Anxiety

Not mine, Girl Child's. As a toddler she was fearless but somewhere along the way she became anxious.

It shows in the fact that she had nightmares for nights after Bunny B died. But it is mostly showing by her refusal to ride the bike she got for Christmas. This is the bike she chose and which has been sitting in the garage since August. You see it's a bike with 20 inch wheels and that is bigger than the bike she learnt to ride on. So she has been refusing to ride the new bike. I finally convinced her to give it a go yesterday and once she got over her fear she did well. She does well if you can convince her to actually try. But that's often a hard thing.

She has only has one stack while riding. That was about 3 weeks ago and she grazed both knees and palms. I think it's the part of the reason she's avoiding the new bike. She is worried but nothing we say or do seem to make her feel better. Today, we returned to the bike shop to check the brakes were okay. Girl was convinced that the back pedal brakes weren't working properly. They are. The guys at the bike shop were great and let her try a couple of other bikes. But she got scared and refused to try. While she eventually did ride her bike around at the bike shop, she has refused to ride it at home. I'm hoping she will ride it again soon.

Boy Child has anxiety, too. He has difficulty asking for things in shops. He needs someone to be with him. Apparently he stutters when he has to ask for something. I knew he got nervous but I don't remember being aware of the stuttering. You give him explicit instructions of what may happen (but because you cant foretell everything) any little thing that deviates from the way the event plays out in his head makes him anxious. We know he needs to be able to do this so every so often we make him have a go. But I wonder if it's worth the effort.

Do you deal with anxiety at your place? Any brilliant ideas for me?