Take the Quiz!

child anxiety

How do I address child anxiety that’s the result of trauma?

Podcast

I recently had a question from a listener whose child has separation anxiety after the death of a caregiver. I did reach out to this family privately but I wanted to cover this on the podcast as well.

Before the most recent DSM update, PTSD was listed as an anxiety disorder but as the field has become more trauma informed, it is now listed as a trauma and stress-related disorder and anxiety is recognized as one of the symptoms. 

This shift recognizes that PTSD is not just a subset of anxiety and in fact anxiety is an adjunct of PTSD. The new diagnosis recognizes that the most pressing concern is to address the trauma. The anxiety may drive the behavior that inspires the intervention, That is, the child may be displaying separation anxiety and that’s the reason the family is seeking help but the underlying reason behind the anxiety is the trauma of losing a family member.

Let’s talk a little bit about trauma. It’s a word we use a lot and not always correctly. The DSM defines trauma as “actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence.” You can see that’s extremely limited and doesn’t include the way we use trauma even in the therapy field. In the therapy field, we include broader upsetting or disturbing events so we might call a divorce a trauma or being fired from a job. Technically, per the DSM diagnosis, these would not be trauma although they would certainly be upsetting and deserve attention and care.

Now I personally have no interest in gatekeeping the word “trauma.” If someone tells me an experience was traumatizing for them, I’m not going to say, “Well, technically I don’t think you can claim that term” instead I’m going to offer support, right? But when it comes to figuring out what to do next and how to treat or address a situation, we do need to be clear about what is traumatic and what is not.

I mention this because I’ve talked to many parents of anxious children who are using the term “traumatized” to describe their child’s experience and this is making it difficult for the parents to address the anxiety. They are understandably concerned that pulling back from the Parenting Pitfalls and exposing their child to the things that make them anxious will further traumatize their child. They are confusing upset with trauma. And I think we need to be very clear that being upset is very different than being traumatized.

Let’s go back to that DSM definition of “actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence.” The key here is threatened, which means that even if we weren’t in danger, we believe we were. Truly believed. This is a big concern about active shooter drills in schools. If children aren’t aware that it’s a drill, this can absolutely be traumatizing. 

Now we’ll talk about the symptoms of PTSD — that is, post traumatic stress disorder — in the current DSM for children 6 and under. 

For that diagnosis, the child must have been exposed to actual or threatened death, seriously injury or sexual violence either directly experiencing it, witnessing it happening to someone else, or learning that it did happen to a parent or caregiver. The DSM expressly states that this does NOT include media such was watching a violent movie or seeing an upsetting picture. Again, this is the DSM diagnosis and we are not saying that seeing a scary or violent movie would not be upsetting or disturbing. 

If the child has this exposure history, then we look at symptoms. These would include intrusive symptoms like:

—Distressing memories that reoccur (sometimes the child won’t seem upset but will play repetitively about the event). When I worked at a shelter, many of the children would act out the police coming to arrest someone in their house over and over again.

—nightmares or dreams about the event. This could be a child who wakes up crying because they’re dreaming about the person who died.

—Dissociative reactions, also called flashbacks, where children act as if the event is happening again, and again this can be expressed through play. 

—Distress when exposed to things that remind them of the event, like a child who gets upset driving through the intersection where they were in a car wreck,

And it would include symptoms of avoidance such as:

—Refusing to go into the room where that person died;

—Avoiding conversations about the trauma event.

—Disinterest in play or other activities that used to interest them;

—The presence of negative emotional rates like sadness or confusing or fear;

—Withdrawing socially;

—not being able to have fun.

Other symptoms might include:

—sleep disturbances;

—Irritability or anger so tantrums

—difficulty concentrating

—hypervigiliance, which is being super tuned in to the possibility of danger

—exaggerated startle response

You can see how this can be confused with anxiety since anxiety shares many of the symptoms. Sow hat’s the difference? The biggest difference is the presence of the traumatic event. 

There are several treatments with a strong evidence base for young children with a PTSD diagnosis. These include Trauma Focused cognitive behavioral therapy or TF-CBT, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy and Child-Parent Psychotherapy. All three of these treatment modalities include the parents. The younger the child is, the more vital it is that parents are included in the therapy. This is because relationships mitigate trauma. EMDR or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is also a recognized treatment for trauma and if you’re interested in exploring this, I would recommend that you contact EMDRIA at EMDRIA.org. Doing EMDR with children is a specialized skill and EMDRIA has high standards for the people who can be listed in their directory. Sometimes a clinician will take a weekend class and feel like they are ready to go and I just want to caution you about that. EMDRIA can help you screen for a truly qualified therapist. 

Children heal best in the context of a loving, supportive, relationship with a caregiver who is dependable and trustworthy. If your child has experienced a traumatic event and you are seeking treatment, make sure that you are included in that treatment, whichever you choose.

Trauma treatment is meant to help the person process the traumatic event so they can move through it. Now I’m going to explain this super simplified but trauma glitches our brains. It gets us stuck. Note that the intrusive symptoms are all about the stickiness — nightmares, memories we can’t shake, being triggered back into our trauma response when confronted by a reminder, avoiding things that make us think of the trauma. Treatment helps us unglitch our brains. Children who may repetitively play out the traumatic event are trying to unglitch. They are trying to play through to understanding so they can let it rest. Sometimes they need help pushing through the stuck place in their play. 

It’s important that the therapist a family chooses has specific training in trauma because inappropriate treatment can be retraumatizing. For example, our thinking used to be that people needed to remember the traumatic event. You’ll see that in movies where someone has a blank space in their memory and the big climactic moment in the movie is when they remember what happened. Actually not remembering can be protective and healing doesn’t always require uncovering those distressing memories.

Ok, back to the question that inspired this episode, How do I address anxiety that’s the result of trauma? And the answer is first address the trauma. 



How do I address child anxiety that’s the result of trauma? Read More »

What can I do when I feel like I’ve failed my anxious child?

Podcast

You know, when I started this podcast I figured I’d do it for one year — 52 episodes and that would be it. But this is Episode 54 so I’ve officially gone past my goal and the questions that are coming in are more complex. Like this one. And of course the actual question has a lot more backstory, which I won’t share given that it is very personal, and I’ve tried to distill it into this one simple but complex question, which is What can I do when I feel like I’ve failed my anxious child.

Oh listener who posted this and who did not leave their email so I couldn’t respond personally, I hope you are listening now. 

I’m sorry that you’re struggling right now and that you are hurting. Being a parent can be so painful especially when we are watching our children have a hard time. AS writer Sarah Payne Stuart: said, You’re only as happy as your least happy child. 

I’m going to try to address this very big, very important topic in this extremely short podcast and I hope that I’m able to do it enough justice that you will feel comforted and more confident at the end of it.

First off, you have not failed your anxious child. The relationship between parent and child is one that is forever changing. It changes as they change, as we change, as life changes. And sometimes we are a step or so behind the changes that need to come.

I learned this for the first time when my son, my oldest child who is now 26, was two. This is when he entered what I call the bent banana stage. You know the one, the one where your toddler asks for a banana dn if you give to them and they fall on the floor wailing because the banana is the wrong shape or size or you started peeling it for them or you didn’t start peeling it for them. When my son hit that age I was totally unprepared and our days bounced from tantrum to tantrum. This beautiful relationship I’d built with him came apart like wet tissue paper. The worst day was when he had a meltdown in public and another person intervened and told me I was handling it wrong. That’s a whole story about a bagel and one day if we ever met in person, ask me and I’ll tell you the whole sordid tale .But as I left that shop in tears, totally ashamed, I felt like a terrible mother and I felt like a fraud because I’d been working with kids for about a decade and yet here I was undone by my toddler. I can close my eyes and put myself right back there and remember exactly how it felt to carry my screaming child to the car while this woman watched, my face hot with guilt and anger and grief and fear thinking, I’ve broken my kid. 

