Fight or Flight Worksheet: Help Your Child Spot Anxiety and Calm Their Body

Written by Dr Lucy Russell DClinPsyc CPsychol AFBPsS

What is the Fight or Flight Response?

The fight or flight response is a natural physiological reaction to a perceived threat, whether real or imagined. It prepares the body to either fight or flee, to stay alive. Scientists sometimes call it the acute stress response.

With the fight response, your child’s body gets ready to stand up to the threat, so you might see anger, shouting or lashing out. With the flight response, their body goes into flight mode and gets ready to escape, so they may run off, hide or avoid a situation.

What Happens in Your Child’s Body

These symptoms can be scary because the physical reaction is so powerful. Recognising the symptoms helps your child feel more in control.

Let’s say you’re walking in the woods and you suddenly hear a loud growling noise. Your body is likely to switch into survival mode.

Within milliseconds it prepares you to fight the animal or run away as fast as you can. Your heart rate increases, pumping more blood to the muscles so they are ready to respond.

The response is supported by chemical messengers called stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones trigger a cascade of physical changes in the body, such as faster breathing, dilated pupils and heightened alertness.

The Body Symptoms Diagram

The diagram below is part of your free worksheet. Print it out and put it somewhere prominent, such as the fridge, so they can remind themselves of the symptoms.

Remind your child that these symptoms are temporary. They usually pass within a few minutes, once the body feels safe again.

When the Stress Response Gets Stuck on Repeat

Whilst this response helps us cope with real dangers, if your child is living with chronic stress or anxiety, it can be triggered too often.

In essence, their brain regularly overestimates the danger. Chronic stress can lead to negative health outcomes such as anxiety, depression, and physical health problems.

If your child’s stress response kicks in most days, or anxiety is getting in the way of school, friendships or sleep, do speak to your GP or another health professional. Frequent, intense anxiety can sometimes be a sign of one of the anxiety disorders, and early support makes a big difference.

That’s why it helps so much for children (and parents) to practise stress management techniques they can use when the symptoms kick in.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn: The Other Two Stress Responses

This article focuses on fight and flight because they are the two most common responses to anxiety. However, you may also have heard of the four Fs: fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Freeze and fawn are less common, but knowing about them helps you recognise them in your child (or yourself).

All four are part of the same stress response, and they all tell you the same thing: your child’s body has detected a threat, and they need help to feel safe again.

1. Freeze response: Sometimes the body responds to stress by freezing or becoming very still, rather than fighting or fleeing. Your child might go quiet, stare blankly, or seem unable to move or answer a question.
2. Fawn response: The fawn response means trying to stay safe by pleasing others. A child who fawns might go along with whatever everyone else wants, apologise a lot, or find it very hard to say no when they are uncomfortable. It is easy to miss, because a fawning child often looks calm on the outside.

If you notice freeze or fawn responses often, or after a frightening event, do mention it to your GP or your child’s school. Occasionally these responses are linked to trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and a professional can help.

The good news is that the calming strategies in this guide help with all four responses.

The Science Behind Anxiety Symptoms

Understanding the science behind it helps your child feel better placed to manage it.

The autonomic nervous system is a complex network of nerves that controls involuntary processes in the body, such as heart rate, digestion and breathing.

It is divided into two main branches, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is like the body’s accelerator. It increases heart rate, causes dilated pupils and diverts blood flow to the muscles so the body can respond quickly to a threat.

The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the body’s “rest and digest” response.

Think of this as the body’s brake. It slows the heart rate, constricts the pupils, stimulates digestion and helps the body return to a calm, relaxed state.

How to Calm the Stress Response

Did you know that we have some control over our nervous system? Your child can switch on the parasympathetic nervous system by slowing and deepening their breathing, or relaxing their muscles.

Mindfulness can also promote calm in the body and trigger the rest and digest response.

Regular exercise helps too. It releases endorphins, which are natural mood lifters, and reduces stress, so the stress response is less likely to be over-active.

Lastly, a routine that includes enough sleep and healthy eating supports the nervous system and keeps it in balance. These simple stress management habits help the whole family.

Grounding Techniques for Anxious Moments

Grounding techniques bring your child’s attention back to the present moment, which tells the brain that they are safe. I group them into three types, so your child can choose what suits them.

• Physical grounding techniques: pressing their feet firmly into the floor, squeezing a stress ball, or noticing the feel of a textured object in their pocket.
• Mental grounding techniques: naming five things they can see, listing an animal for each letter of the alphabet, or counting backwards in 3s from 100.
• Soothing grounding techniques: cuddling a favourite soft toy, picturing a safe and happy place, or repeating kind words to themselves.

Practise these when your child is calm, so they come more easily in a stressful moment. You’ll find lots more ideas in my 15 best grounding exercises for kids.

