Episode 129: Supporting Anxious Kids without Making Things Worse with Dawn Friedman
/For this week's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast, we are going to dig in into childhood anxiety and specifically delve into the most common missteps that well-meaning parents of anxious kids make that actually end up increasing anxiety in the long run. As a parent to an anxious kiddo, I've found myself caught in a few of these traps and I think my conversation with Dawn Friedman, therapist and child anxiety expert will be so helpful. .
Here's an overview of what we talked about:
What to do when your anxious kiddo is always coming to you for reassurance
Getting clear on your roles with your kid’s anxiety (what's "yours" and "theirs")
Knowing when it’s time to seek support for your kiddos and yourself
If you are looking for more support, visit childanxietysupport.com and follow Dawn on Instagram @dawnfriedmanmsed and on her Facebook page, Child Anxiety Support.
RESOURCES:
Anxiety Relief for Kids by Bridget Flynn Walker (book)
Just Breathe by Julie Bayer Salzman & Josh Salzman (video)
Worry Jar
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody! This is Dr. Laura Froyen. And on this episode of the balanced parent podcast we are talking with Dawn Friedman and we're gonna dig into childhood anxiety and how to help our anxious kiddos actually cope with being anxious from a place of respect and compassion but without enabling them.
So we're gonna dig into this conversation. This is actually something that comes up for me a lot in my clinical practice, you know with my clients and in my own home, I've got an anxious kid in myself, so don I'm really excited to have this conversation. Welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Dawn: Well, thank you so much for having me. I am a therapist in Columbus, Ohio. I work with little kids, big kids, teens and adults, but I don't really get to work with kids very much because of Covid, I had to shut my office and I also run childanxietysupport.com, which is a membership and psycho education support group and course for parents of anxious kids.
Laura: Amazing. I think that's so needed. The way that I see anxiety is that it's this for some people, they're kind of anxiety meter is turned up and it will likely be that way their whole lives that they will, you know, they, it's just the way we're wired and we have to learn to cope with it and the earlier the better understanding how the brain works, how anxiety works its role in our lives and but what I see a lot with folks who are in the respectful and conscious parenting world, you know, these really beautiful, well intentioned family members, parents who are really looking to support their kids. They want to make sure that their kids feel seen and heard and validated, not dismissed and in doing so they lean into the anxieties and the worries. Do you see this too ?
Dawn: I do. And because that's really who my clients come from here in Columbus, Ohio we have a couple of really great, wonderful respectful preschools and they send a lot of clients my waste a lot of anxious kids my way. They're really good at catching those kids in their programs and figuring out those kids need extra support.
And I have found that those of us in the respectful parenting community are so attuned to our children that we tend to get lost in our kids anxiety. And I think there's a couple things that are going on there and one is that high intensity parents like us who care very deeply about doing a good job are often coming to it from an anxious place ourselves often because we are trying to re parent through, we're trying to do something differently than was done in our own family. And so we tend to project our own fears and worries onto our kids a little bit.
And also if we're high intensity, high sensitive people, it's no wonder that our kids inherit our brains and they are also high intensity, high sensitive kids. And I think those two things make us sometimes get stuck in anxiety loops with each other and I am absolutely anti parent blame. I do not do that. I know and trust that the parents who come to my office are doing their best and just need a little support to tweak it a bit so they can figure out how to support their kids' anxiety instead of accommodating their kids anxiety.
Laura: Yeah, I love this supporting instead of accommodating. I think one of the things that is so important for us to understand is that for like you said many of us who have anxious kids were anxious kids ourselves and that was my experience, I was an anxious kid, nobody saw that are recognized that, that what was happening, you know, I had tummy aches you know all the time like and they took me to doctors, no one saw it for what it was, it wasn't a thing in the eighties you know that we were looking for at least not in the midwest and I know blame to my parents but I think that for lots of us we who experienced anxiety as kids that are coming, you know, coming to the realization of like oh that's what it was now, how do I do it differently for my kids and we're but we're still thinking about like what we think we wanted as kids and then we go and do that for our kids.
So like the you know six year old anxious Laura wanted someone to comfort her and see her and validate her and so then I go and do that to my own anxious kid and give those things and that's actually not what I necessarily needed. I needed more cognitive tools to start working with my thought process is working you know, playing around with the thoughts and the worries that were coming in into my head and so I think we have the best of intentions, we never want to dismiss our kids feelings, we want to be fully present with them and but at the same time we didn't know what we needed as kids, we knew what we thought we needed, but we didn't actually know what we really needed.
