relationship between the parent and child, and it then translates to your child feeling more calm overall. The core of it is: ‘How do we help kids feel safer, and how do we parent in a way that achieves that?’” Evans says.

Graber and Evans use the “SAFER” framework to guide parents through anxiety management, focusing on what parents can do to make a significant difference at home, even when the outside world is unwieldy.

S is for setting the tone. “Calm is contagious. Kids are little sponges,” Evans says. It might seem impossible to set a calm tone when you’re freaking out inside. Maybe your kid asks about death, or a school shooting, or about getting sick. We’re human: These things terrify us, too.

So remember that you don’t always have to be instantly available. Take a minute (or multiple minutes) for yourself instead of getting reactive. This is the difference between kids and adults: We have the wherewithal to pull ourselves back and self-edit, and we don’t owe our kids an immediate reply. Parents don’t need to be constantly on.

“When a child asks something that’s anxiety-provoking, the best thing you can do is to take a minute and say, “I don’t have the answer to that, but I’ll come back to you,” Graber says. “Practice slowing down. Take a breath. Take a break. Go into a conversation intentionally.”

She likes to tell parents to visualize themselves as a mountain that doesn’t get blown over by whatever’s happening around them.

A is for allowing feelings to guide behaviors. Don’t try to talk your kids out of their emotions; let them feel what they feel.

Let’s say you’re rushing out the door for school, and your child is complaining that they’re nervous about basketball practice. They’re dragging. They won’t put on their shoes; you need to get on a work call in 15 minutes. Acknowledge their feelings instead of battling it.

“What you can say to them is: ‘It’s OK to be anxious. I know you’re worried. We can talk about this, but I need you to take three deep breaths and walk toward the car to get us to school.’ You’re holding the feeling, but then you’re guiding them [to a behavior], setting a limit, and creating a recommendation for what they can do with that anxiety,” Evans says.

F is for forming identity. Giving your child a refuge at home is one of the best salves against anxiety. Follow their interests, whether it’s drums or dinosaurs; make sure that home is one place where they can express their true selves instead of being steered in certain directions.

“When your child knows that, ‘Wow, my parents are really into this thing with me,’ it helps them to feel that their interests matter and that they matter in the world,” Graber says. The other side of this coin is building community outside of home: making a point to say hello to the people you pass every day on the walk to school; establishing strong routines, predictability, and rituals that reinforce security.

“When kids know who they are and where they belong, and they can say, ‘I really like myself,’ they worry less. It quiets the noise of doubt and anxiety,” Evans says.

E is for engage. Getting kids to open up is rough. I usually ask my sons how school went and at best I get “fine” and, if it’s a really special day, I might hear a juicy tidbit about cafeteria drama. When it comes to what they’re worried about? I truly have no idea until it all comes spilling out, usually at bedtime when I’m half-asleep and wholly unprepared to respond thoughtfully.

It’s common. Evans and Graber often see parents who maximize (elevating worries and catastrophizing); minimize (brushing anxieties off in an effort to help but actually discounting them in the process); or rescue (jumping in to fix the issue instead of listening to the kid, which is definitely something I do).

Their solution is “Don’t Scare the Cat”: Basically, don’t come at your child with a ton of emotion and questions, or else they’ll scurry away. Instead, try echoing: Repeat back what you hear.

“If a child comes home and says, ‘So-and-so didn’t talk to me today at lunch, and I’m so sad about it,’ we often have a tendency to say something like, ‘Don’t worry about that. You two have been friends forever!’ What we’re recommending saying is, ‘Wow. She didn’t talk to you today, and that made you sad.’ If they come to you excited, meet that. If they come to you sad, meet that,” Graber says.

Don’t discount the stress or offer to text so-and-so’s parents to patch things up (guilty). Just mirror their feelings. This helps your kid feel heard and seen, and makes them more likely to say more.

R is for role model. Parents aren’t perfect. We’re flawed, with our own anxieties. We don’t have to present an infallible front for our kids, but we can model self-compassion.

“It’s about taking a look at how you talk about yourself, how you think about yourself, what triggers your own anxiety or frustrations, and just understanding and bringing awareness to your own actions,” Evans says.

Think about how you react to stress and how you subconsciously model that for your kids. For example, whenever we’d have guests over, I’d turn into a screaming mess for three hours beforehand. I’d shriek at my kids to pick up their disgusting shoes and howl at my husband that we lived in a pigsty. I didn’t want to be judged for having a messy house, but it also came from a real place: I wanted to show guests a home that I felt proud of (and, um, my family really doesn’t share those values).

Now, I send them out before we have people over. To the mall. To the movies. To wherever. I know that I need to frantically scrub and spray in peace; I’m showing my kids how to compartmentalize without sacrificing my own emotions. I tell them that I get nervous before people come over, and I know how to cope with it — alone.

“This shows kids that it’s OK to be imperfect, and that growth comes from self-compassion instead of self-criticism. We see a lot of perfectionism in kids and being hard on themselves. And we’d love parents to be less hard on themselves in general, too,” Evans says.

Kara Baskin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @kcbaskin.