Children's worries keep odd hours. One surfaces at bath time, another in the car on the way to school, and the big one waits until the light goes off. A worry jar gives each of them somewhere to go: your child writes the worry on a slip and folds it in, and the lid stays on until the two of you open the jar together at a set time. The worry is not brushed aside. It is asked to wait, and it keeps its appointment.

Where the idea comes from

The jar is a child-sized version of scheduled worry time, which researchers call worry postponement. In the early 1980s, Thomas Borkovec and his colleagues asked people who worried heavily to save their worrying for one set time and place each day and to put it off whenever it turned up at other hours. Their daily worry dropped more than a comparison group's did. The reasoning: worry clings to every place it gets rehearsed, and one fixed slot shrinks those cues.

Children need that move made physical. A slip to fold and a lid to close turn think-about-it-later into something their hands can do. They also have plenty to practice on: in a study of 193 ordinary schoolchildren aged 8 to 13, almost 70 percent said they worried every now and then, mostly about schoolwork, health and friendships.

How this jar works

Start with the tag: pick one of four worry times between 3:30 and 6:30 pm and add your child's name. Whenever a worry turns up, it goes on the slip in a few words, and the ideas help when a blank line feels like too much. Folding it in drops the slip into the glass, where nobody reads it again until worry time.

The jar holds twelve slips. A full jar usually means worry time has been skipped, so the page asks you to open it before anything else goes in. A worry that is already waiting cannot go in twice.

At worry time, open the jar. The lid comes off and the oldest slip comes out first. Read it together, then decide where it belongs:

• Still a worry sends it back in for another day. Anything that has not happened yet goes here.
• Sorted out is for a worry that turned into a problem you solved, or a plan that worked.
• Never happened is for the ones where the feared thing simply did not come true.
• Out of my hands is for worries that belong to the grown-ups, the weather, or nobody at all.

Below the jar, the record keeps each sorted slip in its pile and sums them up in one line, such as five of eight never happened. A paper jar cannot do that part. Over a few weeks your child sees, in their own words, how many of their worries turned out to be false alarms.

What the research says, and what it does not

The clearest evidence for keeping count comes from adults. Lucas LaFreniere and Michelle Newman had 29 people with generalized anxiety disorder log their worries for ten days and then track what actually happened. Of those worries, 91.4 percent did not come true. The most common result for a single person was that none of their worries did, and the people who saw more of their worries fail to happen improved more over treatment.

Keep the limits in view. That was a small study of adults with a diagnosis, and the postponement research was done with adults as well. This page is not a tested treatment for childhood anxiety, and your child's count may land well below 91 percent. The jar's job is to let your child check the worry's track record instead of taking its word for it.

Making worry time work

• Keep it short and regular. About ten minutes at the same time each day, in the afternoon rather than right before bed.
• Listen before you fix. A calm "that sounds hard, what might help?" lands better than "that won't happen."
• Give a still-a-worry slip one small step. Practice the spelling words, ask the teacher, or plan who to sit with at lunch, then fold it back in.
• Notice the waiting. Leaving a bedtime worry in the jar until tomorrow is the real skill, so say out loud that you saw it.
• Fold in one of your own. Children copy what they watch.

For a worry that needs a real decision, The Worry Tree walks one through whether there is anything to do about it. When the worry lives in the body, The Calm Down Jar gives your child something to shake and watch settle while they breathe. Teenagers and adults who want the same appointment on paper can keep a Worry Journal.

When a jar is not enough

Worry is part of growing up, and this jar is built for the everyday kind. The CDC notes that fears and worries a child does not outgrow, or that get in the way of school, home or play, can be a sign of an anxiety disorder, and that the first step is talking with your child's health care provider. If worry runs most days, your child's pediatrician or a child therapist is the right next call, and the jar's record can come along.