Dawn: I feel like I know it's totally making sense and I also have an anxious kid and I get stuck in a reassurance loop with her because she keeps coming to me for reassurance and then she's reliant on me to reassure her. Yeah, really, what I need to do is sometimes walk away, which is really difficult because I think the thing is about respectful parents is we're really good at talking and so sometimes we talk too much instead of saying you've got this and now I need to go away from you which is
Laura: Anxiety provoking for us because the last thing we want to do is feel like that we are making our kids feel abandoned by us too. Right.
Dawn: Yes, abandoned. Yes, always. And and the thing I tell parents though is when you're coming in from this because we cannot take any particular parenting decision or choice or behavior out of the context of the big, beautiful relationship we're building and if you have a big, beautiful, respectful relationship, then there is room for you to push back on them a little bit that's going to be okay saying to your child, you've got this, you can handle that is not the same thing as taking them out into the woods and say good luck, get home on your own kid. But it feels like that sometimes to us that that's what we're doing.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I had this moment that came up this morning, my own family with my own anxious kiddo, my husband and I are both anxious. My daughter got a double whammy, a double dose of it. She has some mask acne popping up and she's nine and she went to her dad about it because she had noticed it and he kind of said like, oh it's probably nothing and just dismissed it and then she came to me crying that her dad had just dismissed it, that she, so she had this big worry about her skin and then this other, you know, feeling of being dismissed.
So I know what I did in that moment, but it's really tempting to get into one of those reassurance loops, you know, and so I'm curious about like what do we do with that when our anxious kid is coming to us for reassurance and we desperately want to give it to them, especially when it's their worried over something small or nonsensical, what do we do, especially if we've kind of unknowingly and with the best of intentions, notice listener that dear sweet listener that Dawn and I both think you're wonderful parents with the best of intentions. We've created some of this reassurance loop pattern. I love that phrase. What do we do with that?
Dawn: Well, first of all, we're going to validate that they're upset right? Like you said, that's really what they're looking for. But now they're kind of looking for us to fix it and understand that the anxiety is all about avoidance. How can I avoid this yucky feeling? How can I avoid the risk of this yucky feeling. So maybe she's worried somebody's gonna make fun of her, maybe she's gosh, that's a tough age and maybe she's just feeling bad about herself and I'm not sure what's going on with her, but there's some avoidance in there that she's trying to help ask you to avoid this yucky feeling that she's having right?
Laura: For her, it's the fear of the unknown. She just wants to know what it is like if I just say it's a pimple, you know, it's fine, but if I say I don't, I'm not entirely sure what that is or why that's there, then that amplifies her anxiety. Just.
Dawn: So I would say validate, which is not validate that the fear is real validate that she's having the fear, which again is tricky sometimes when we start like getting ahead, I'm going to try to make sense of this and if I don't tell me about that. So your child comes and says, I'm worried about this on my face and you start, oh it's probably not that you might be getting ahead of it and you haven't heard the validation. And first you just seem to say, I hear you're worried about this.
Laura: Yeah, I just want to hold to the light what you're saying. So it is our instinct to jump to the reassurance that they don't need to worry about this thing. Oh it's fine, it's gonna be okay and then we need to stay in validating. Not that they have every right to be concerned about it, but validating that they are concerned, right? You about this a lot. Right now you're worried about that you noticed this bump on your skin, you picked it and made it bleed and now that it's got you concerned. Just that's what it sounds.
I think it's really helpful for people to hear like what that sounds like versus like, oh you're really worried about that. Going to like, oh yes, I mean, gosh, we don't know what that is. You know, and that's really scary to not know what it is. You know, there's a difference between those two things. Like you can almost hear it in the tone of the voice. One is can amplify the unknown. And we also like you said, don't want to skip the step of validating where they are, their current emotional state.
Dawn: So we're just stating it, right, stating stating it and then we have to stop, which again is hard for us because we love to talk, we're really good at it and then we need to not go towards solving it because that can feel dismissive and again, this is what we tend to do because we're really good at it, we emphasis and validate so much that again, exactly what you were saying, then we are making it worse, like Yes, so what we need to do for ourselves is notice that we're getting caught into their anxiety.
