Have you ever felt that your child’s anxiety impacts the whole family? As a parent, it’s hard to see your child struggle, and you’ll probably go to great lengths to make them feel better. When parents act to help their child avoid uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, we call that an accommodation. For example, an anxious child may get a parent to send them a text when they get to work safely – something the parent probably wouldn’t otherwise do. A child who doesn’t like talking to strangers may ask a parent to order for them at a restaurant. A child who is fearful of being alone in the house may ask a parent to accompany them to the bathroom.
All of these accommodations make a lot of sense! Your son or daughter will be able to resume his or her day without anxiety, and there’s no tantrum for you to deal with. However, we know that accommodations actually do not help in the long-term. The problem with accommodations is that children don’t learn that they can manage their anxious feelings independently. And parents may feel trapped by the accommodations, busy acting to alleviate their child’s fear and not knowing there is another way to support them.
Let’s look at a specific accommodation. Sally is very anxious in social situations and is fearful of speaking to her teachers. Anytime Sally has a question about homework, her parents contact the teacher. One day, Sally comes home from school very upset about a grade she received on an exam and thinks there was a grading mistake, but she is scared to talk to her teacher. Her parents instead contact the teacher, asking for clarification about the grade, and Sally’s grade goes up. Sally learns from this that the only way she can approach conflicts in school is through her parents – that she can’t handle things by herself. Why would she even try to speak to her teacher? She knows that her parents will address the issue and she will not have to experience any anxiety about a scary conversation. Sally’s parents thought they were helping, but soon notice that Sally’s anxiety and avoidance of social situations is getting worse.
If you relate to this cycle of anxiety, we can help. SPACE, Supporting Parents for Anxious Childhood Emotions, is a treatment for childhood anxiety delivered directly to parents. In SPACE, parents learn how to respond supportively to their child’s anxiety, showing that they understand their child’s emotion AND believe in the child’s ability to tolerate discomfort. Parents learn to take small, gradual steps in removing accommodations and thus helping their children learn to regulate anxious feelings independently.
Research indicates that SPACE can be just as effective in treating childhood anxiety as individual cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and can ultimately even improve the parent-child bond. To work with one of the clinicians at Gordon Therapy Group using SPACE, contact us. To learn more about SPACE and the research on it, go to https://www.spacetreatment.net/.