You CAN help your anxious child and find peace for your whole family

SPACE Treatment for Child Anxiety

Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions In Oak Park, IL and virtual across IL

Have you tried everything to help your child feel less anxious, but their anxiety just gets worse?


You have….

  • Given in to avoid your child getting upset

  • Found yourself saying “Calm Down! This isn’t a big deal!”

  • Rearranged your family’s schedule to reduce your child’s worry

  • Found that simple things are no longer simple and even getting out the door is taking increasing amounts of time

  • Allowed your child to sleep in your bed just so everyone can get some sleep

  • Given up on ever going to the bathroom alone

 You want your child (and your family) to find freedom from anxiety

What is SPACE?


SPACE is an evidence approach to treating childhood anxiety. Successful SPACE treatment results in changes in your child’s anxiety, which likely means improvements for the whole family.

The surprising part about SPACE is that you, the parent, will be coming to the sessions. Although you are coming to the sessions, this treatment is for your child. You will have the support to make specific and strategic changes at home. Those changes will help your child to be less anxious.


SPACE recognizes the unique and important role parents play.

As parents, we want our kids to be calm, confident and happy. We also have to get through the day with work, chores, meal prep, extracurricular activities, bills to pay … the list goes on. These two things often lead parents to try and reassure their child or make changes to limit the child’s distress. SPACE recognizes that the ways that parents try to protect their child and limit their child’s distress often increases the child’s anxiety.

SPACE also recognizes how central you are in your child’s life. Day in and day out you are with your child most. 

SPACE empowers parents to… learn about childhood anxiety and how to support their child differently so that their child is less anxious.

But how does SPACE work?


In SPACE treatment, you come to the sessions. Your child may also be in therapy, but SPACE has been shown to be effective even if your child isn’t seeing a therapist.

The sessions focuses on the one thing that you can always control - yourself. This means that we are not asking your child to do anything different. This is a very different way to think about treating childhood anxiety.

The two main changes that you learn to make are to respond more supportively and to reduce the ways you have accommodated your child’s anxiety.

What does this mean?

  • You learn what to say to your child that is effective and supportive

  • You learn to identify the ways that you accommodate your child’s anxiety (changing the family schedule, a lot of reassurance, laying with your child while they fall asleep are all common examples)

  • You learn to reduce the accommodations you have been making to your child’s anxiety

SPACE can help you…

  • Understand your child’s anxiety

  • Identify how your parenting can support your child in feeling less anxious

  • Reclaim your time, privacy and leadership in your family

  • Improve your relationship with your child

  • Reconnect you with the joys of parenting

How therapy works

Frequently asked questions about sPAce treatment

FAQs

Hear from SPACE creator, Eli Lebowitz, explain why parents are the best resource for treating childhood anxiety and OCD.


 You don’t have to let anxiety call the shots in your family.