Personal anxiety is super super, super catching. It needs to be because as a species we need to catch when somebody in our environment is anxious for our own safety. So if a kid is anxious we're gonna feel anxious, they're gonna catch it and we're just are ratcheting each other up
Laura: It's like a ladder. Like where you're climbing up the anxiety ladder together when really what we wanna do is notice what wrong of the anxiety ladder the kid is on, meet them there and then help them down the ladder.
Dawn: Yes, because they're gonna borrow our brain, you have to calm our brain down before you rush to be with your kid, be with yourself and notice that you feel yucky, make sure you're breathing for me. I always notice my shoulders go up to my ears, I have to drop them and then we can be neutral with so what would you like to do about it or would you like to try this? Like then we might go towards problem solving depending on the child's age Because at a certain age we want to scaffold their own problem solving.
So how you respond to a three year old who's anxious is obviously really different than how we respond to a 13 year old, but we need to be cognizant of that because sometimes we're we're forgetting that it's our child's job to move themselves through discomfort to a solution or even there's not a solution, they just need to figure out how to calm their own bodies down.
Laura: Yeah, how to sit in the kind of the uncomfortableness of whatever it is that's going on for them. There was like a glimmer of something in what you just said that was, I think so important for parents to here too is that we have to get clear on who owns the anxiety whose anxiety is it like you were saying before that it's really catching and I think that we take on responsibility for our kids anxiety that it is our job to soothe airworthy, It's our job to help them not, you know, make them not have the worry anymore or get rid of the worry.
So I'm kind of curious about that, like what are some things that parents can do to kind of help them feel really settled and firm in like this is my child's worry, this is my child's anxiety talking, not mine. And it's their job to manage it. And it's my job to teach them tools like how do we get clear on our roles with our kids anxiety?
Dawn: I love that you asked that because I have been thinking about it a lot and I've been thinking that we as parents would really help us if we just gave ourselves a chance to sort of run with our anxiety for our kids, gave ourselves a safe space away from our child with someone, maybe that's a therapist, maybe that's a partner, maybe that's with a friend, maybe it's just with our journal that we wrote down all of our fears and worries and just gave them space because we're running from that too.
And I noticed when I was teaching parenting classes, we would be talking about a problem and the model of the parenting classes I thought was that we would list the problem and then we would explain why it was a problem and we'd often dig into it and maybe the problem was my child, I won't put on their shoes in the morning that every single group I taught there would be a five year old who wouldn't put this and reel down.
Often the parents would spiral all the way to, I'm afraid that they won't be able to get a job because they won't be able to get their shoes on and then they'll be homeless and no one will love them and I think we need to have space to acknowledge that things feel that big so that we can start recognizing this is coming from an existential fear that I want my child to have a good life, It's not just about acne under a mask, it's I want them to be loved, and I want them to love themselves. And because when we recognize the way that we spiral in a safe place, then we can start seeing when it's happening in other places too. And I know this sounds so big, but I think these big existential worries really drive our everyday worries with our kids.
Laura: Yeah, I think so too. You know, I'm just as you were talking about this, like, is there a space and room for that too? For doing some of that kind of like going down the worry path with our kids to giving them space for, you know, kind of taking the worry far as far as it goes.
Dawn: I think there can be. I think with very young children, there isn't so much of a need. Their worries are pretty clear, like, I'm afraid of monsters under the bed, I'm afraid they will eat me.
Laura: And that abstract thought, that kind of existentialism, you know, for the younger kids isn't as there. Although I think I do think that young kids, I feel like at five, I feel like is when existential crises start coming up for kids, you know, big questions.
Dawn: And then so I see kids in my office, they show up at five, they show up at eight and then they start showing up in their teens and I think you're exactly right. I think five is an age where those things start coming up
Laura: When did the universe said there’s a big existential question?
Dawn: You know, it's a reason why five year olds are all afraid of robbers because they realize there's a world out there. So I think it depends because with some kids, I think running with that spiral might be too much. And so I think, you know, it's very, very individual. But especially as kids get older, I think that is a really good CBT tool, is to say, let's make an appointment for your anxiety or to say to your child when they come home from school, You can go off on all of your anxious things and bad things that happened for 15 minutes. We're going to set a timer and because what they need is to learn how to contain those worries, that container.
