childhood anxiety - AT: Parenting Survival for All Ages

PSP 335: Creating Natural Exposures to Crush Anxiety and OCD

Ultimately we want our kids to live a life where they walk towards their anxiety or OCD fears and discomfort. The more they build those anxiety and OCD skills, the more resilient they will become. Natural exposures can help on two fronts. If your child is not ready to commit to formal ERP (Exposure Response Prevention), the main approach in OCD treatment, doing natural exposures can be a great first step. Second, we want our kids to develop an organic, authentic way of dealing with anxiety or OCD. When they learn how to create natural exposures when faced with triggers, they learn how to live their life while keeping anxiety or OCD at bay. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore how natural exposures can help and how to get them started.

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PSP 333: Should You Tell the School About Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD?

Parents often ask me if they should tell the school about their child’s anxiety or OCD. The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. There are things to consider. Like does their anxiety or OCD impact their academic performance or ability to function at school? Is there a chance that they will be mislabeled or misunderstood due to their anxiety or OCD? In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore the areas to consider when weighing the pros and cons of telling the school about your child’s anxiety or OCD.

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How to Help When Your Child’s Anxiety Gets Triggered by Other Anxious People

Your child has spent a lot of time and energy learning how to cope with their anxiety. Perhaps they feel like they can finally manage their anxiety. But then someone near them starts to spiral out of control. Anxiety can feel contagious, especially when someone near them is panicking. How can they be around them, while keeping themselves grounded? In this week’s Youtube video I talk to kids and teens about ways to keep their own anxiety in check when someone near them is anxious.

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PSP 331: The Biggest Misconceptions Parents Have About Child Anxiety and OCD Therapy

When your child is in therapy or you are searching for an anxiety or OCD therapist, you might have expectations and assumptions about how treatment should go. Often those expectations and assumptions are inaccurate. I invited therapists Dr. Josh Spitalnick and Marti Munford from Anxiety Specialists of Atlanta, to sit down with me on the AT Parenting Survival Podcast to discuss the most common misconceptions they see among parents.

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Helping Kids with Anxiety or OCD and Sensory Processing Issues

Helping Kids with Anxiety or OCD and Sensory Processing Issues This episode is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the guidance of a qualified professional. Anxiety and OCD don’t live in a bubble. Often kids with anxiety and OCD have sensory processing issues as well. It can help to understand what is sensory, what is anxiety, what is OCD and what […]

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PSP 329: What to Do When Your Child with OCD or Anxiety Won’t Discuss it

Often parents give up before they even start because their child with OCD or anxiety refuses to talk. It is easy to think there is nothing you can do if you can’t get your child to discuss their anxiety or OCD. But there is always a place to start, always.

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When Your Child’s Faced with Anxiety or OCD Struggles Do They Give Up Before They Begin?

How does your child talk to themselves when faced with anxiety or OCD struggles? How they show up to these anxiety or OCD issues can make all the difference. Do they cheer for themselves or do they cheer for anxiety or OCD? In this week’s Youtube video I talk to kids and teens about how our internal dialogue around anxiety or OCD is crucial.

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PSP 327: Reducing Inflammation to Improve Mental Health

We are hearing more and more about how inflammation is implicated in many mental health issues including anxiety and OCD. But what does that mean? Are there ways we can see if our child is struggling with inflammation? Are there things we can change in their diet or lifestyle that will reduce inflammation?

I don’t know those answers, but I do know someone who does! That is why I invited Dr. Ann Kulze, a renowned physician and founder of the Healthy Living School to come and talk to us. Dr. Ann has been featured on the Dr. Oz show, Oprah and Friends Radio, Time, and WebMD sharing her expertise in this area.

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PSP 322: Finding Happiness During Difficult Times

When we are raising kids with anxiety or OCD it can take a toll on our own level of happiness. We can be consumed with fear, overwhelm and the what-ifs of tomorrow. But our child’s journey with anxiety or OCD is a marathon not a sprint. If we live in crisis mode all of the time we rob ourselves and our family the joy life can bring. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about how to find moments of happiness even during difficult times with your child’s anxiety or OCD (or any difficult time for that matter).

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PSP 320: Are You Defining Success Around Anxiety or OCD in a Helpful Way?