Then my friend called, my friend with a child exactly one month older than my son, and said, “What in the heck is going on, my daughter has lost her mind.” And when we compared notes I realized, oh, he’s just 2 now and he needs a different kind of parenting than I’d been offering. I was still parenting him like a baby and he was letting me know that he was ready to be parented like a toddler. I had to learn a whole new set of skills.

This was a lesson I learned over and over again and every time we hit a snag — whether it was with my son or later with my daughter — and I started having that overwhelming feeling of frustration and guilt and failure I’d stop and say, “Wait, maybe it just means something needs to change.”

So I will ask you dear parent, who is feeling like a failure, I think it’s far more likely that you’re NOT a failure, that you’re a good parent in a relationship that needs to change. The pain and frustration you have, the struggle between you, is a sign that your child is demanding something different from you and you can do something about that. You have it within your power to go and figure out what to do next.

Do you get that reframe?

So many of the parents I talk to who are committed to parenting differently than they were parented — and there are a lot of us in the respectful parenting, gentle parenting, attachment parenting, conscious parenting, etc. community — Are super afraid of getting it wrong. In fact, so afraid that we might be causing harm that we are all too ready to beat ourselves up when we are unhappy or when our child is having a difficult time. 

Parenting guilt goes with the territory, I don’t know any parent who’s going to feel like they’re 100% nailing this parenting gig all of the time. And when we slip and yell or read a parenting book that highlights our mistakes or see another parent handling a challenge with grace that we screwed up, we’re probably going to feel guilt.

But guilt is only useful when it helps drive change. Guilt that just makes us feel bad about ourselves is useless at best and harmful at worst. It’s ok to say, “all right, guilt, I’m going to do things differently so you can stand down now.” It’s ok to say, “I regret those mistakes but I’m going to forgive myself and honor my intention to do better next time.”

And then we can start putting the supports in place that will allow us to do that. That’s what I mean about finding the motivation to drive change.

A lot of parents I talk to feel guilty not just because of what they’ve done or haven’t done but because of how they feel. They feel guilty for not enjoying their child or not enjoying parenthood and let me just say, that you can love your children very very very much, you can be willing to lay down your life for them AND you can also not enjoy them because kids aren’t always enjoyable.

 you can also not always enjoy parenting because the work of parenting — the day to day work of it — is not always enjoyable.

Parenting anxious kids is really hard. It’s hard to worry so much about them, it’s hard to feel derailed by them. It’s hard to have kids who demand so much. It’s hard to feel like you’re constantly failing. It’s hard to get whined at. It’s hard to deal with meltdowns. I mean, it’s not fun. It’s perfectly ok to want to run away from home sometimes.

I tell parents this all of the time — if you’ve worked with me before you’ve probably heard me say it — but there’s a whole genre of novels about moms who leave their families and there’s a reason for that, which is many of us have days when we’d like to run away from home. It’s ok to fantasize about running away and joining a circus instead of being a parent. Sometimes fantasizing about it is just the break you need to help you come back and face your tantruming child and your overbooked calendar and your messy kitchen and your endless to-do list once again.

I bring all of this up because sometimes the guilt about failing (I’m using air quotes here) is covering up a guilt we have about wishing we didn’t have these demands on us at all. And sometimes all of that guilt — all of that messy shame and worry and regret and fear — makes it really hard to know what to do next.

I meet a lot of parents who are overcompensating — like really getting entrenched in the parenting pitfalls — because they aren’t liking their kids very much and they feel bad about it.

So for example, a parent who goes out of their way to be gracious when their child is whining and dragging at them because they feel guilty for wanting to lose it. And I tell those parents, it’s ok to be human in the relationship. You don’t always have to be an instagram worthy parenting whisperer with your kids. If the relationship between you and your child is generally healthy, is generally loving, is generally strong then there is room for your imperfection.

There is room to get it wrong, realize it, and course correct.

There is room for you to go back and say, “I didn’t know and now I do and so I’m going to do it different from here on out.”

Getting it wrong, getting stuck in parenting pitfalls, feeling unhappy —  is a sign NOT that you’re a bad parent or that you have a bad kid or that you’ve been doing a bad job, the sign is that something needs to change.

That’s it. 

Just that something needs to change. And how else are you going to know that something needs to change except by becoming dissatisfied about the way things are right now. In other words, being unhappy in your parenting relationship or with your child is healthy and appropriate and NOT a sign of failure. 

When I am working with parents, I start with the assumption that they are doing a good job. Because most parents are. And when I start with that assumption, I am looking for confirmation so I’m making a point of noticing that parents’ strengths and skills. Those are the things we want to tap into as we make change. I don’t start with what they’re doing quote unquote wrong because I don’t think in terms of wrong. I think in terms of, What’s working and what’s NOT working.

This is why I say that your parenting isn’t the problem; it’s the solution.

IF I went back in time to meet myself as the unhappy mother of an unhappy 2-year old, I wouldn’t say, “Wow, what a screw up. What a bad mom. What a mess!!” I’d say, “Oh wow, there’s a mom tuned in enough to know that this isn’t working and just needs some help in figuring out what to do next.” 

I’d look at the good relationship we had up until that developmental turning point and know that the relationship was demanding change. My son was one of those kids who hit every developmental milestone like the Wile E Coyote running into a wall. Just slammed into it and every time I’d forget and think oh my gosh, I’m failing. I think I didn’t figure it out until he was about 10. I’m hoping you get to figure it out sooner. That change is hard, that change sometimes — well often, requires some measure if discomfort. It requires us to be uncomfortable enough to change. 

So my dear listener who posted this question to me and anyone else who is feeling this way, you have NOT failed your anxious child. You are realizing that what you’re doing isn’t working and how wonderful that you’ve realized this because now you can look for supports and information to help you create change. That doesn’t mean your struggle is over but it does mean that you have begun the journey to better functioning and understanding. 

True failure would be in denying your unhappiness or denying your child’s struggle and continuing to do the things that are not working. It would be continuing to treat a toddler like a baby when they are begging for help in growing up. 

We growing parents, instead of seeing ourselves as doing things wrong, I wish we could reframe this as the inevitable course of changing parenthood. What you did and what you do works until it doesn’t and then you might be unhappy and your child might be unhappy. But you can change things. Let me know if I can help. 



What can I do when I feel like I’ve failed my anxious child? Read More »

What derails child anxiety treatment?

Podcast

This week’s question comes out of several different versions of people who contact me and say they’ve tried to get their child help and it isn’t working or it hasn’t worked and they’re asking me what to do next. So I’m squishing all of these questions together into one to talk about the things that get in the way of child anxiety treatment. 

There are five things we’re going to talk about. OK? Are you ready? Here they are: The five things that get in the way of child anxiety treatment are:

  • Information

  • Time

  • Trust

  • Fear

  • And

  • Bandwidth

Let’s go through these one by one.

The first is information or lack thereof. And that speaks to the misunderstanding that the child should be the target of anxiety treatment. There are lots of studies about child anxiety because it is one of the most common if not the most common reason why parents seek out mental health help for their kids. And those studies tell us that we should be targeting the parents because, as you know, if you are a listener to this podcast, the parents are the ones who are capable of shifting the way the family is supporting the child. The parents are the ones who can create exposures, which is to say can find ways to help their child face their fears. The parents are the ones who will be passing on and encouraging skill acquisition on the part of the kids. And parents generally are more motivated. When we target children, we are expecting them to be able to interrupt the patterns that we know become ingrained in families with anxious kids. That’s not realistic. And we’re expecting them to remember and use pretty complicated skills. But these skills are ones that they not only need to learn but they need to practice and relearn over time. If we teach those skills to the parents, they can remind their children and reteach them at each new developmental stage. Finally anxiety is a tricky beast that teaches us that to be safe, we need to listen to it. While parents may be ready for the child to do things on their own, the child may be perfect happy with the status quo. That doesn’t mean that kids like being anxious but it does mean they may be less motivated to deal with their anxiety and more interested in continuing to avoid the things that scare them. Parents on the other hand, are more likely to want the children to gain more independence and so are better placed to encourage their children towards that goal.