Laura: Okay, so a lot of parents who come to me feel ill equipped to handle their children's anxiety, most of them are in therapy themselves for their own anxiety for the first time in their mid thirties and they're learning these CBT tools. So CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy, it's one of the best approach is the most well researched approaches for working with anxious thoughts, it doesn't cure anxiety, it helps you live and cope with it and it kind of be partnered with it and work alongside it.
Right. And so for parents who are in this situation where they're noticing like their kids, they're in this may be a reassurance sleep where their kid is coming to them with a lot of worries or they're noticing some anxiety symptoms. How does a parent know when it's time to seek support for themselves and helping their kids versus getting their kid into into a therapist's office? And I have a follow up question to that question too.
Dawn: Okay, I always tell people the time to ask for help and get help is when you feel stuck. So if you feel stuck then that's a good time to get help period. There doesn't have to be a particular point, although I will say as I'm thinking about this, so I get a lot of parents and I bet you do too that what is bringing them to therapy is in our community.
A lot of co sleeping and the kid is 89, 10, 12, and the parents are ready to be done with co sleeping or the child is ready to be done with co sleeping in the continuum of co sleeping, maybe they're still laying down with their 11 year old and they want to be able to not do that. I have no, I say whatever parenting works for you. Great, so I don't co sleeping is working. I don't think it's a problem if you're co sleeping with the bigger kid unless you don't like it, or they don't like it.
Laura: And then 100%, yes, yeah, 100% agree that, like, if it's not broke, don't fix it and yes, families all over the world sleep with their kids, it doesn't work just until it doesn't work for one of them, then it changes. So yes, 100% agree.
Dawn: So basically, if you feel stuck whether it's in something like co sleeping or getting out the door from school or you just feel overwhelmed what's going on for your child, then it is time to get help. And that is different for every family.
Laura: Wonderful. Good. I think that lots of parents think like, oh, it's not so bad or oh, we're doing okay. And so they wait until it is more, I think earlier can be better. Even it's just getting support for yourself and kind of getting ahead, get building your toolkit so you can help them if you're noticing some stuff coming up for your kids.
But yeah, I still agree with you now, I feel the problem I'm seeing in my community is in the families who are coming to me because I'm not an active practicing therapist at this point in time. I do, I focus on coaching in courses, the wait lists are sometimes a year long to get in. And so if we're waiting until you're really stuck, then you've got another six months, seven months, eight months before you get to actually see a therapist. That can feel like a long time.
Dawn: That's true. Especially right now because very few of us who see kids in my community, we are offices aren't open and so the very youngest children are not being seen And it's hard to do virtual with a five year old. Yeah, I think the youngest I work with is 9,10 depending on the child and I've got a couple of colleagues. They're pretty burned out though, where they're they're not going much younger either. But also, and this is to be reassuring, the research shows that what is more effective than just therapy with the child is parent training. Yeah.
Laura: I just did a big yes listener you can't see me.
Dawn: Yeah, she did a fist pump. So which is why I did my program and I know there are other people doing programs too and it's just like finding a good therapist, you find somebody that you click with, there's a lot of us who have switched to virtual work right now. Find someone who you click with and yeah, start working with them. Start learning, as you said, anxiety is a lifetime thing. We need anxiety to keep us safe and to make sure that we meet our deadlines and all of those things, we just need to learn how to cope with it and and that since that's a lifetime thing, we can always be learning new stuff, I love doing the research because then I go, oh here's something I can try with my kids now.
Laura: Yeah, I love that and but not everybody has, you know, like I look at my desk right now in front of me out of view of the camera and it's got 10 parenting books on it, not everybody, you know, can can spend time reading all those books, it's so wonderful to have folks like you and your colleagues who work in the anxiety world who are distilling the information down into bite sized pieces that parents can quickly go and implement and I fist pumped because I was, you know, leading you to that place of really understanding, helping parents come to understand that truly you're the best person for this job in helping your kids and that's what all the research says and there's a really good reason for it because you already have an attachment relationship with these kids, you know.
And attachment relationships are beautifully healing there and the ideal context for for doing good work with kids, there's lots of wonderful tools that parents can learn and start using with their kids now, some kids, my kids know that I'm a feelings doctor and sometimes they don't like it when I slip into that role and so sometimes, you know, there's certain dynamics where you do need outside help or you need someone else and you know, there's school counselors that are usually well trained in CBT to can help. But one of my favorite books for this topic that I recommend to my clients all the time is Anxiety Relief for Kids by Bridget Flynn walker. Have you seen that one?
