Why we love Worries 101
Teaching tamariki the neuroscience behind worrying helps them make sense of the way it feels, so they can better work through it.
What to do
Either print a Worries 101 worksheet or just use any sheet of paper you have - and draw in the 4 boxes.
Talk about how worrying happens because of the time when our brains were first formed – think cave-person times. If a sabre toothed tiger was running at us should we worry? Yes! Worrying sends messages from our brains to our bodies to prepare us to….?
- Run, climb a tree, swim across the river or hide…
You don't need to be the expert in this as the parent - it may be important for your child that you explore this together. Change it up for the age and stage of your child.
One way to come at this is 'curiously' - "I've just been learning about what happens when we get worried, like when I ...."
Draw a picture of a person some paper and add in the body parts as you talk about them below (heart, lungs, muscles and brain). Talk about what needs to happen in our body for us to escape danger? To run away from a sabre tooth tiger or try to fight it off, we need adrenaline. Talk about what happens for us during the athletics day sprints. It’s sort of the same feeling. Adrenaline makes...
- Our heart pump faster
- Our breathing become shallower
- Our muscles contract!
Changes take place in our brains too. Because our top priority is escaping the sabre-toothed tiger, the huge outside area of the brain (cortex) shuts down –especially the front of our brain (our prefrontal cortex) because when we’re really, really worried, we don’t need it. We just need lots of adrenaline to run and hide, or react and defend ourselves.
But our world has really, really changed since the cave person times. Think about all the change that’s happened – even just in the last 300 years! There’s been the invention of vehicles, technology, computers and more – and we no longer have dangerous animals in our backyards.
The world is actually safer, but our brains haven’t had a chance to catch up. Evolution (changes to our brains and bodies) takes hundreds, if not thousands of years. This means that sometimes our brains and bodies react like there’s a sabre-toothed tiger in the room, even though there isn’t. So it's normal to over-worry and feel a bit anxious sometimes.
Get started on the worksheet!
Grab your paper or printed worksheet and complete the cave person side of the sheet.
Then kōrero: What experiences can make us worry so much our brains peskily release a surge of adrenaline when we don’t need it?
- Trying something new
- Speaking in front of a group
- Meeting someone new
- New places
- Lots of noise
- Lots of people
- Fast or noisy traffic
- Having a big test or assignment
- Not being with people we love
Lots of things can make us worry and cause our brains to release adrenaline when we don’t actually need it. Explain that sometimes when this happens we do things that aren’t fun for us, or very helpful e.g. we become angry and defensive, or we disengage…
Let your child know that there are some things we can learn, that help. When we do these things, we re-engage our whole brain and stop the release of adrenaline when it’s not needed. These things let our brains know that there is no sabre-toothed tiger in the vicinity – and no need to panic!
Complete the ‘nowadays’ side of the worksheet and talk through some of the things that can help calm us down.
Emphasise that an important thing to do when we feel very nervous, worried or anxious is to focus on our breathing – inhaling right down into the base of our tummies. When we do this our body tells our brain to calm down. This is weird and amazing, but it’s scientific! We know it works!
Ways to learn from Worries 101 everyday
This activity is a great introduction to Tummy Breathing or Body Scans – awesome skills that grow stronger with regular practice.
We also love Aroha’s Way by Rebekah Lipp and Craig Phillips - in fact any of this series are great New Zealand reads that we’d totally recommend too.
