It can be difficult to talk about how anxious we feel, particularly for young children who might not recognise this feeling yet or have the words to describe it. Creating a character or a creature, like the ‘Worry Monster’, can be used to resemble your child’s anxiety and is a great way of developing a shared and age-appropriate language for discussing anxiety. You might want to support your child to visualise the character by drawing it out – it might be a certain colour, with particular features and for some, they might want to add speech bubbles which represent the specific worries they are experiencing. To start, I ask students to imagine what their worry would look like if it were a real-life monster. We talk about how imagining what the worry looks like is a starting point for talking to the worry. This might sound silly to some students, but I explain that when we can talk to our worries, we can tell them they’re wrong or that we want them to leave! I teach students to say, “I don’t have to listen to you, Worry Wilbert (or whatever name they’ve chosen),” or “You’re not welcome here, Worry Wilma.” A great book to review this process is Worry Says What? by Allison Edwards. Constructing the Worry Monster This is a slight deviation from the original worry monster concept, but they really enjoyed using these when we made them. Or you may have come across slight variations that use different types of containers like jars. Those would be your Worry Jars, Feelings Jars, or Anxiety Jars. Pretty much all you need is some kind of box, and some resources to decorate it with. 6. Draw/Write Worry

First, get the children to lie on the floor and close their eyes. You could potentially put someone relaxing music on. Place a dab of glue on the top of the box. Place one of the curled pipe cleaners on top. Continue to make a cluster of curled pipe cleaner “hair” on top of the box. What you actually feed the worry monster can add an extra element of interest and engagement for the children. Then secure them at the end with a rubber band or similar. You could draw faces onto the stress-balls with pens. Using the box and writing down your problems on paper also helps to turn something intangible into something they can actually touch, work with, and control.A good activity, then, is to take the children on a scavenger hunt with one of the purposes being to find ‘food’ for the worry monster. Anxiety is a bully. It bosses your child around, tells them they are not good enough, and causes high amounts of fear. Suddenly, your anxious child begins to see anxiety as a part of them, bringing down their self-confidence and opinion of themselves. The best way to help your child battle anxiety is to name the worry monster, thus, making sure that the anxiety is seen externally. This process allows children to keep their own identify strong while externalizing the anxiety as the bully. Knowing your child has worries can be disheartening but you can help them deal with their worries by:

It’s a good idea to use the worry monster pretty soon after the hunt for added motivation and engagement. 5. Make A Worry Monster Showing You Care and Understand - Simply taking an interest and talking to your child will allow them to feel comfortable opening up to you.Imagine there is something that you are worried about. It might be something that makes you sad, or that you are scared of. Natural objects are also a good choice, as they have calming textures in the hands. Things like leaves or conkers would work well, as would many other types of loose parts materials. 3. Emotion Pebbles In this particular small group activity, students each create their own unique worry monsters, choosing from different bodies, eyes, mouths, arms, and even legs. Some students make worry monsters that look quite scary while others make worry monsters that appear friendly, and that’s okay.

Place a dab of glue above the open mouth in the center of the box for each eyeball. Place the eyeballs on the box.

Sometimes when we feel worried, frustrated, or overwhelmed it may help us to store our problems away. Express their feelings by writing them on a paper (they can also make a drawing, or you can help them write it down)

This activity helps students to develop self talk for dealing with their worries and recognize times and places that tend to bring out the worry monster. From here, we practice talking to their worry monsters and paying attention to time when he or she might come out. This activity really helps students to recognize worry triggers and employ that self talk that helps them to combat their worries! While the box is drying, cut the white foam paper to look like teeth. You can make them square or triangular. We chose the triangular ones. For some children – just writing the worry was enough, for others they needed a minute or two with me to chat through something (I usually spoke to them quietly at my desk while correcting their copy or brought them outside while the other children were working.) We discussed the type of things that could be put in the worry box – problems in the playground/ in class/ finding something difficult etc. In practice Worry dolls are one great option for bedtime, and I’ve written a whole article about different strategies you can employ with worry dolls, that you can read here.You can either buy a worry monster like above or else create your own using a cardboard box. I made this one with a group of children in the resource room 2 years ago and used him in my classroom last year too. You may have read about this very same concept described as a Feelings Box, Acceptance Box, or Anxiety Box.