Why Promoting Independence Helps Your Anxious Child
Parents who promote independence instead of safety help anxious kids thrive.
Posted May 29, 2026 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
What if there was a way to help your anxious child learn self-confidence about facing scary thoughts and situations? What if there were things you could do now that might help them avoid the need for psychotherapy ? The good news is that there is—and it costs nothing. It involves being willing to set the stage for your child, teen , or young adult to practice being independent by learning to do things that feel risky, adult, or potentially dangerous.
This might sound crazy to you. Isn’t it a parent’s job to keep their child safe and emotionally attached? The answer is an obvious "Yes," but how you keep your child safe and emotionally well-adjusted hinges on what you consider dangerous and how you believe you should help your child build resilience .
If you check the statistics about the typical dangers parents believe they must protect their children from, such as child predation, kidnapping, and interpersonal crime , then you know the news is good. The risks for interpersonal crime against children are so low that it would take 750,000 years of standing alone outside for a child to be abducted in the United States. In fact, your child’s safety is much higher than when you were a child or when your Boomer parents were children. It is unnecessary to believe it is dangerous for your child to do things alone or with other kids while outdoors, at sports practice, or in public restrooms.
Studies about what helps children, teens, and young adults thrive show that the best way to achieve this is to do what seems counterintuitive: independence training. Ortiz et al. (2024) created a program in which children did activities that seem dangerous to today’s parents. Kids were instructed to do one thing a day without any parental instruction, supervision, or attendance, such as carving something with a penknife, building a fire, cooking a meal, riding the bus by themself, or going somewhere, getting lost, and then finding their way home.
Parents felt scared at first, even though they could recall enjoying the same activities as a child. Over time, the children became more skilled, more self-confident, and more independent—and they loved the program! The activities also decreased their anxiety , worry, and avoidance. Schools that implemented this program found the same results. Ortiz and his team even built a playground that had tons of old lumber and construction tools, like saws, drills, and hammers. Children built multistory structures while learning to use grown-up tools independently, without any adult supervision or help. The parents also learned to relax and felt less stressed because they were doing less supervision, less instructing, less commentary, and less worrying. Everyone won.
The lesson for you is to work yourself out of the job of constant supervision, instruction, and monitoring, so your anxious child can discover, by doing, that they are capable, competent, and able to get themselves out of the dilemmas they create. If you dare to do this, your children will someday thank you, and you should feel much less stress from overparenting. (For more on promoting independence, click here.)
Ortiz, C. & Eastman, M. 2024, A novel independence intervention to treat child anxiety: A nonconcurrent multiple baseline evaluation. Jl of Anxiety Disorders, 105, 102893. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2024.102893
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Karen Cassiday, Ph.D., helps kids, teens, and adults break free from anxiety, build inner confidence, and live with calm purpose and peace of mind.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.