How Self-Esteem Plays a Role in Kids with Anxiety or OCD Anxiety and OCD will often take a swing at our child’s self-esteem. It can do that with the anxious or intrusive thoughts it bombards them with. It can do that by paralyzing them with fear, as they watch their peers not struggle. It can also be present alongside anxiety or OCD. It can help […]
Helping Kids with Anxiety or OCD Cope with Grief or Trauma It’s hard enough to have anxiety or OCD, but what happens when your child is hit with grief or trauma? It can feel like a muddy, chaotic mess. Unfortunately life happens and so do tragedies. Our kids are not immune to life happening to them, I wish they were. Anxiety and OCD are opportunistic. […]
How Online Support Can Be A Game Changer for Parents Raising Kids with OCD or Anxiety There are common stories among parents raising kids with OCD or anxiety. Stories of struggling to find a well trained anxiety or OCD child therapist. Stories of feeling isolated and alone. Stories of friends, family or the school not fully getting the depths of their child’s struggles. These are […]
Helping Kids Who Procrastinate “I’ll do it later.” That’s normally how it starts. “I have plenty of time.” That’s how it continues. “I can’t do it! I don’t have enough time.” That’s how it ends. Welcome to the world of procrastination. Anxious kids are either one extreme or the other. Kids who procrastinate want to kick the can down the road until the road comes […]
How to Motivate Our Kids to Work on Anxiety or OCD One of the biggest challenges parents face when raising a child with anxiety or OCD is…motivation. How do we motivate our kids to face their fears? How do we motivate our kids to sit in discomfort? How do we motivate them to even talk about their struggles. That can feel like an uphill battle. […]
Helping Kids Who Get Anxious Watching the News The news can be overwhelming to many of us, but if you are a kid with anxiety or OCD it can all be too much. Being flooded with images and stories of doom and gloom can impact your child’s level of anxiety or OCD. But what if you have a teen who controls what they watch and […]
How to Tell When It’s Difficult Behavior or When It’s Anxiety or OCD Your child is refusing to clean their room, go to bed or go to school. They are digging their heels in and it doesn’t look like they are going to budge. What are you supposed to do? Well if your child has anxiety or OCD, you might want to take an extra […]
How to Help a Child with Social Anxiety Social anxiety isn’t about not being able to make friends or keep friends. It is about the overwhelming feeling of judgment, criticism and rejection one feels. In this week’s podcast I chat with my 9 year old about her struggles with social anxiety (it runs in the family), and what has helped her make huge progress crushing […]
Therapist Corner with Dr. Allison Solomon and Michelle Massi, LMFT Welcome to another episode of the Therapist Corner with two of my favorite therapists, Dr. Allison Solomon and Michelle Massi, LMFT. In this episode we answer questions submitted from AT Parenting Community members. We discuss a variety of issues including: Anxiety/OCD therapy with multiple diagnoses Improving OCD skills among mental health professionals Accommodating OCD Confidentiality […]
How to Not Accommodate Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD with Eli Lebowitz Anxiety and OCD is a family affair. The anxiety and OCD will hook you in, talk to you and get you to grow it. Learning how to identify how you are accommodating your child’s anxiety or OCD is key to their long-term success. I’m honored to have Dr. Eli Lebowitz on as […]
Helping Kids Understand Why Distraction Doesn’t Help Anxiety or OCD When I ask kids what’s the main way they cope with anxiety or OCD, I almost always hear distraction. “I try to get my mind off of it,” they usually say. Unfortunately that is like putting a bandaid on a bullet hole to stop the bleeding. Ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away, it […]
How to Help Your Child with Anxiety or OCD Advocate for Themselves As much as we want to protect our child from anything and everything, it is important that we teach them how to advocate for themselves. This is especially true when our kids have anxiety or OCD. They need to know how to articulate how they feel and what they need. This is true […]
Helping Kids Who are Afraid to Leave the House Due to Anxiety or OCD Does your child’s anxiety or OCD make them afraid to leave the house? Do they stay at home to avoid being triggered? Unfortunately the more our kids avoid, the bigger their anxiety or OCD can grow. When kids don’t leave the house to avoid being triggered, they are at risk of […]
PSP 195: How to Help Your Child Maintain Progress with Anxiety or OCD So your child has just crushed their anxiety or OCD. You are feeling on top of the world and so are they. Now what? This is often when the ball is dropped. It is often when the seeds of the next infestation of weeds are left to grow, unchecked and unmanaged. But […]
Coping Skills for Anxious Teens with Janine Halloran It’s hard to get our kids to use coping skills, but it’s even harder when they are teens who don’t like to be told what to do! In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I had the privilege of talking with Janine Halloran from Coping Skills for Kids. We discussed how to approach teens so they are […]