The second reason child anxiety treatment gets derailed is time. It does take time to unpack and examine family patterns and create a plan to address those patterns. It takes time to follow through with that plan. Anxiety treatment is not a one and done intervention, it’s something that unfolds over weeks. So there’s learning how to make the plan, making the plan, and executing the plan. A way to cut back on the time needed for this, is to get direction. A program like mine, where I’m available to answer your questions and give you feedback, can cut back on the time it takes to figure things out and then get the things done.

Third reason why child anxiety treatment can get derailed is Trust. Namely parents need to trust the plan, children need to trust their parents. The parents I work with tend to be gentle parents, supportive parents, parents who are in tune with their kids. It’s their super power and also the thing that gets them stuck. I know this because we didn’t call it gentle parenting back when I was raising my kids — we called it attachment parenting — but when you are so close to your children, it can be difficult to trust anxiety treatment because it does require us to put our kids in uncomfortable situations. So if we have an anxious child who is struggling to order for themselves in a restaurant and we see their tears and know they’re hungry and scared and here’s this nice evening out with the family and they are suffering instead of enjoying being at their favorite restaurant, we may so identify with them that we just go ahead and order. It’s hard to trust that making them do it is good for them when they’re telling us it’s not. Like, who do we trust? Our child who is telling us they’re not capable? Or this plan? No matter how much research is behind it, in the moment it can be hard to follow. This is why I think ongoing support is so important, which the research bears out. Parents do better when they have someone to help guide them, reassure them, remind them of the plan and help them figure out how to dial it back if needed or when to push even though it’s hard. 

Ok, next barrier, next thing that can derail treatment is Fear. Not the child’s fear but the parents’. Lots of parents have tried to manage the anxiety and then have pulled back because they’re concerned that they are further harming their child. This is another reason why I like working directly with parents. I have found that if we expect parents to be the target of the intervention then we have a terrific opportunity to work with their parent on their own anxiety about their child’s anxiety. Just as we’re working with the child on exposures, on helping them confront the things they’ve been avoiding, so we need to do that with parents. And I think this is really exciting — this is the part of the work that I love the most, I think — because there is so much healing to be had in supporting parents who are anxious about their kids. Processing their own worries has such great lessons in figuring out how to help their children process their worries. I know that’s been incredibly helpful for me as a formerly anxious child who has an anxious kid. Anyway, our fear can derail child anxiety treatment but it can also be such an important key to progress.

Final barrier! That would be bandwidth. Parents are by definition busy and often overwhelmed with lots on their plates and I can appreciate that even if anxiety treatment feels urgent that it’s also difficult to find the bandwidth or the spoons or the mindspace to devote to addressing it. Am I going to explain how my program address this? I sure am. Let me explain how it works. The central workshop is Strong Kids, Strong families and that’s based on the Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions or SPACE program developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz of the Yale Child Study Center. That’s a six week program — one lesson drops each week. SPACE is fairly straightforward. You do the things and you get results. That’s the information piece, the first barrier in this list is addressed via Strong Kids, Strong Families. The rest are addressed by the other parts of the Child anxiety Support membership. Now you can get in there, do your six weeks, solve the anxiety issue. But most of us have other barriers. I address the Time by making the site so accessible. It’s better than a weekly group because it happens on your time, at your convenience. You can get to the site on your computer’s browser but it’s even better in the phone app so it’s easy to find time to take the lessons, check in, talk to me, etc. The Trust piece and the Fear piece, those are addressed through the live components. Whether that’s watching the live webinars, or by coming to the live chats or office hours to speak directly to me in real time, or by private messaging me because I answer really quickly. Again, better than a weekly support group because the virtual piece of it means you can reach out to me whenever and I’m super available. The app makes that easy for me, too. I get a notification on my phone and check in to respond. 

But bandwidth, how do I address that in the program? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s by using a membership model so that people can drop in, can go at whatever speed they want. You can rush through, you can go slow. You can start slow and speed up or vice versa. You can take a break and process what you’re learning, you can dip into other courses or resources that can help you figure out what you need to do next. You can tread water for awhile and then dive back in. You can hang in there and lean on the community supports. I’m there to encourage you even when you need to take a step back. You can drop in to Eve Hermann’s Stress Reset practices to give yourself some bandwidth, that’s why she’s there, to help parents take care of themselves so they can do this big work.

Yes, I’m obviously a fan of my program. And remember, if you’re listening to this in the last week of March 2023, we will be starting our spring cohort next week on April 3rd. If you join that week, you will join me in walking through the program. Child Anxiety Support is always available — you can enroll at any time — and the Strong Kids Strong Families piece is asynchronous. But twice a year — spring and fall — I’ll be offering it cohort style, meaning if you join then you’ll get the first week lesson at the same time as I go offer extra supports around that lesson, and the second week I’ll be talking about the second week and so on and so forth. 

Just head to my site to join me and know that I’m here and the program is here whenever you need it.  



What derails child anxiety treatment? Read More »

Do you recommend any supplements for child anxiety?

Podcast

The question that showed up in my inbox this week is “Do you recommend any supplements for child anxiety?” The author of the question goes on to say, “Also is there a relationship between vitamin D and anxiety? I have read too little and too much vitamin D can make anxiety worse?”

First off I cannot make any recommendations about supplements because that’s out of my scope. My masters is in clinical mental health and I do not have additional training in nutrition. That said, I can report what studies have said. And for this I’m relying on a lit review published in Nutrients, an academic journal, in March 2021. The title of this lit review and I’ll post it in the show notes as well, is The Influence of Vitamin D Intake and Status on Mental Health in Children: A Systematic Review 

Their findings were that the studies, and I quote, “supported potential positive influence of vitamin D on mental health in children.” They go on to recommend, again, I quote, “Vitamin D intake within a properly balanced diet or as a supplementation, except for safe sun exposure, should be indicated as an element supporting mental health in children.” 

I couldn’t find any research specifically about having too much vitamin d and child anxiety although a google search on the popular web Brough tup results. But nothing in the scientific literature. That doesn’t mean it’s not an issue so I’d say that your best bet is to talk to your cild’s healthcare provider to get a better understanding of how to know what’s right for your child. 

My take on this overall is that good nutrition is good for our mental health but it’s not a cure all and more does not mean better. In other words, when we’re looking at our anxious child’s functioning, we can look at basic nutrition, sleep, physical exercise as part of the big picture. We know, for example, that anxiety gets worse without sleep and that physical exercise can alleviate some of its symptoms but as the study says, this is “an element supporting mental health.” 

Our physical and mental functioning are tied together for sure but sometimes it’s a chicken and egg kind of thing. I work with a lot of families whose children have gastric issues like celiac or IBS or allergies and it can be difficult to tease out which came first. Did the gastric issues contribute to the anxiety? Because our gut is very tuned into our thinking. Lots of us call the stomach our second brain. If you have an upset tummy, you may interpret that as anxiety even though ti might be caused bye omethign you ate. 

On the other hand, anxiety can cause upset tummies. It’s one of the most common symptoms of child anxiety.

This is why it’s so important to get a medical workup for your child when they are dealing with anxiety. And if there are gut issues or their headaches are because they need glasses, we need to address that.

So vitamin D might be part of the picture. And I’d say considering this study, it’s a good idea to talk to your child’s healthcare provider to get more information about how to test their levels and whether or not supplementation is necessary. I wouldn’t just start with supplements for child anxiety and assume all is well. 

Now as I said, my masters is in clinical mental health counseling and so I work through that lens. That’s my bias, that’s what the research says. A two-pronged approach — taking good care of our bodies and also working on our minds — is in my opinion, our best bet.

