Help Your Anxious Child: Tips from a Child Therapist

This child therapist specializes in helping parents whose children have excessive anxiety and/or OCD. I recommend her website anxioustoddlers.com to parents frequently. She makes it clear that parents should not over accommodate  anxiety behaviors and let children avoid challenges like sleeping in own room or going to school. She cautions parents that getting frustrated and asking them to something they clearly are not ready to handle like a sleepover party are the two extreme parenting styles. She has some simple practical suggestions for a balanced approach for parents to use in coaching children to "crush" anxiety. She starts by telling parents to discuss anxiety with the child and give it a name to externalize it and keep it from eroding the child's self-esteem. That is where I usually begin when doing individual counseling with students who have too much anxiety. She has some great articles and has published two books, This video addresses a question I get every week as a school counselor,"How can I help my anxious child?"