Clinician Quinlan Taylor offers parents practical tools to manage childhood anxiety

Quinlan Taylor, a clinician with the Anxiety and OCD Clinic, told parents at a Downingtown Area School District parent speaker series that childhood anxiety often looks different at each developmental stage and that parents play a central role in helping children build tolerance for distress.

Taylor said very young children frequently show anxiety through behavior (tantrums, separation anxiety), elementary students often show perfectionism and peer-related stress, and middle- and high-school students may experience more complex social-media-related anxiety and avoidance. "Sometimes what looks like behavior problems are actually just boiling anxiety that is festering under the surface," Taylor said.

Why it matters: Taylor emphasized that environmental stressors—constant news exposure, social media, pandemic-related disruptions and school safety drills—can compound children's anxiety and that early, measured parental and school responses reduce risk of longer-term problems. She cited research linking current-event exposure to greater emotional distress and said suicide rates for children aged 10 to 14 have "tripled between 2007 and 2017," noting the statistic as part of the broader evidence she was summarizing.

Taylor stressed that avoidance is the most common and harmful response to anxiety: school refusal, withdrawing from activities, excessive reassurance-seeking and overreliance on devices can provide short-term relief while reinforcing anxiety in the long term. She contrasted two unhelpful parental responses—over-accommodation (excusing missed work or removing challenges) and under-accommodation (dismissing children's concerns)—and urged a middle path that supports children while encouraging graded exposures to feared situations.

Practical steps Taylor recommended include modeling calm and resilience, creating small, scaffolded exposures ("watch me do this first... now let's do it together"), establishing clear, achievable daily goals, and pairing progress with nonmonetary rewards such as one-on-one time. She demonstrated a simple breathing exercise—square breathing, inhaling for four counts, holding four, exhaling four—and suggested parents make practice playful and predictable.

During a brief question-and-answer exchange, Beth Ann Soneli, who works with Downingtown Area SD in health and wellness, highlighted how parents' own social-media-related stress can shape children’s responses; Taylor agreed, saying parents and children often "feed off each other." School staff present encouraged early intervention and reminded families that building-based resources (administrators, counselors, prevention specialists) can support identification and referrals.

Taylor closed by listing resources, including the Anxiety and Depression Association of America and materials from the presenter's office, and said a worksheet with exercises would be shared with attendees. Organizers directed parents to the Downingtown Area School District website and dtownctc.org for additional materials and local supports.

The session ended with thanks from organizers and the presenter; no formal actions or votes were taken.