What this means is even if there are physical issues present that need to be addressed we also need to work on our mental functioning.

Anxiety can become something of a habit. That’s not to say that it’s a habit like smoking or biting your nails, it’s more a habit of thinking and processing. If we have a child who has gut issues and they develop anxiety either due to those gut issues or due to something else that is exacerbated by the gut issues or whose gut issues are caused by anxiety and we take care of their belly we still need to take care of their anxiety and vice versa.

Even when their belly feels better, they have learned to expect the world to be anxiety producing. They’ve gotten so used to feeling uneasy in the world — of expecting that stomachache, of expecting the social anxiety that can come when you might have to run to the bathroom, of associating certain public spaces with nervous feelings — they will need to address that. That takes practice and it takes exposure.

The next question might be where to start first and I’d say wherever feels most available to you. If your child is due for a well child visit soon, it’s easy enough to talk to their provider then. If you’re going to have to wait a bit to get in there, you can start working on the education and coping piece. You can’t get it wrong as long as you’re moving forward and are open to finding answers where you find them.

There is no silver bullet for anxiety. Sometimes I’ll see folks on social media saying, “Do this one thing, get this one treatment, learn this one technique” and that’ll cure anxiety but that’s not been my experience and observation in working with hundreds of families. Anxiety is more complicated than that. There are things you can do to support growth and coping but there is an element of learning that is unavoidable. 

Here’s a metaphor that might help explain this. Let’s say I have a penchant for bad boys. I’m basing this on my young adult self who had terrible taste in boyfriends. I thought the problem was I kept dating not great guys. But actually the problem was that I kept choosing to date not great guys. I mean, that’s not saying I deserved poor treatment — of course not — or that I was causing it. Again, absolutely not. But until I did the work I needed to do with a therapist, I kept dating rotten guys. I needed to learn more about healthy relationships, about setting boundaries. I needed to work on my self-concept. 

That’s how anxiety is, too. I can have enough vitamin D in my body, I can be physically centered and calm, I can be exercising and that’s all wonderful and will definitely help but I still need to work on my thinking. 

And sometimes working on my thinking, will help me access tools like getting a good night’s sleep and hitting the gym on the regular.

I love when parents are open to a multiprong approach so I’m very glad this person asked the question so that we could talk more about this and it gave me the chance to do the research, which I always appreciate. 

A reminder that April 3rd we’ll be starting the spring cohort. If your’e listening to this after April 2023 please know that the Child Anxiety Support program is always open and I tag the recorded live events so that you can find the topics your’e most interested in and revisit them. But if it’s before April 2023 or during, I’d love for you to joint he site and come along as we go through he program together. If you have questions, please reach out to me. You get 14 days free to try it out so you have nothing to lose except the grip that anxiety has on your family.

Do you recommend any supplements for child anxiety? Read More »

How do I explain to my anxious child that they don’t need to be scared?

Podcast

This is such an interesting question because it assumes that this is one of our jobs as a parent. That we are supposed to tell kids not to be scared and sometimes that’s true. Sometimes our job is to be reassuring. Like when a child is afraid of going to the doctors, and we sit down and explain what’s going to happen and maybe buy them a toy doctor’s kit so they can process their emotions through play. But does that mean that if they’re still scared that we’ve somehow failed them? Or that they’ve failed to process their experience correctly?

I mean this question really gets at the nature of fear and how we feel about fear and how we feel about our kids feeling fear.

Ok, let’s back up.

First, fear is not a bad emotion to have. Fear is supposed to keep us safe. Fear is a warning signal to be careful, to keep your eyes open. Fear is ok. It’s not comfortable but it serves a purpose.

We are going to be afraid sometimes. We are going to be afraid of new experiences sometimes just because they’re new. We’re going to be afraid of situations like going to the doctor’s if last time we got a shot. It makes sense that we would be nervous about going again even if we’re not going to get a shot this time. 

What I’m getting at is that the issue isn’t fear really. The issue is letting fear get the best of us. Fear is a tool and we need that tool but we need to be discerning about using it.

Being afraid is ok. Sometimes it’s even more than ok, it’s super smart. We need to learn when our fear is helpful — like when it’s telling us to back away from the cliff or not go into that dark attic in the haunted house or study for the test in order to get a good grade. 

And we also need to learn when it is NOT helpful like when it’s telling us not to ever go on the hike or that every house is haunted or that we shouldn’t even bother to take the class because it will be too hard.

We need to learn when our fear is protective and when it is avoidant. Or more to the point, we need our children to learn when fear is protective and when it is avoidant. 

The question, “How do I explain to my anxious child that they don’t need to be scared?” Might be better asked this way, “How do I support my anxious child when they are scared.” And you’ll see we’ve shifted from trying to FIX what’s happening or our child and moved to helping them learn the skills to manage the experience themselves.

When our children are afraid, we can validate the feeling without validating the fearful thing or event itself. By this I mean, we can say, “I know you feel scared,” which is validating without rushing to reassurance or to avoidance. So we don’t have to say, “I know you feel scared but there are no monsters under the bed” or “I know you feel scared so why don’t I sleep in here with you.” What we could say is something like, “I know you feel scared, what do you think would help you know that you are safe.”

It doesn’t have to be these exact words and it doesn’t have to be handled this way every time, I’m just using this as an example to start shifting the conversation and shift to honoring and supporting your child’s agency.

Anxiety offers an invitation to be curious. What might happen? What could we do to explore that? We could invite our child to look under the bed with us. We could give our child a flashlight and invite them to look for monsters. I’ve had lots of kids who have found it helpful to create a sign for their bedroom doors that says, “No monsters allowed.” 

When we do the reassuring, we create a dependency on being the source of reassurance. When we give them the means to explore and confront and cope with their fears, we are giving them opportunity to be brave. 

Let’s try another scenario. 

Let’s say an older child is anxious about a big paper that’s due and they are coming to us for reassurance that it’s good, that they’ve written a great paper. Now there’s nothing wrong with telling them, “You’ve done an excellent job on this paper” or “You can really see your hard work in this paper.” But when they start saying, “But will my teacher like it?” No amount of our reassuring them is going to be enough. So instead we can say, “You worked really hard on this; no wonder you’re anxious to know what your teacher will think of it.” And then we can invite curiosity. “What would happen if your teacher didn’t like it? What would you do? Would that change the way you felt about it?” There’s no right answer there, it’s just a chance to be curious. It’s just the chance to be curious about problem solving, like would you ask for extra credit work? Would you ask for a meeting to argue for a better grade? Or it might be an opportunity to talk about evaluation and what it means to be evaluated and explore our philosophies. Like does someone else’s judgment negate our own? Like can we separate our pride in our work from grades, which can sometimes be so subjective? Again, no right answer. But we’re building up critical thinking, the ability to problem solve, and reiterating our family values around work and judgment and the ways we interact with the great big wide world.

I think this question helps us, too, to see that parenting an anxious child is not just about parenting an anxious child. It’s about parenting, period. It’s about learning and growing and coping with who we are and what we want from the world and how to operate even when things are uncertain or unpredictable or outright scary.

If you are thinking of joining Child Anxiety Support for more specific concrete answers — ones that apply to your unique family and go beyond what we can do in these short podcasts, please know that starting in April we will be going through the 6-week Strong Kids, Strong Families program together. My membership is always open, which means you can join at any time and take the course at your leisure. But if you join by April 3, 2023, then we will all be doing the lessons at the same time. Each of our weekly live events will be focused on that week’s lesson so that we can dive in deep. I am always available to give you personalized support, so that together we design a concrete, step-by-step plan to address your child’s particular anxiety. Whether that’s sleep or behavior or separation or school, this evidence-based program will give you the information and tools you need to address your child’s anxiety across a lifetime.