9 Tips to Help Your Child Manage Panic Symptoms

1. Remind your child that this is a normal response. It’s just their body trying to keep them safe.
2. Explain that they can learn to control these feelings, for example by slowing their breathing. It takes time and practice.
3. Reassure them that the sensations will pass.
4. If possible, help them find a quiet and comfortable space to take a break and recharge.
5. Encourage your child to connect with a pet, a family member or a trusted friend, and let them know it’s always okay to ask for help.
6. Very slow, deep breaths are their most powerful tool against panic. They tell the body that the danger has passed.
7. Engage the senses: focus on something pleasant to look at, listen to, smell, taste or touch, to shift attention away from the trigger.
8. Distraction can help in the moment. If your child is scared of lifts (elevators), they could sing a favourite song in their head (that’s my favourite technique!) to stop their thoughts spiralling.
9. Create a safety plan together that includes coping strategies, coping statements, support people (and pets) and emergency contact information.

Real Danger Vs Worry

As we have already seen, it’s not just real danger that can trigger this response.

Even when there is no danger at all, our thoughts can create imagined scenarios, “what ifs”, that feel just as real as actual dangers.

These can snowball, and before we know it we are in full-on panic mode.

Here are some examples that children and teenagers often experience, based on imagined danger rather than real danger:

1. Speaking in front of the class: The thought of reading aloud or giving a presentation can trigger a full stress response. Your child might think, “What if I mess up? What if everyone laughs at me?” It isn’t life-threatening, but the body may respond as though it is.
2. Taking a test: Again, this is not life-threatening, but the body can easily be triggered into a survival response. Thoughts that can spiral include: “What if I go completely blank? What if I fail?”
3. Falling out with a friend: Conflict can feel scary, especially for children. They might think: “What if they don’t want to be my friend anymore?”

You might recognise some of these thoughts from your own life too, for example before a big presentation at work.

Why Worried Thoughts Trigger Anxiety Symptoms

Why do thoughts sometimes trigger this response when there’s no danger to life?

In essence, our brains are still pretty primitive.

They evolved when there were many life-threatening dangers around, such as predators.

They didn’t evolve for modern-world scenarios like exams and tests.

Think of this response as extremely simple, like a smoke alarm. It’s either fully triggered or not triggered at all.

There’s no middle ground.

A smoke alarm can’t tell the difference between burnt toast and a life-threatening fire. It triggers regardless.

So when your child starts to notice the symptoms coming on, it can help to practise safety statements in their head, such as: “It’s okay, it’s just my body over-reacting” or “It’s okay, it’s just my alarm system trying to protect me”.

Some children also like short positive affirmations, such as “I can do hard things” or “This feeling will pass”. Writing their favourite coping statements on a card to keep in their pocket or school bag can be really helpful.

The brain’s prefrontal cortex has evolved to give us incredible planning and organising skills.

But these skills also cause us to worry about the future and go over the past, and the brain can read these thoughts as threats that trigger the stress response (fight, flight, freeze or fawn).

Examples: How Families Use the Worksheet

Example 1: Arthur

Arthur, a 16-year-old boy, had regular panic symptoms during his exams. The thought of messing up triggered a rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms and a strong urge to flee the exam room.

Arthur used the worksheet diagram to name his symptoms and this helped him feel more in control. He practised mindfulness in the mornings, focusing on his breath and the present moment, which helped him feel more grounded.

On exam days, he used deep, slow breaths to regain control whenever the panic kicked in, and completed all his exams.

Example 2: Maya

Maya, an 8-year-old girl, often went into fight mode at bedtime. When worries about the next school day kicked in, she would shout, slam doors and refuse to get into bed.

One calm afternoon, her parents went through the worksheet with her. Maya coloured in her symptoms (a tight tummy, a hot face and clenched fists), and together they chose two grounding techniques: squeezing her soft toy and naming five things she could see.

Within a few weeks, Maya was able to tell her parents “my alarm is going off” and ask for help. Bedtimes became much calmer for the whole family.

Example 3: Cathy

Cathy, a 42-year-old mother of two, had been using the worksheet with her son. During a stressful week at work, she realised she recognised many of the symptoms herself: a racing heart, a churning stomach and an overwhelming urge to escape.

She started practising deep breathing during her breaks and taking short walks outside. By the end of the week she felt much calmer, and more patient when helping her son with his own anxiety.

Understanding Anxiety

If you want to deepen your understanding about anxiety so you feel clear on exactly which steps will help for your child, consider our mini-course, Knowledge is Power!

Using Your Free Worksheet: Summary

Use your free worksheet to help your child understand their symptoms and triggers better.

Practise the tips and grounding techniques above to prevent panic, or bring it quickly under control.

It’s also important to help your child recognise the thoughts that trigger their anxiety. Over time, they can learn to calm these thoughts or gently adapt them to help them stay calm.

And remember, the worksheet works for adults too. Looking after your own stress levels is one of the best ways to help your child feel calm and safe.

Dr Lucy Russell is a UK clinical psychologist and Clinical Director of Everlief Child Psychology. She qualified as a clinical psychologist from Oxford University in 2005 and worked in the National Health Service for many years before moving fully into her leadership and writing roles.

In 2019 Lucy launched They Are The Future, a support website for parents of school-aged children. Through TATF Lucy is passionate about giving practical, manageable strategies to parents and children who may otherwise struggle to find the support they need.

Lucy lives with her family, rescue cats and dog, and also fosters cats through a local animal welfare charity. She loves singing in a vocal harmony group and spending time in nature.