Dawn: I'm looking up to see if it's on my shop with my kindle,
Laura: So that one is one of my favorite ones and it basically just teaches the parrot how to do CBT. I love it, but not everybody likes to work in learning from books. So when you're working with families, what is like three of your favorite kind of anxiety stopping tools or anxiety, you know, tools that you, that you're quick and easy that parents can implement, I want you to give away all your secrets. But,
Dawn: I was gonna say it's so hard because it's so depends on the kids, every kid who comes in my office already knows how to breathe. In fact, they're pretty sick of it. So stick with the breathing. You guys don't give it up, but understand that has a limit and very often the kids don't understand why they're breathing. So there's actually a great video and I think it's just called breathe and it's specifically about anger, I can see you're googling, I'm gonna see if I can google for it.
Laura: I'll put it into the show notes, my team will put it into the show or if you send me the link will pop it in.
Dawn: Yeah, it's Just Breathe by Julie Bayer Salzman, Josh Salzman. Yes, it's terrific. And I show that to kids because it's kids actually explaining brain science and talking about breathing and it's specifically about anger, but I show it in all of my trainings, it's so terrific. So that is one of my favorite things. The other thing is we were talking about.
Laura: Wait, hold on, just a second. I love that. I think kids want to be in the know they want to know their how their brain works. And I think so often times when we use like take a deep breath the and beautiful, wonderful, well intentioned parents, you know? Yes, but I think when we, we say that to our kids, they interpret it to mean calm down a little dismissive or a little bit like don't be this way anymore.
It feels like put a lid on it, stuff it down kind of, you know, I know that that's not the intention that most parents have when they tell their kids to breathe, but I think that's the way it gets interpreted and there's lots of ways that miscommunication can happen between parents and children, I know exactly what you mean. So many kids, I feel like come into my practice and they're like, if I get told to breathe one more time but I love that idea of having them, you know what the breath is doing for them, That's beautiful. Okay, alright and then you would talk video.
Dawn: That's a great one. And then with about containers. So one of the things that I did in my office off and I have a sand tray and the kids would build their worries in the sand tray and then we would put a lid on it and they would leave it at my office and you can do that at home. So you can that can look like a lot of different ways with an older kid that can journal their worries. Like I was saying we can and then shut it that we can draw pictures of it and we can crumple up those pictures or tear up those pictures.
You can even you're outside, you can put them in the fire pit depending, you know people but there are ways to build containers. You can even have a worry jar where kids put in their worries and then screw the lid on it. It's gonna look different for every kid. But it does give them the idea that you can have worries. You don't need to solve them. You can visualize that container. You can give them a literal container to help them with that visualization. I remember when I was in fifth grade and I was having trouble with multiplication and up all night worried about it.
And of course again we didn't know it was anxiety and I created a visualization for myself where I would put them the multiplication tables in a shoebox, put the shoe box on a shelf, shut the door to that room and it was the only way I could go to sleep. So sometimes I tell kids about that and invite them to think about.
Laura: Aren't kids brilliant. I think kids are amazing. You came up with that, you know that that was something that you just intuitively knew how to do. I think we got to trust our kids to in this process of helping them figure out.
So teaching kids that that worries can be contained and put away and then helping them come up with what do you think is the best way for your worries to be contained or put away? Some kids are worried that they'll forget about the worries, They don't want to burn it. Some kids want the worry gone and sent away. I think kids are brilliant. I think we can trust them to know those things. They just, sometimes a little nudge in the right direction, you know around this piece. I love that making the container for the listeners who follow me on Instagram.
I do have a highlight on my Instagram page where my daughter and I made her worry jar together. So if you, you know, if your listeners are looking for like a visual of what that can look like. Hers has a dragon in the bottom who guards her berries because she gets very concerned that she'll forget to worry about something.
And so she has a dragon and her worry jar who guards it? Another one that my clients love on Amazon, you can get this paper called flying wish paper. It's kind of just like tissue paper and you can draw or write your worry on it and then you roll it up into a cylinder and light it on fire and it flies up into the air and it's safe to do inside, which is super cool. Okay, so container, that's number two.
