“And you can tell the child that from now on, I will return your call a little late. For instance, if your child calls you every day right after school, you can wait five minutes before you return that call. ![]() “So, I always suggest picking an easy one, one that they think will be easier to accept for them and the kids.”Īccommodations can be reduced incrementally. “Usually, the parents want to focus on the biggest one, but that can be too hard,” says Dr. The parents are asked to pick one accommodation to work on reducing first. IN SPACE, the clinician guides the parents to reduce those accommodations step by step as they move from being their child’s rescuer to a more supportive role. What’s new with SPACE is that it can work without the kids participating directly. Reducing these accommodations has always been part of the most common treatments for anxious kids - CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) or ERP (exposure and response prevention). In one study of parents of anxious kids, 97 percent reported that they resorted to accommodations. ![]() “But you want to ask yourself whether with the accommodation you’re providing, are you helping them face their fear or are you helping them run away from it?” “It’s an instinct that you want to save your kid from a stressful situation,” notes Qiuyuan Liu, LCSW, DSW, a clinical social worker at the Child Mind Institute who uses SPACE with families. And kids who are shown a reflection of themselves as strong and capable of handling their anxiety, without parental accommodation, see themselves that way. Practice coping with anxious feelings gradually makes the anxiety fade. On the other hand, if parents respond by communicating that they’re confident the child can deal with the anxiety, even though it’s uncomfortable, the child learns, over time, how to get through anxiety-provoking situations. So when parents reflect back to them that they are helpless in the face of anxiety, and need to be protected, that’s what kids learn to feel about themselves. Kids look to their parents to see who they are, Dr. But parents coming to the rescue only confirms to the child that they need someone strong to protect them, and it robs them of the chance to build resilience. ![]() We don’t have to go to that party where there’s going to be a clown.” Those responses - which insulate the child from the thing they fear - are called accommodations. We can cross the street to avoid that dog. In the case of anxiety, kids turn to parents to protect them from the thing they fear: “Can I sleep in your bed? Can I stay home from school? Are you sure this won’t make me sick?”Ī parent’s instinctual response is to protect the child from distressing feeling: “I’ll sit with you until you fall asleep. Lebowitz explains, SPACE is based on the recognition that kids are hardwired to turn to parents when they are in distress, and parents are hardwired to respond to alleviate their distress. And if kids are also depressed, engaging in self-harm, or suicidal, reducing accommodations may have to wait until the depression has been treated.Īs Dr. When kids are severely anxious, they may need medication along with SPACE to change their behavior. It is especially helpful for younger kids, whose parents tend to do more accommodating. It can be used for all anxiety disorders as well as OCD. In studies, SPACE has been shown to be as effective as therapy in which the clinician works directly with the kids. When kids practice coping with anxiety, they get better at it, their confidence grows, and their anxiety fades. Parents gradually reduce the accommodations they have been doing for their kids, and express confidence that the child is strong enough to tolerate uncomfortable feelings. ![]() In SPACE, parents are trained instead to assure children that even though the fear is uncomfortable, they can handle it. Accommodations help kids feel better temporarily, but the lesson they learn is that they need parents to protect them, and their anxiety gets worse. Experts call things parents do to rescue kids from their fears “accommodations.” If a child is afraid of dogs, the parent agrees to walk down the other side of the street to avoid a dog. It’s natural for kids to turn to parents when they are anxious, and for parents to protect them from the things that upset them. It works by changing the way parents respond to anxious behaviors in children, such as asking parents to stay with them until they fall asleep, or avoiding places and things that they are afraid of. It’s called SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions). For children who are anxious, there is a surprising new form of therapy in which the therapist works only with the parents.
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