Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions
EQUIPPING AND EMPOWERING CHILDREN TO FACE THEIR FEARS
Making accommodations for a child can often be necessary and welcome, because they’re a small person in a world that isn’t always built with them in mind. Sometimes you can give them right-sized tools to meet right-sized challenges. When those challenges get tough, it’s only natural as parents and caregivers to want to find ways to settle and accommodate their fear.
When it comes to child anxiety, however, one accommodation can lead to another, inadvertently increasing worry and fearfulness over time — which is the opposite of what we intend by helping in the first place! Repeatedly accommodating a child’s worries without engaging them in the process of how to soothe on their own can create a narrative that they can only overcome their struggles with outside assistance. Because a child feels temporary relief in the moment from what you offer them, they are more likely to ask for that accommodation again the next time they feel anxious, and the next.
The therapeutic approach of Supportive Parenting for Anxiety Childhood Emotions (SPACE) helps disrupt this cycle of worry and gives caregivers and parents new strategies to empower their child to capably and confidently face their own challenges.
What is “SPACE”?
Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions, or SPACE, is a short-term caregiver-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety and OCD, usually taking place over the course of twelve weeks. SPACE utilizes caregivers to help children better manage their anxiety and prepare for future stressors they may face, with the goal of treating the child’s anxiety and their ability to manage it.
In the words of SPACE creator Eli Lebowitz: “We might consider our role as parents not to be able to reduce the pain our children must live through, but to help them learn how to suffer less.”
Instead of focusing on your child, who may not be suited for therapy for a number of reasons, SPACE focuses on influencing one of the biggest emotional inputs in your child’s environment: you!
SPACE seeks to support parents and caregivers like you to learn how to:
Identify worry patterns that are inadvertently causing your child’s overreliance on you
Create new patterns of relating with your child that empowers your child to handle anxieties and challenges
Modify how you approach and accommodate your child’s needs with new tools and strategies to expand their ability to self-soothe
Understand how anxiety works, including the thoughts, feelings, and actions that contribute to it
Remain a trusted support in your child’s life while creating an environment of greater self-trust for them
By supporting you, your child is better equipped to:
Increase confidence in their abilities to cope with fearfulness and worry
Lessen overreliance on outside support because they understand new ways to support themselves
Practice skills like bravery and self-soothing on their own
What SPACE Does
The goal of SPACE as a therapeutic treatment is to increase appropriate caregiver support and decrease caregiver accommodation. Doing so allows the child to have more agency to support their own emotional needs, while still feeling adequately supported by their caregiver in the process.
Accommodations can and should be used in many instances with children, and they only need to be addressed when accommodations outlive their usefulness and begin to create more friction than support. SPACE helps identify which of accommodations and default patterns you’ve relied on are past the point of what is developmentally appropriate or useful for you and your child and can be phased out.
For instance, a child might age out of needing to hold your hand when crossing the street for safety. Accommodations like that one might have once been extremely important at certain stages of development, but over time may no longer be as needed. Likewise, repeatedly answering your child’s calls or texts when you’re away from home may be the right move if they are experiencing illness or other circumstances that warrant it. On the other hand, if you always answer repeated calls and eventually choose to stay home during date night because separation anxiety makes getting a babysitter difficult, your accommodations likely soothe short term distress without teaching how to tolerate and navigate worry.
Instead of creating more opportunities that can reinforce stress and anxiety, SPACE gives you the opportunity to support your child without enabling behavior that isn’t in their best interest.
You’ll still have opportunities to be a trusted source of comfort in your child’s life, but they’ll get the added (and necessary) benefit of learning how to trust themselves too.
You choose the accommodations it’s time to shift, and with your therapist you create a plan that allows you to support your child from a place that empowers them toward self-understanding, and gives you back the boundaries that will empower you too.
If you want to read more about SPACE, you can read our blog, and find more information in the book Breaking Free Of Childhood Anxiety & OCD by Eli Lebowitz.
Who is SPACE for?
Though SPACE takes place in a therapeutic relationship with parents and caregivers of children and adolescents who have anxiety and OCD. For more information, and to help determine if your child is experiencing anxiety or OCD, you can learn more on our blog here.