How do you define success when it comes to getting anxiety or OCD under control? What does “recovery” look like to you? What does it look like to your child? How we view success and how we convey it to our kids is critical. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I explore what a healthy view of “success” looks like and how to communicate that effectively to our kids.

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Ask the Child Therapist Episode 92 Kid Edition: How to Use Imagery to Cope with Anxiety or OCD

If you have a child with anxiety or OCD they are bombarded daily with horrible, upsetting thoughts. This sea of overwhelming images and ideas can drown kids and pull them into a dark abyss. It can be hard to cope with anxiety or OCD when you are constantly fighting these thoughts.

Kids will often ask what they can do to get some relief from these thoughts, images and ideas. One of the best weapons I have used in my practice is teaching kids to create a “world.”

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This Can Increase Nausea Caused by Anxiety

Anxiety and nausea seem to go hand in hand. When our nervous system feels the panic of a false alarm, the stomach eventually takes a hit. Physiologically this makes sense. Chemicals meant to aid us in an emergency are pumping through our system. Our digestion comes to a screeching halt, or worse, it urgently evacuates everything it is holding. This bodily overreaction can make a person feel nauseous. The experience is harmless, but it feels unnerving and distressing. How we react to this anxiety-induced nausea can alter how bad it can become. Often this nausea becomes an issue in and of itself, the fear of throwing up becoming its very own anxiety theme. In this week’s Youtube video I talk to kids and teens about why we get nauseous when we are anxious and how to respond during those times to lessen its long term impact.

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PSP 314: How to Help Kids Who Won’t Use Coping Skills

We all want our kids with anxiety or OCD to use coping skills to deal with anxiety, overwhelm, and dysregulation. But what happens when they refuse to use them? In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I talked to my go-to expert on coping skills, best-selling author and therapist, Janine Halloran. In this episode, Janine and I discuss why some kids refuse to use coping skills and what approaches to use in order to help them embrace these tools.

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PSP 313: Helping Our Kids with Anxiety or OCD Flourish

When we are in the trenches trying to help our kids with anxiety or OCD it can be hard to think of our kids flourishing. Often, however, it is within the struggle itself that some kids can find resiliency and purpose. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I invited Stephanie Krauss, author of Whole Child, Whole Life, to discuss her own journey with her son’s OCD as well as elements of her new book that offer a shift in perspective.

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Parenting a Child with OCD? Don’t Do This.

If you are parenting a child with OCD you might be scouring the internet looking for ways to help your child. It can be such a relief when you finally stumble on the right approaches to help your children with OCD. You might have found the right OCD therapist or the right OCD support online. Often when we find these resources we dive head first into changing things at home. It can be exciting when you learn that there is a treatment approach for OCD that is highly effective. You might want to start doing ERP (Exposure Response Prevention) right away. But often we are missing some foundational steps. We haven’t poured the concrete and yet we are already building a house. In this week’s Youtube video, I talk about the importance of assessing where your child or teen is at before jumping in with OCD interventions.

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Tag: childhood anxiety

PSP 335: Creating Natural Exposures to Crush Anxiety and OCD

PSP 333: Should You Tell the School About Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD?

How to Help When Your Child’s Anxiety Gets Triggered by Other Anxious People

PSP 331: The Biggest Misconceptions Parents Have About Child Anxiety and OCD Therapy

Helping Kids with Anxiety or OCD and Sensory Processing Issues

PSP 329: What to Do When Your Child with OCD or Anxiety Won’t Discuss it

When Your Child’s Faced with Anxiety or OCD Struggles Do They Give Up Before They Begin?

PSP 327: Reducing Inflammation to Improve Mental Health

PSP 322: Finding Happiness During Difficult Times

PSP 320: Are You Defining Success Around Anxiety or OCD in a Helpful Way?

Ask the Child Therapist Episode 92 Kid Edition: How to Use Imagery to Cope with Anxiety or OCD

This Can Increase Nausea Caused by Anxiety

PSP 314: How to Help Kids Who Won’t Use Coping Skills

PSP 313: Helping Our Kids with Anxiety or OCD Flourish

Parenting a Child with OCD? Don’t Do This.

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