When we are raising a child with anxiety or OCD it can be all consuming. So consuming that we put everything on hold, including our own mental health. This is a slippery slope because without our own mental stability, we won’t be able to be an anchor for our child. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore why it is so crucial we focus on our own mental health and how this will actually help our children as well.
Many of us learn how to help our kids with anxiety or OCD, but are we doing enough to help them help themselves? Helping our kids own their journey is key to their long-term success.
Anxiety and OCD can cause our children to act in ways that can be overwhelming, disheartening and sometimes even hurtful. It is easy to fall into the trap of taking our children’s anxiety or OCD personally. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about the many ways we can take our children’s anxiety or OCD behaviors personally, and what we can do instead.
We will all fall short sometimes and so will our children with anxiety or OCD. They will avoid, they will crumble, they will give in to their anxiety or OCD. That is all par for the course. More often than not they will view these situations as “failures.” They might beat themselves up or use the experience as evidence that they can’t do it again.
It’s hard enough to parent a child with anxiety or OCD, but when your own mental health issues are added to the mix, it can be all-encompassing. But it’s not all bad. Having your own anxiety or OCD issues can help you be a better parent to a child with anxiety or OCD.
How to Stop Panic Attacks from Ruling Your Child’s Life Sometimes we focus so much on how to stop panic attacks that we miss an even bigger problem, avoidance. What’s even more debilitating than panic attacks is the panic around having them. Panic attacks create a knee-jerk reaction of avoidance. They might avoid going to school, going out with friends, or going to the movies. […]
Handling Parental Burnout Around Anxiety or OCD Parental burnout can take any one of us to our knees. When we are riding on fumes we aren’t good for anyone, including our kids. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I talk about things that cause parental burnout and what we can do to dig our way out of the hole. To take a deeper dive […]
Letting Go of How Life Should Be We have expectations about how our children’s lives should be. We have expectations about how our family should be. This can be reinforced by friends, family or even the school system. So what happens when all those expectations fall short? What happens when we look at our reality and it doesn’t match up? Parenting is messy and we […]
Handling Toddler & Preschooler Sleep Issues One of the first signs of anxiety in young children is sleep disturbance! Sleep disturbance can have a ripple effect throughout a child’s day. It can make them more cranky, anxious and irritable. It can make us, as parents, exhausted and impatient. That’s why I thought it would be helpful if I brought Allison, a sleep and wellness coach, […]
Ugly Parenting Moments and How to Repair Them We all have our ugly moments as parents. We all show up in ways we don’t want to show up for our kids with anxiety or OCD. But what do we do after those ugly moments are over? In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore what triggers ugly parenting moments and how we can repair […]
Calling out Anxiety or OCD When a Child is Angry We talk about helping our kids realize when it is their anxiety or OCD ruling their behavior. But what happens when we get a loud bark when we do it? Is it a bad sign if our child gets angry? Should we stop? In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I talk about when and […]
How to Help Our Kids with Social Anxiety Social anxiety isn’t about being an introvert. It isn’t about being shy. Yes, those attributes can coexist with social anxiety, but it doesn’t have to be present. Social anxiety is about the fear of rejection. It is about the concern that others will judge or criticize you. When we have social anxiety we let others define us. […]
Do You Take Your Child’s Behavior Personally? When your child acts up do you take it personally? Do you have a knee jerk response that is filled with hurt, anger or frustration? Join the club! We all do at times. In this episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I am going to walk you through the most common reasons why this happens, how it […]
Helping Kids When Anxiety Makes Them Feel They have to Always be Productive Anxiety can often show up in two very different ways. One is through avoidance. When a person is anxious they might avoid doing difficult things in order to avoid discomfort. I did a whole video on anxiety and procrastination here. The other coping mechanism is to do, do, do! Anxiety will tell […]
How to Not Compare Your Child to Other Kids The comparing game can be so tempting. Why can her kids do that and mine can’t? Why is it so easy for them and everything is so difficult for us? Why do we have to go through this? I wish my child was like that. Trust me I get it, I live it. But in this […]