Just head to childanxietysupport.com and remember that you get the first 14 days free. Have questions? Reach out to me at dawn@childanxietysupport.com or through instagram where I’m at dawnfriedmanmsed. I look forward to hearing from you.



How do I explain to my anxious child that they don’t need to be scared? Read More »

How do I get my anxious child to sleep alone?

Podcast

This week we’re answering a super common question that I get in different forms and this is: How do I get my anxious child to sleep alone?

The person who asked this question has a 10-year old who still needs their parent to stay with them at night. We’re going to call this 10-year old Francine because that is nothing like her real name. Francine is 10 going on 11. She has a younger siblings who is five. The way the family works bedtime is one parent help the five year old get to sleep and the other parent stays with Francine.

The family has a good bedtime routine — they start getting everyone pajamas and teeth brushed and settled in at around 8:30 and then theoretically lights out at 9. However Francine struggles to fall asleep and has been saying up later and later. Her parents are getting increasingly frustrated because they want to spend time together in the evening and they have things they’d like to get done, too, after the kids are in bed. 

The family has tried leaving Francine alone but she will come out of her room and interrupt them repeatedly or if she does fall asleep, she will wake up several times at night and demand to either sleep with them or that they come back into her room to sit with her until she falls back asleep.

No wonder they’re frustrated. And I’m sure Francine is frustrated, too, because I’m sure she doesn’t want to create so much fuss.

The family has tried a lot of things. They’ve tried rewards, they’ve tried charts, they’ve tried sound machines. They’ve tried melatonin. They’ve met with their doctor to see if Francine has any health issues. They’ve tried getting angry and just refusing but that just drags out the inevitable and of course at night everyone is exhausted and so the parents end up giving in.

Again, this is a super common scenario. The details may be different but if you’ve got a bigger kid who still needs this much support to fall asleep, you are not alone.

First let’s talk about this issue in the context of anxiety.

There are two common reasons why anxious children might be struggling with sleep. The first is generalized anxiety, which is being worried. AS I’m sure all of you know, the deep dark quiet at night is prime worrying time. If I could see you I’d ask for a show of hands for how many of you have ever dealt with insomnia where you’re staring at the ceiling, yearning to go to sleep while your brain churns through every potential disaster and every past mistake. Well that happens to kids and teens, too. A child who is prone to worrying in the day is just as prone to worrying at night. Maybe even more prone because at night our defenses are low. We’re tired and our brains are less guarded so all of those worries we’ve been pushing aside show up and disrupt our sleep. 

If you have a child who worries about worrying then they may be using you for a distraction from that worrying. Or they may find you a calming presence, someone who keeps the worry monsters at bay.

The second reason a child might struggle to sleep alone is separation anxiety. This would be a child who doesn’t want to be away from you during the day either. They may follow you from room to room, or insist on coming upstairs with you or will call to you if you go to the bathroom without letting them know you’re leaving the space. They might also have trouble separating from you for school or other activities.

These children might feel vulnerable when they’re alone or they may worry about you. They may worry about how you’re doing. Separation anxiety may be a part of their functioning long term but it can also crop up after a traumatic event. So for example, if you were recently ill if there’s been a death in the family or a neighbor was robbed, they might need you close to know that they and you are safe.

Of course both elements of anxiety might be present in one child. Francine may feel safer when a parent is with her because she worries about someone breaking in through her window and she may also find that she has more intrusive worrying thoughts that come to her at night.

In fact, one thing Francine’s parents told me in their email to me is Francine also worries about not getting enough sleep. I know how that feels and I’m sure you do, too. The later it gets, the more aware we are that morning is coming in fast, the harder it is to fall asleep.

All right. Now we have a picture of what’s happening and we can talk about what to do.

Sleep issues are often deeply entrenched. They’ve usually been going on for awhile. It’s a Parenting Pitfall that creeps up on us. We create a routine to help everyone get to sleep and then the routine gets more complicated, it gets more demanding and we get more stuck. That’s because parents tend to start trying to deal with it and then give up because they’re exhausted. What happens is that we are actually training our kids to push more and more and more.

Let me explain this by giving a fake example. Let’s say you have a child who, like Francine, wants you to stay in the room with them. You tell them you will stay for ten minutes, that’s it. They start crying when you get up to leave at ten minutes. They beg and beg and you stand there arguing with them. Finally you leave the room and then they start screaming. You come back and tell them to settle down and try to leave again. They get out of bed following you, still crying. You take them by the hand and bring them back but they leap from the bed sobbing and race out the door. You go after them. This goes on for so long that you give in and stay with them until they finally cry themselves to sleep.

Or some version of that.

That parent may feel heartbroken, or manipulated, or trapped, or angry, or embarrassed, or defensive. I’ve heard from parents who feel all kinds of ways about it. And let me add that it is absolutely ok to not want to co-sleep with your anxious child. And if that’s you, then you’re going to need a structured plan.

Parents are going to have to make the break for sure, which means they’re going to need to push things with their child and it’s likely their child isn’t going to be happy about that. But with a structured plan, clear communication with the child so they’re not surprised, and graduated exposure — which means taking things step by little step — they will see results. And they will be able to build on small results to get to big results.

One of the most challenging things about making this shift is helping parents understand that teasing it out, teasing apart the problem and creating a plan isn’t going to be a quick fix. The longer it’s been going on, the longer it will likely take to get unstuck. Also the more intense the child is in general, the more intense we can expect the process to be. But when we have realistic expectations then we won’t be disappointed or discouraged.

What we know is that parents hold the key to making a difference in these kinds of sleep issues. If you want help with your anxious child’s sleep issues, you can find it in my Child Anxiety Support program. The Strong Kids, Strong Families walks you through how to make a plan and I am available to answer your questions and help you personalize the plan. I’m there via private message, community posts, and in our live events, which include chats, workshops and drop in office hours.

And I also want you to know that in April we’ll be doing our first cohort in the program. What this means is that in the first week of April we’ll be doing the first lesson in Strong Kids, Strong Families together. All of the live events will be about that first lesson — other resources, more supports and information. The program is alway open — I don’t do launches because I want it to be available to anyone who needs it whenever they need it. But I will be walking through the program with all members, six weeks, one lesson each week so that we can be doing it together as a community. To get in on that, join today and we’ll be getting started together April 3rd 2023. If you have questions let me know. 

You do not have to deal with this struggle alone and I promise you that things can improve.



How do I get my anxious child to sleep alone? Read More »

Why doesn’t encouragement help my anxious child?

Podcast

The question this week is “Why doesn’t encouragement help my anxious child” but I think it will be illuminating if I give you more information about the question I received that inspired this episode..

I’m not going to read the whole thing since there are some private identifying details in it but the parent shared that they have a child who tends to be pretty negative, which is not uncommon in anxious kids. This child is particularly pessimistic about their ability to overcome their anxiety and the parent feels like the more they try to encourage them, the more discouraged the child gets. So for example, the parent will say, “I know you can do it” and the child will say, “No I can’t.” And the parent will say, “You’ve done it before so I know you can do it again” and the child will give a lot of reasons why they could do it that time but that they won’t be able to do it this time. So they’ll say things like, “Last time the situation was different” or “last time I didn’t know any better” or “last time was just good luck.”

This is a situation I come across a lot in my work and I know how frustrating it is for parents.

So first, why are some kids so resistant to encouragement?

The answer here is that encouragement can feel like pressure. We’ve talked about slow to warm temperaments on this show before but I’m going to go over it again since some of you might be new to the podcast.

Temperament traits are aspects of our personality that are more or less stable. These are nature not nurture qualities although obviously they can be impacted by the environment. A slow to warm person is someone who takes their time coming to new experiences. This is someone who might show up at a networking event, and stay on the sides checking it out for awhile first. You know, seeing how the room is flowing, who’s there and who isn’t. A child who is slow to warm might want to watch other children go down the slide before attempting it themselves. They might not want to eat a new food the first time it is served and need to see it repeatedly before they’re willing to give it a try. 