Dawn: Let's see what's another one. I'm trying to think of something because I use those with even younger kids and I'm trying to think of something that I do with older kids. Well this is less about anxiety in particular, but I think it's really helpful is I am a great believer, like you said, kids want to know how things work. And so one of the things and I just talked about this on my Instagram is so I'm holding this up for you to see, I have these really short, these are child development, like one page, this is what your eight year old does is what your 10 year old does.
And of course I have a lot of child development books on my bookshelves and I will invite kids to read those with me to talk about what's going on for them. So, Oh, I can't remember what age it is, I can't remember if it's eight or nine, but there's an age where kids are terrible tattletales. 6-7 is a tattletale. 7-8 is nobody likes me, I'm going to run away.
But also this is they worry about cheating, but they'll cheat themselves to win and they feel bad about themselves. I remember this, I remember feeling like there is something wrong with me, I can't do these things and so I often tell kids you are not supposed to do these things. Look in this book, this is actually what you're supposed to be working on. You are growing, you're going to get better at this. We have that vision or at least sometimes we need help having that vision for our child because we are afraid for them.
But if we can hold that for them, you are growing, you are getting better all the time. This is not always going to be that scary. And we can show them, we can literally sit down and say, look eight year olds worry about that. It's okay, you're not always going to be this undone by your worry. And that is, I find so many kids have such relief, you know, the latter age, so older, elementary and early teens, it's all identity formation.
So we don't want them to become so identified with their anxiety that to give it up would be to lose a piece of themselves. So we want to let them know that they are growing and anxiety may be a part of their experience but it is not who they are. And for those of us who have anxiety, we can appreciate how much that can make us feel stuck. So we can help them not be stuck about it.
Laura: Oh my gosh, yes. This who am I without my anxiety, who would I be? Yeah, it can be scary to let go of piece of your identity. So if we've got young kids and we are starting to feel like they're anxiety is very close to who they are, like they feel like they are their anxiety or they are their worry, how can we go about helping them get some distance kind of right from the beginning, objectifying and you know, moving it outside of themselves so that they can really look at it and see it as this is I have an anxious part of me, I have worries in me but they're not me, do you know what I mean? Like how can we help them with that from the beginning?
Dawn: I think there's a couple of ways and again, your mileage may vary with your child and I think you made a really good point too that if you sort of have an anxiously shaped brain, if you have a brain that's prone to anxiety, your brain is going to be a part of you all of your life and so you're gonna need to learn how to come alongside it.
Right? So I think part of it is letting them know that there are many aspects of their brain so that the kind of people who tend to be anxious temperament traits, they tend to be high intensity so we can let them know you're a big feelings person, you feel things big, you feel joy big, you feel worry big because then it's not just anxiety, it's these other wonderful qualities. High sensitivity is a temperament trait associated with anxiety and we can say you're a pretty sensitive person, you're gonna need to take care of yourself.
And that might be particularly worrisome day, you need to wear your squishy pants so you feel a little more comfortable in your body. And the other thing is a temperament trait that is highly associated with anxiety is negativity and and all this negativity gets a bad rap because it's so negative. But the truth is negativity as a gift. If I'm being operated on by a surgeon, I want a surgeon who is able to spot worries who is able to say I need to double check, I didn't leave my sponge in my patients.
That's a negativity trait, negativity trade is somebody who can spot concerns and plan for them. What a great quality, we just don't want to be run by those. So it's terrific if you remember to pack an umbrella because it might rain. It's not terrific if you're so worried about rain, that you can't fall asleep the night before the picnic. So helping them understand this is a temperament trait. It has wonderful qualities, but you're the boss of it. It is not the boss of you. So, so that's part of it for younger children. What is sometimes useful?
And actually my 17 year old daughter has found this useful, is naming the anxiety because that helps make it more like a companion and her therapist. And I thought this is great. So I hope that he doesn't mind that I'm sharing this. You can also feel it is he said, I'm gonna call your anxiety Nicholas Sparks because it always makes you cry. And so she'll say Nicholas Sparks is going off in my head right now, but it helps her separate herself from that feeling she's having.
Laura: I love that. Yes, okay, those are beautiful things. I asked you for those kind of three things. Right? So, breathing. Really understand why you're breathing, containing it, normalizing. It was that third one. They're really helping them understand that this is a normal part of development and that they are not alone in it.
