How does a parent help a child with anxiety move through the world? Researchers have discovered that being overly accommodating in reaction to anxious children’s fears can actually harm them more than help them. Overly accommodating and protective parental reactions have lead to worsening anxiety in children, and even more debilitating anxiety symptoms in adolescence and adulthood.
Researchers at Yale’s Child Center and Yale’s Dr Eli Lebowitz came up with the SPACE Program, “Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions”. It offers an alternative approach to treating anxiety disorders than medication and traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, and has been found to be equally as effective as CBT in trials. SPACE works by reducing over accommodating behavior in parents and instead replacing it with validating behavior that expresses understanding for a child’s fears, but still pushes them out of their comfort zone enough to grow. When parents feel more secure and that signal is passed to their children, children are more likely to feel less anxious and more willing to branch out. SPACE is an exciting development in the psychology world for those who’ve struggled to find helpful treatment for childhood anxiety in the past!
Read more about SPACE at Psychology Today