Slow to warm temperaments can be frustrating for adults who don’t understand it. They might see the child’s initial refusal as a barrier or a hurdle when really that child just needs time to take it all in and make their own decision.

Not all slow to warm kids are anxious but some anxious kids are slow to warm. They might feel anxious as part of that temperament, as part of experiencing something new for the first time but they might also NOT have anxiety about the event but have anxiety about the perceived pressure.

So a child who needs to hang back and watch other people try the slide, might not be feeling worried about the slide but they might start feeling worried if their caregiver interprets their caution as a problem and starts trying to talk them into it.

They’ll be hanging on the sidelines, maybe with an intense look on their face, and if left alone will eventually make an attempt but adults — misinterpreting their slow to warm temperament as an anxiety problem — might start saying, “You can do it, those other kids are doing it, why don’t you try, here I’ll take you over there” and that makes them dig in their heels because they’re feeling rushed.

This is very tricky because sometimes kids do need our encouragement but sometimes they don’t. And figuring our who your child is  and who they are in the context of holding back is part of the parenting puzzle.

Ok, back to encouragement.

The opposite of the slow to warm temperament, which by the way is also called high withdrawal — is a high approach person. The high approach person likes new experiences, is interested in trying out new things. They’re the ones who see a slide and go right up that ladder. Those are kids who are willing to try every new food, who leap into new social experiences. And those children can also have anxiety but it’s not necessarily expressed through this side of their temperament. And we as a culture love these high approach kids.

They can be easier to parent because they are willing to give things a go. And when they’re reluctant encouragement can be just the thing to get them over that hump. They might hang back for a minute and you say, “You can do it” and they say, “Yes I can, let’s go.”

Most of us parent to a high approach temperament because it makes sense. We interpret a child who holds back as a child who is nervous and yes, sometimes that’s true. But as I’ve said, it can also be an expression of this particular personality trait.

Picture the slow to warm child at the slide, not necessarily reluctant but wanting to take their time. And now the parent starts encouraging them with that “you can do it” etc. The child still needs time to figure it out but now they’re feeling pushed. Because they’re feeling pushed beyond what they’re ready to do, they push back. You say, “you can do it” and they say, “no I can’t.” They’re doing this because they are not experiencing the good will you are intending to give them. They are experiencing it as “You’re doing this wrong.”

The slow to warm child, doesn’t actually need encouragement. They need space.

So that’s the slow to warm child and encouragement. Again, they may experience this as pressure. And I think, from what the person who posted this question shared, this is what’s going on for them.

But there’s another reason why encouragement may not work and that’s because encouragement is another form of reassurance.

Reassurance is the most common parenting pitfall that gets families stuck in child anxiety. Anxious kids ask us to reassure them that it will all be all right. With non-anxious kids — children who have a typical amount of developmentally appropriate anxiety — get reassured and move on. Anxious kids — children who have an atypical amount of anxiety or who have anxiety that is more than we would expect for them developmentally — get reassured and then acclimate to that reassurance and want more.

This is a child who keeps coming back asking you to tell them that it’s safe or that they’re ok or that nothing bad will happen or that they can do the hard thing — and you find yourself having to answer them over and over and you start feeling like you need to talk them into new experiences every time. Or that any anxiety provoking event ends up in a meltdown. That’s the way we get trapped in reassurance, that’s what makes it a parenting pitfall.

When that’s happening, we may really struggle because it feels bad not to reassure our child. So I want you to think about describing instead of reassuring. Validing the feeling if not the facts.

A child says, “Will I be ok if I go down the slide” and you can say, “You feel worried about that slide, I can appreciate that.” You could also say, “Why don’t you watch those kids go down and see what you think.” Or you could say, “You can only know if you try.”

What we’re trying to do is build in curiosity about the event rather than a blanket reassurance. They might fall off the ladder going up. They might bump on their bottom at the end of the slide. They might climb up there and decide it’s too high. Who knows. There are no guarantees in life. That’s part of what’s so hard about anxiety is that it wants certainty and anxious people — including kids — need to learn how to manage that feeling of uncertainty. 

There are lots of places to learn how to confront anxiety and going up or down a slide is not a mark of success or failure; it’s an opportunity to explore. Families who are learning how to unstick themselves from the sticky parts of anxiety, who are learning how to climb out of parenting pitfalls and not fall back in, can use everyday events like slides as opportunities to manage their own responses. In other words, save the big confrontations for the things that really have you trapped. If your anxious child doesn’t go down the slide, I wouldn’t worry but I would be working on the things that are getting in the way of functioning like sleep routines, separating from caregivers, dealing with social relationships, struggling with perfectionism, etc. 

When they’re having some success in those areas, you can bring the learning to things like slides.

For example, if you have a child who struggles with separating from you, you can be working on that with a specific plan and then when they experience some success there, if they come to you and say, “I don’t know if I can go down the slide” you get to say something like, “You can only know if you try but I do know that a kid who can stay downstairs on their own while I”m upstairs putting laundry away is plenty brave.” 

How do I motivate my anxious child to deal with their anxiety?
The question, “How do I motivate my anxious child?” is more complicated than it first seems because

Why doesn’t encouragement help my anxious child? Read More »

How do I motivate my anxious child to deal with their anxiety?

Podcast

The question, “How do I motivate my anxious child?” is more complicated than it first seems because it’s showing that we may still need to make that paradigm shift where we need to put the focus on our own behavior first and on our child’s behavior second. If we are waiting for our child to be motivated before we start work on their anxiety then most of us are going to be waiting a very long time.

A lot of our anxious kids — and even anxious adults — aren’t yet in the place where they understand that their anxiety is the issue. A child who is afraid of dogs likely thinks dogs are the issue. A child who feels safest when their mom is around, likely thinks that the problem is that mom isn’t always able or willing to be around. 

I think about my own fears as a child around thunder storms. I was terrified of them. And the problem, to my mind, was that thunderstorms existed. The solution my family used was to put me in the living room with headphones on listening to The Wizard of Oz on an 8-track tape. That way I couldn’t really hear the thunder and then I was no longer afraid. That worked just fine until one storm night the electricity went out and I was alone in a pitch dark room. As you can imagine, this did nothing to help me deal with my thunderstorm anxiety.

And this is because my family and I assumed thunderstorms were the problem and so we should avoid thunderstorms when really the problem was my anxiety.

I was not interested in dealing with my anxiety because that was yucky and painful and again, I didn’t think it was a problem in the first place. No the problem seemed to be that the world was scary and I wanted it to be safe.

That’s why we parents need to focus on our motivation and through that make good decisions for helping our children learn to cope with the reality that the world is often scary and not always safe. As our children get better at coping with that reality, we might see more motivation from them. Or if they’re focused on getting access to the things that they’re avoiding, we might see some motivation there, too. That might be a child who really wants to go to a slumber party but is afraid to sleep away from home. 

But it’s ok to start before we’ve got their buy in. It’s ok to start with figuring out our own motivation.

Let’s talk about that a little bit.

The best way to understand how to motivate ourselves is to understand why we aren’t motivated. What is stopping us from climbing out of the parenting pitfalls we find ourselves in when parenting our anxious kids. For those of you who are unaware, parenting pitfalls are the things we do that keep us and our kids stuck in patterns of anxiety. An example would be my parents using that 8-track tape. It seems like a solution but it can be a trap especially if they started staying home on days when storms were predicted to stick close to the stereo. Or if — and this did happen — I started clamoring for the headphones at the first sign of wind and rain. If you aren’t sure about parenting pitfalls, you can take my quiz, which you can find at child anxiety support DOT com forward slash quiz and see if and how your family might be stuck.

Anyway, common reasons we aren’t motivated are:

      • lack of time

      • lack of bandwidth

    And I’ll say that both of those things are predictably made worse by the anxiety itself. Because parenting an anxious child is exhausting and time consuming, right? So the traps seem like a way to deal with the anxiety less even though they tend to eat up our functioning.

