Dr. Matt Biel on How to Help Our Kids Manage Their Fears and Worries

We thoroughly enjoyed our live chat with Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center. Among the many suggestions and insights Dr. Matt shared with us was a reminder to keep our sights on the micro and focus on “winning the hour” instead of the day. But when it comes to the macro, perhaps the most helpful — and easiest to follow — piece of advice is to remember that what our kids need most from us right now is love.

If you missed the live event, you can watch it here!

Below, we’ve included some of the highlights from our conversation with Dr. Biel. For more information, plus a list of resources to help our kids manage their fears and worries, head to our article here.

"Resilience, more than almost anything else that we might consider a characteristic, is earned — it’s earned through trials and tribulations, it’s earned through hardship, it’s earned through creative and durable response to adversity. From what I know about the Undivided community, this is a group that is rich in resilience — because raising a kid with durable challenges creates a durable hardiness in families."

What are the things to keep in mind when talking to kids about things that are difficult or adverse?

• Know your child. Every kid has their own personality, their own temperament, ways they react to new and unexpected things.
• Where is your child developmentally? The way you might talk to a 7-year-old who has autism versus a 7-year-old who has OCD versus a 7-year-old who’s got an intellectual disability are all different conversations.
• Take your child’s lead. There’s a tendency adults have when we’re anxious about something to overshare rather than taking a moment to pause and say, What does my child need to know in order to make sense of that for him or herself?

"I want to encourage folks to be compassionate with yourself, compassionate with your child, and modest in your ambitions as you think about what is possible to achieve each day. Be really concrete and specific. What’s a 15- or 20-minute chunk of learning, interaction, or challenge that you want to focus your attention on tomorrow? Let’s win that hour. If you win that hour, you win the day. Whatever happens beyond that is gravy."