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
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We will have a 15-20 minute consultation where I can answer all of your questions. This allows you to make sure we are a good fit.
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We will have 1-2 appointments to complete the evaluation. This process typically involves your child. This allows us to fully understand your child’s nervous, worried and scared feelings as well as what strategies you have tried to help. All of this information will help inform our treatment plan.
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Once we have completed the evaluation we will move into the actual SPACE treatment. We will meet weekly and you may have things to complete between sessions. SPACE treatment typically takes between 10-12 weeks.
Frequently asked questions about sPAce treatment
FAQs
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No, your child’s anxiety is not your fault. You did not cause your child’s anxiety. But, you can help them learn how to cope and move beyond it. You already do this with other challenges that come up, like sibling disagreements, a tough teacher, a mistake on the sports field, or a skinned knee. The truth is that parenting an anxious child is different from parenting a child without anxiety. Often our natural parenting instincts can get in the way of reducing anxiety. This is exactly what SPACE targets. Learn more.
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Maybe. SPACE has been shown to be effective without the child meeting with a therapist. Sometimes the child is already in therapy and SPACE is added as an additional treatment. Since every child and every family is unique this is something that will be discussed during the initial evaluation to see what makes the most sense for your family. Learn more.
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Separation anxiety
Social anxiety
Generalized anxiety
Specific phobias
Illness and health anxiety
Panic disorder and agoraphobia
Selective mutism
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
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Visit the contact page or send me an email and we can set up a consultation phone call.