    Another common reason we might not be motivated, is we might have real concerns that our child isn’t capable of handling the demands of facing their fears.

    I want to stop and talk about this one for awhile because it mirrors the reason kids stay stuck, too. They also don’t believe they’re capable of handling those demands.

    Let’s take two kids who are learning to roller skate. One child isn’t anxious and they know they might fall but they figure they can handle that. The other child is anxious and they also know they might fall but they don’t feel capable of handling it. It’s not necessarily that one is predicting worse outcomes. Both children may have a friend who broke their wrist roller skating. So both might know that is indeed a real risk. But the non-anxious child may not just feel more confident in their abilities, they also may feel more confident in handling a wrist fracture. An anxious child is less optimistic overall. Their self concept — their sense of who they are — may be more negative. 

    These are the kids who say, “I know I’m going to fall. I can’t do it. It’s too hard.” And we go to reassure them, “You’re going to do great. You’ll be fine. Look, your little sister is doing it so I know you can, too.” 

    Remember, reassurance is the most common pitfall. And it doesn’t work.

    That doesn’t motivate the child because we’re making the mistake that the roller skating is the issue instead of the anxiety. The truth is, they might fall. Anyone on roller skates might fall. But then again, they might not. And if they do, it might not be so bad. And if they break their wrist, well, that’s super lousy but they will survive it. 

    Even as I say these things, I know that as a parent it can feel somehow irresponsible. Like we’re saying that a broken wrist is no big deal. That they should just blow off their fears. Let me be clear, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the big picture work of anti-anxiety learning is to figure out how to exist in a reality that is unpredictable and sometimes scary and occasionally even dangerous. 

    Such big work, I know.

    Thunderstorms are usually fine but sometimes people do get hit by lightening, sometimes homes do get destroyed in tornadoes. Sometimes even our wonderful all powerful parents can’t keep us safe.

    A hard reality for us as well as for our kids.

    So where’s the motivation? It’s in believing that our children can indeed handle it — all of the uncertainty — and can have good lives in spite of the world being scary. We have to hold that belief first so that we can offer it to them.

    You know how we talk about co-regulation a lot on social media, in parenting books and classes? This idea that we can bring our own calm to our children? This self concept piece is like that. We believe in them even when they don’t. We believe in their strength even when they feel weak. And this isn’t a suck it up buttercup, stiff upper lip kind of belief. It’s more, I believe you have the ability to grow through this. To learn about your inner strength. To learn that bravery means being afraid but doing it anyway. 

    We can motivate ourselves and our kids but taking things small. What began my ability to deal with thunderstorms, and this is a memory my dad brings up to me a lot so I know it was meaningful to him as well, was sitting on his lap on our front porch watching the storms roll in. I borrowed his bravery. He showed me how to find the delight in the big noise and uncertainty but it took practice and it took his help. Because he traveled, he couldn’t do that for me every time and my mom, with three kids five and under didn’t have time either. But that’s ok, because I got enough confidence to begin a fairly long journey of dealing with my fear of thunderstorms.

    One thing that I think can be helpful is to celebrate your child’s wins big or small. You can announce this beforehand like, “Next time we walk by that barking dog, I will hold your hand but I won’t carry you and after we will celebrate with a sticker or an ice cream cone or big hugs.” Or you can just notice the next time your child has handled something I celebrate it.

    This is different than reward charts although those can work, too. I just think we need to be cautious about relying on them too much because they can lose their effectiveness. I’m not against them — extrinsic motivation can lead to intrinsic motivation — but they can’t do the work for us. 

    My thinking is that once you have a child holding your hand instead of being carried around a scary dog, you might have buy in for a more explicit plan with a whole exposure hierarchy and stair step rewards but it really doesn’t have to be this formal. 

    If you are interested in figuring out a plan with clear steps and what to do when, I encourage you to check out the Child Anxiety Support program since this is what we do inside the membership.


    How do I motivate my anxious child to deal with their anxiety? Read More »

    How do I co-parent an anxious child with someone who causes more problems with the anxiety?

    Podcast

    The particular question I received that inspired this episode is much longer and very personal so I’m not going to read the whole thing but I will share that the listener says that the relationship between mom and dad has lots of conflict, not just about anxiety but about other parenting choices and the listener is wondering, and here I WILL quote directly:

    “Do we just carry on with how we handle her anxiety in our care despite being different? How does an anxious child cope with split homes? How do we ensure the anxious child doesn’t play the parents off against each other (which currently happens). We are lost and her anxiety is getting worse.”

    There is a lot happening here so I want to slow down and first of all address the issue of different parents doing things differently. The fact is that we have no control over how things happen in our children’s other household. In a perfect world we’d be able to talk to our children’s co-parent and come to general respectful understanding if not agreement. But we don’t live in a perfect world so the answer to the first question, “Do we just carry on with how we handle things” is yes. You carry on that way. You do the best you can, you parent in the way you feel is most helpful and healthy for your child, period.

    The second question the listener asks, is how does an anxious child cope with split homes. Well, that depends on the child and that depends on the homes. Divorced families, in my opinion as a child of divorce and as someone who has worked with lots of divorced families, aren’t automatically less healthy than intact families. My take is that happy, healthy parents are good for raising happy, healthy kids and for many families that means not parenting together. The issue that I’m seeing in this question is not that the parents are apart physically, it’s that they are so far apart philosophically and aren’t able to be supportive of each other and yes, that can be an issue for any kid but especially for anxious kids.

    I have worked with many families who don’t live together and who may not always operate on the same wavelength but if they are respectful of each other’s differences and don’t bad mouth each other I don’t think that has to be a problem. Maybe mom eats meat and dad runs a vegan household but it’s fine because the kids know that the different houses just do things differently. 

    Now both parents might have strong feelings about the way they choose to eat, which is fine. People should live out their values. And it doesn’t have to be a problem if they are respectful of each other’s right to make their own decisions in their own homes. 

    In a case like that, kids know what to expect. They know they can have pepperoni on their pizza at mom’s and that at dad’s they’ll top their pizza with soy cheese and it’s fine. They know they can talk about the different pizzas in their different homes and nobody will get upset. That shows consistency and care and respect, which matters so much and I’d argue that those kids — with parents who are so far apart in their thinking but so open and welcoming to their child’s other families way of doing things — are lucky. Because they know that if they do things differently, too, they won’t lose the love and respect of their parents. 

    They will grow up to make their own decisions and to understand that there’s lots of ways to do things.

    Likewise when it comes to trying to co-parent an anxious child, if one parent, for example, let’s call them Jill signs up for my program and recognizes that they need to create exposures for their anxious child and the other parent, let’s call them Bill is unwilling to do this, this may slow things down but it doesn’t need to halt things altogether. Exposure at least part of the time is better than never having exposures ever. 

    Now it may be hard on Jill. Jill may feel like she always has to be the so-called bad guy since she’s the one always pushing her child to confront their anxiety and Bill might feel like Jill is being too hard on their child but as long as they don’t interfere with each other, the child is going to learn that the different houses do things differently.

    The problem comes if Jill starts telling the child, “Your father isn’t doing you any favors” or if Bill starts telling them, “Your mom is being too mean to you.” Or if they start fighting with each other about it. Or, and unfortunately this happens way too often, start trying to pull in allies whether that be the child themselves or other people like teachers, siblings, and friends. 

    For example, when I was doing clinical work with kids, I’d have parents in my office trying to get me to go to court with them against the other parent. There’s a million reasons why this is not ok — starting with if you hire a therapist for your child it is unethical for that therapist to make custody recommendations — and also again, what happens in the other house hold barring outright neglect or abuse, belongs to that other parent.

    And if there are behaviors or parenting choices that are a concern, if one parent IS concerned about neglect or abuse then it’s even more important that their household remains as healthy and supportive as possible.