SPACE can be especially useful for the caregivers of children and teens who are resistant to therapy for a variety of reasons. In a typical therapeutic modality like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, a child can learn how worry works and what it feels like in their body, as well as practices to calm their nervous systems, relax their body, and understand how to use their thoughts to cope with anxiety and face it with bravery. In many instances, CBT can be an incredibly effective treatment, but SPACE exists for the instances when it might not be the right fit for that child.
Some instances when SPACE may be the right therapeutic choice:
If your child is too young to engage in other modalities like CBT
If your child is unwilling to go to therapy
If it is particularly difficult for your child to practice coping skills and emotions
If your child is receiving a different therapy modality but you and their therapist are not resulting in expected outcomes
Not only has SPACE been found to be just as effective as CBT, widely known as the gold standard treatment for anxiety, it has also been found to reduce overall family stress and it can help anxiety disorders go into remission (Lebowitz et al., 2019).
Services
In one-on-one SPACE sessions at Ensemble Therapy, you and your therapist will identify accommodations you are currently executing and determine which ones you and your child will benefit from modifying. In order to effectively support you and your child, you’ll focus on one accommodation to shift at a time and create a plan to implement what you learn in new ways.
SPACE Session with Kaylyn, 45 minutes, $210
SPACE Session with Leah, 45 minutes, $245
How does the process work?
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How does the process work? ♡
Step 1: FREE 15-MINUTE PHONE CALL (OPTIONAL)
This optional first step is for you if you feel like you need more information before you move forward with the process. We’ll have a free, 15-minute phone consultation with you to discuss your general questions and concerns. This is not a time where we will assess yours or your child’s specific needs, but rather to help you decide if this is the right therapeutic modality for your family at this time.
Step 2: SPACE SESSIONS
Therapy sessions begin with understanding what accommodations it may be time to phase out to support you and your child. With your therapist, you’ll develop a plan to address the accommodation you want to focus on, how to discuss new changes with your child, and what support you and your child need during the implementation phase.
Step 3: ASSESS TREATMENT OUTCOMES
Along the way, your therapist will provide guidance and feedback to process your experience and ensure that you and your child have a supportive foundation to work from. In order to provide a consistent environment of support for you and your child, a therapeutic SPACE program generally takes place over 12 sessions. Treatment is complete when you feel confident in your ability to support your child and the intensity of their feelings of worry and anxiety-related behaviors have decreased.
Our Approach
At Ensemble Therapy, we operate from a trauma-informed, human-first approach based in an understanding of child development, psychology, education, kinesiology, and biology, and research-backed intervention strategies.
Your therapist will hold a space of non-judgmental compassion both for the emotional experience that keeps your child reaching for accommodations to try to feel better, and for your learning process as you move from defaulting to less useful accommodations to more supportive alternatives. The process of helping a child develop new tools to overcome or soothe anxiety is not linear, and neither is developing new tools to support them as their caregiver, but your therapist will keep this in mind during all of your sessions together and meet you where you are each day with care and understanding.
READY TO FIND OUT IF SPACE
IS RIGHT FOR YOUR FAMILY?
Meet Our Therapists
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Meet Our Therapists ♡
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Kaylyn Evans is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Registered Play Therapist RPT™ and Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC). She earned her Bachelor’s Degree at Southwestern University in Biology and Psychology and her Master’s Degree in Professional Counseling at Texas State University. Kaylyn is currently working towards her certification in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy. Kaylyn’s goal is to provide trauma-informed, anti-racist, and LGBTQIA+ affirming counseling at all times. Kaylyn has experience working with children, adolescents, and families in a variety of settings including elementary school and community agencies.
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Leah Gilbert is a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor (LPC-S) and National Certified Counselor (NCC). She received her Master’s Degree in Counseling from the University of North Texas (CACREP Accredited Program) and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Texas at Arlington in Interdisciplinary Studies. Leah is currently working towards her Registered Play Therapist™ (RPT™) credential.
Leah has worked with children and families for the last fifteen years in public education, ten years as a school counselor and five as a teacher. For the last two years, she has been the recipient of the CREST Award (Counselors Reinforcing Excellence in Texas) presented by the Texas Counseling Association. Leah believes that connection and building a collaborative relationship is key to the therapeutic process. She will work with you and your child to provide assistance during various challenges, transitions, and concerns.