Anxiety and OCD in Kids
Anxiety and OCD in Kids
How to Turn Fearful Moments Into Helpful Challenges
In this newsletter, we provide you with notes on How to Turn Fearful Moments Into Helpful Challenges, an episode of AT Parenting Survival Podcast.
Hosted by Natasha Daniels, a child and teen therapist who has worked with teens and their families for over 16 years. She is also the creator of AT Parenting Survival Podcast. She teaches parenting approaches to help children with anxiety and OCD and gives a new perspective on common parenting problems.
Read our notes below.
Topics Covered in this Summary
Discussing Anxiety and OCD
Helping Kids with their Anxiety or OCD
Advice for Parents
Discussing Anxiety and OCD
Anxiety may make a child appear to be cautious, nervous, shy, or fearful. They may express their fears by crying or throwing tantrums.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by obsessions and compulsions that take up a lot of time and get in the way of important things like making friends and doing extracurricular activities.
When you’re a parent of an anxious child, you assume that your role is to provide reassurance, comfort, and a sense of safety. You want to support and protect your child who is distressed and, as much as possible, avert her suffering.
In fact, when it comes to a child with an anxiety disorder like OCD, trying to shield them from things that trigger their fears can be counterproductive for the child.
By doing what comes naturally to you as a parent, you are unintentionally giving in to the disorder and letting it control your child’s life.
Helping Kids with their Anxiety or OCD
It’s normal for parents of anxious kids to want to take away whatever is causing the anxiety. But that only feeds the anxiety and doesn’t help them get over the things that make them anxious.
There’s a treatment for anxiety and OCD called exposure and response prevention.
Exposure involves exposing a kid to what makes them anxious a little at a time until they get more and more comfortable with the feeling.
Response prevention means preventing the child from engaging in the ritual behaviors they’ve developed to make themselves feel better.
Advice for Parents
It can be really hard when our kids are facing fear or discomfort and their anxiety becomes so deceptive that they can't handle it. But we can help them manage it by:
Figuring out what the issue is. If your child struggles with something, it’s good to ask and not just assume. Everybody wants to feel heard.
Setting up challenges with or without rewards. You can offer to coach, praise or perhaps a firm parenting approach may be appropriate.
We have to remember that as long as our kids are willing to do something that is going towards their discomfort or fears, we want to celebrate that because that's the goal.