Now that you understand why we use mission plans to help children overcome their anxiety, it is time for you to learn how to make mission plans that are tailored to your child’s specific needs.
Step 1: Create a list of fears and worries
Before developing a mission plan, you will need to decide which one of your child’s fears or worries you would like to work on first. A couple of weeks back, you filled out a checklist of fears and worries and created some goals for the program. Let’s return to these and dig a little deeper to figure out what you should work on first.
Look at your Fears and Worries Checklist and consider how your life and your child’s life are impacted by each fear. For example, some children are so afraid of interacting with others that they refuse to go to school or avoid activities that they would likely enjoy. Additionally, some caregivers may find themselves sleeping in their child’s room every night or constantly having to answer repetitive questions due to their child’s fear.
Take some time and review your Fears and Worries Checklist and transfer your answers to the new List of Fears and Worries Worksheet below. Feel free to add, remove or edit anything after thinking about the ways each fear impacts your child and/or your family. You will notice that there are two new columns attached to the checklist. These are for you to rate how much of problem a fear is and add notes specific to your child for each fear you check. These ratings will help you rank the fears in order, from most to least problematic. See the examples for Neil and Sally and then complete your own form
Now that you’ve had a chance to review some examples, consider your child’s fears and fill out the List of Fears Worries worksheet below. You can either print out the worksheet or fill it out electronically.
Ask yourself and/or your child what they avoid, refuse to do, or find difficult and then ask yourself if that could be related to anxiety.
Getting your child to participate in this activity will be harder for some families than others. Why? Well, children sometimes do not want to talk about their fears. Even discussing a feared situation may be scary for them, too (this might be a great place to start for some mission plans)! They may also suspect that telling you about certain fears will then lead to them having to face it, so they would rather just pretend like it isn’t a fear at all.
Further, some children may not recognize certain fears. It is also possible that they may have avoided a fear for so long that they have forgotten about it or they think it is no longer a problem.
Keep in mind that kids who struggle with the need to be perfect may also be embarrassed to admit that they have these fears. Remember you can always use your rewards system to help motivate your child to participate in LUNA.
Once you have finalized your list, it can be helpful to discuss a couple of your top options with your child to see if they have any anxiety symptoms that they are particularly motivated to work on. It isn’t a problem if your child is not sure at this stage, that is okay. We will go over how to select a good fear in the next section.
