In a time when life for kids is ever-changing we have recently added the Worry Board to our school-agers classes.  Anytime during class kids can remove a slip of paper from the board and write down a worry they are having. The paper then gets folded up (as tiny as they'd like) and stapled to the board. Once the worry is on the board they no longer need to carry it with them. It is removed from their small shoulders.
              I gave the children my word that I would never read their worries. Tricky promise because who doesn't want to know what goes on in the minds of small people. But a promise is a promise. I did encourage them to share their worries with adults but that is outside the scope of the Worry Board.  We can talk all day but  the Worry Board is to let it go.
              Wouldn't it be nice, if as adults, we could simply write it down and let it go. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, merely getting it out of our head and on to paper makes it seem so much smaller. It may not make it go away, and as adults we certainly can't be in the habit of ignoring our problems, but sometimes we just need to put it away so we can sleep at night and pick it up in the morning with a fresh start.
              An interesting development came from the Worry Board. In between classes it lives in my dining room ( in keeping with the promise that all worries remain confidential) and just this morning my daughter got up from breakfast, went over and pulled a slip of paper and wrote down something, painstakingly folded it into a tiny square and stapled in to the board. She went back to her breakfast without a word, noticeably lighter in spirit. Now I hadn't expected that. After a hard day at school the previous day she was using what she had learned in class to face the day ahead.  And, as a side note, it appeared to work for her. She had a great day and came home a much different child than the day before. Is the Worry Board magic? Maybe. I might try it next time I can't let something go.

In this session of yoga we have been focasing on a wonderful book by Dr. Wayne Dyer titled Unstoppable Me.  In last week's class our theme was 'Farewell to Worries'.  We talked about our worries and how to manage them.  It always amazes me to hear kids talk about the things they worry about. Sometimes the things that seem so small to adults can produce genuine panic in our children.
One student talked about how worried she was to discover a small spot of blood from a scratch on her ankle. She thought she was really seriously injured and was relieved to discover a band-aid solved the problem.  To an adult ,who lives in the world off 'real worries', this may seem silly. I know there have been countless times that I have been frustrated with my own daughter for fussing over scratches, but to hear it from another child made me stop and think.  How many times during a day or a week do I brush off my children's worries because I think it is nothing? And in this brush off, am I helping or hurting my children? Should we pay more attention to trivial complaints? I'm not suggesting gushing over small injuries,  but simply acknowledging a child's concerns as being valid to him or her.  
Taking time to acknowledge every worry a child has could be very time consuming.  As parents we know that the more attention we give to a behavior reinforces that behavior and WE worry about validating their worries. But in class this week I realized (not for the first time but more as a reminder that I needed) that sometimes kids just really need to know that we hear them.
It's scary to be a kid. There are so many things they don't know about yet. Things that are tiny to adults are huge to kids. Think about the worries you had as a child. We pass on our coping skills to the next generation. If we never learn to manage our stress, then we can't teach our children to manage it either. If we reach for an easy fix, then thats what our children will do too.  It's my personal belief that as parents we are called to do things just a bit better than our parents did. Our children should be a little stronger, smarter, fitter, and happier than we were as kids. 
One idea that has helped our eldest daughter is a Worry Box.She is a natural worrier, just like her mom and her grandmother. When there is worry that we can't get past (even after yoga and deep breathing) we put it in a worry box. It usually involves a very dramatic gesture of snapping the lid on the box quickly so the worry doesn't jump out on us (the more dramatic the better in our house). And there the worry stays until we need to talk about it again.  It has worked really well to get things out of her head so she can move on. 
Talk to your children about their worries. Acknowledge that it can be hard to be a kid and it can be hard to grow up. Share a story with your child about a time when you were worried as a kid . Take a moment to think about what coping skills you have and what coping skills you want your children to have. Practice worry-free moments together.