    I’m not so naive as to think that if you are concerned about your child’s safety at their other parents house that it’s as easy as going to court or getting a guardian ad litem or calling child protective services to make things change. I know that. And I appreciate how incredibly painful and upsetting that is. That discussion is way beyond the scope of this podcast. But I do want to assure you that your focus on creating a safe home regardless of what the other parent does or does not do, will make a difference. 

    All you can control is how things operate in your house so your focus should be on figuring out how to create the most supportive, loving, and healthy environment you can. And in the case of anxiety, that should include learning how to parent an anxious child so you don’t get stuck in the parenting pitfalls.

    Your consistency, your care, your safety will help your child feel safe, too. Remember that connection and healthy relationships help to mitigate harm. There is lots we can’t [protect our children from and frustratingly sometimes that includes their other parent.

    Back to the original post. There’s something else they said that I want to talk about, which is, “How do we ensure the anxious child doesn’t play the parents off against each other“

    Well, we can’t ensure that; we can only focus on how we respond when this happens. I don’t have details here with this family so I’m going to make some guesses and I apologize in an advance to the original poster if I’m missing the mark. 

    When we are trying to co-parent an anxious child, we can expect that child to play one parent off another. This is super common whether or not families are living together, it might be helpful to see this through the lens of avoidance. Remember anxiety is about avoidance. When the child plays parents off each other, what are they trying to avoid? when you see the behavior through that lens, does it make it easier to understand? 

    Can you unhook any feelings you have about the other parent from this situation? What I mean is,

    If you feel defensive or put on the defensive, can you recognize that that dynamic is about the relationship you have with their other parent. If you feel comfortable about how you are handling your child’s anxiety, if you feel confident in your choices, then can you let the other parents’ judgment or anger go? If your child says, “My other parent never makes me do that” can you simply say, “Yes, they do things differently than I do.”

    If the other parent tries to get involved and change the way you’re doing things, well, that’s about your relationship with the other parent. Remember, you do not need to convince them. It’s ok that you are doing things the way that you’re doing them.

    Sometimes in my clinical work with children of divorce, it would feel like the parents were so focused on what was happening in the other household, were understandably so frustrated or angry or sad, that sometimes they were missing the opportunity to parent well in their own home and to celebrate and feel good about their own good parenting.

    I’m not blaming here, I’m saying that trying to co-parent with someone who is not supportive of you, who is making choices that appear harmful to the kids, doesn’t feel overwhelming. 

    But ultimately we need to figure out how to let it go. I’m not saying ignore it. I’m not saying pretend like it’s not happening. I’m saying to recognize that we can only control what we can control. If our child’s other parent is a jerk, well, that sucks but some kids have parents who are jerks. It’s not fair, it’s really painful, but for those kids, what they need is at least one parent who is not a jerk. One parent who is going to keep doing the very best they can, who wills tay focused on what they CAN control, which is their own healthy household, and who will create consistency and safety where they can.

    If this means getting your own therapy, finding your own social supports, I hope you will do that. As an aside, I will add that this is why the Child Anxiety Support program is built on Mighty Networks, which has a community component to the learning. We know that divorced parents — in fact all parents — do better when they aren’t isolated and when they find a community who will help them deal with the very real, very difficult emotions that come with co-parenting in conflict. And that’s even more true when we’re trying to co-parent an anxious child.

    I wish I had better answers to this but I hope that this is validating and that it’s helpful to know that whatever you can do for your anxious child, will make a difference.



    How do I co-parent an anxious child with someone who causes more problems with the anxiety? Read More »

    Am I being protective or over protective?

    Podcast

    This week’s question came from a parent who is trying to figure out how to support their anxious child and reached out to me with a more complex and personal version of the question, “am I being protective or over protective when I try to support my anxious child.”

    Here’s the thing, one family’s protective is another family’s over protective because we can’t take a particular behavior out of the context of a particular family and say, “That is always right” or “that is always wrong.” 

    Anxious children come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and developmental needs. Families, too, have different expectations and values. In one family, choosing to homeschool due to a child’s anxiety is overprotection and in another family it’s a great idea. So how do we know the difference for ourselves? Or at least how can we start figuring it out? 

    Ok first we have to back up and remember what this whole parenting gig is all about and that’s raising humans to grow up and live their own best lives, right? That’s parenting in a nutshell. And we know, from just looking around us, that there are a whole lot of versions of best lives out there. So part of this parenting and growing up is figuring that out — what version? What are our children’s strengths that we can play to? What are their challenges that we can help them confront and overcome or learn to work with them? 

    As they grow, we continuously reassess. Our children change, our values as a family sometimes change, and certainly circumstances can change. Any of that means we go back to the drawing board and say, “Is this still working? Are we still moving forward? Is my child still making progress however that’s meant to look?”

    Back to protections, protect should protect; not limit. Overprotections limit. Overprotections keep kids stagnant and stuck whileProtections keep them safe and encourage growth. 

    A general example would be making your typically developing preschooler hold your hand when you cross the street is protection. Making your typically developing 12-year old hold your hand when you cross the street is overprotection. That’s easy, right? That’s very clear. We know what to expect from preschoolers and we know what to expect from 12-year olds and we understand the mechanics of crossing the street.

    Things get trickier when we’re talking about expectations that are more complicated or nuanced such as managing social media, or navigating romantic relationships, or figuring out how to deal with anxiety.

    In cases like that, where it feels more complicated, I encourage you to step back and ask yourself these questions:

    • What are my goals for my child around this topic? 
    • What skills around this topic will they need when they’re adults? 
    • How can I help them to begin to build those skills now in ways that are developmentally appropriate?

    If what we’re doing is not building those the skills that we know they need, then it might be overprotection. Remember, protections protect but leave room for skill building and over protection limits, it doesn’t find ways to give kids the opportunity to learn the skills they will need as adults.

    This is so hard when we’ve got anxious kids who don’t want to learn those skills. Who are perfectly happy with you managing things for them. Again, step back and think about your child as an adult. Think about what they need now to get them there, to adulthood with the skills that they need whether they like it or not.

    This doesn’t mean that you let an 8-year old fend for themselves when they’re scared anymore then you’d let a preschooler cross a busy street without teaching them how traffic works. But it does mean that at a certain point you’re going to ask them to do the things they need to do, knowing that you’ve given them the support and information that will allow them to do it.

    For example, if you’ve got a 12 year old who reasonably knows how to cross the street but doesn’t want to, then you might insist. You might say something like, “I don’t have time to walk you to the ice cream shop to get you that milkshake so if you want to get a milkshake you’ll need to get there on your own.” And we’d say that with the full confidence that we’ve given them the knowledge and skills to accomplish that safely. 

    They might be scared. They might insist they don’t know how to do it. But a milkshake might be just the incentive they need to find out they can.

    When it comes to anxiety, we might need help drilling down to the small steps and small skills they need. We might need help understanding what’s protective and what’s over protective because some anxious kids are pretty dramatic. I don’t mean this in a dismissive way at all. I mean that their fight, flight or freeze is so big or so consuming that it’s hard for us to get perspective and know whether or not what we’re asking of them is reasonable. That’s all part of the planning and work of supporting and raising anxious kids.

    If you are feeling stuck or your child is feeling stuck, know that this is part of the anxiety process. Feeling stuck just comes with the territory and usually means we need to stop and reassess what we’re doing and whether or not we’re off track in helping our child acquire those skills they’re going to need. If you need help with that. Let me know. 



    Am I being protective or over protective? Read More »

    94 to 99% of families are stuck in patterns that make their child's anxiety worse.

    Are you?

    Take the 10 question Parenting Pitfalls quiz and find out! 

    Take the quiz

    Follow Me

    Attachment Parenting International
    copyright 2024 | Dawn Friedman MSEd
    Scroll to Top