This kind of this common humanity that they are. It's very developmentally appropriate for them to be concerned about these things. And then this last piece of taking a look at it. Kind of befriending it coming alongside it and seeing it outside of yourself, I think that those are beautiful. So you mentioned your daughter's therapist helped her come up with the name Nicholas Sparks cause her anxiety always makes her cry and it just reminded me that sometimes anxiety can present in other ways too, right?
So some kids get really worried and and tearful with their worries, but often times for kids, anxiety can look like anger and angry outbursts, big dis regulation and so can we just closing in on our time. But for those parents who, I think it's just really important that we can start seeing some of those anger hitting yelling, I hate you through an anxiety lens. Can you talk for a minute on that too.
Dawn: You know, I always say that the kids who come to my office either anxious or angry and all the angry kids are anxious, I think that's actually incredibly, incredibly common because anger or anxiety is either inward and that often looks like depression or its outward and that looks like behavior problems and so I think that is, yes, that is incredibly important to see and it makes sense because it's fight flight or freeze, right?
And so some of those kids are fighting if you have a kid who is angry, what I have noticed is those parents are actually accommodating it a lot more because the anger is scary and the anger is a kid who trashes their room who hits parents or and this really scares parents is hitting themselves or is saying things like I hate myself, I want to die, you hate me, you don't love me. Those are really scary.
If that's happening then I think that is a clear sign that you need and deserve help and support because that is really tough stuff and you need someone who's not gonna be blaming, who's not going to be say saying oh it's because you've given him too much leeway, I wouldn't let my kid get away with that. Those are not helpful comments, I understand how parents get there and you need to find someone who understands how you got there and it's going to help you start getting out of it and I say this with great love and concern, it will get worse before it gets better because they have learned to amp up and so when you are no longer accommodating they're going to try what works which is amping it up a little further but we can plan for that. We can plan for that while we're helping them learn how to manage their anxiety.
Laura: Okay Yes, I love everything you just said and it just made me think of another question so what does it look like to no longer accommodate your child's anxiety? I feel like a classic one that I hear parents in the respectful community, parenting community get caught up in is my child is scared to go to the bathroom alone or my child is scared to go to you know upstairs alone when we are no longer accommodating things like that. What does it look like?
Dawn: We're gonna take little tiny bites, little tiny steps. We're not just going to throw your kid to the world's parents are always worried about that. So the parents were going to choose where is the place that you want to stop accommodating and it has to be comfortable for you. So parents often come to it and say I don't think my child will be able to do that but we're not talking about your kid yet. We're talking about your accommodation.
So where is it that you feel most comfortable stopping that accommodation or what are you most tired of doing? So if you really want to pee with the door shut then that's a good start. That's that can be what it is. You're not going to do all the separation anxiety, you're not going to try to to make them go to the birthday party themselves, you're just going to try to pee by yourself. Yes, I say I love you very much and I know you can handle this and I'm going to pee by myself and then you're going to do it and they're gonna wail and cry and bang on the door and you're gonna feel guilty and you might be in there crying while you pee but you know what then you're both gonna have done it and you're gonna have tolerated your child's discomfort with it. And your child is gonna realize they can do it. Now.
You may make a particular plan for that child. Like would you like to do this thing while mommy pee’s? I would say don't do anything that is going to make your life harder. Like mommy will put on a show for you because maybe you don't have time to put on a show every time you go pee, right? But it's about you learning to tolerate your child's discomfort so your child can learn to tolerate their discomfort and then big celebration for everybody because you did it lots of hugging lots of cheering, lots of bragging about what a great job your kid did. So they can brag about themselves.
But it is those baby steps because as your child learns to tolerate discomfort in small ways, they can start bringing that to other things and you start pointing out to them, you're a really brave person. You can do these hard things. Remember how you let me pee with the door shut, you're a hero. So I wonder what you can do next.
Laura: Yeah, I love that. And I think that anxious kids also like to hear like I knew you could do it do that. I like that kind of that like assurance that like my parents knew I could do this. Yes, we are worried, we weren't worried that you could do this. We knew you when you were ready. You would you would be able to do this.
Dawn: And that is the really hard thing to because again, as wonderful loving parents and I see parents do this a lot. They undermine without meaning to. So they'll say to their child, okay, you're gonna do the thing and the kid goes great and then the parent goes, so you're gonna do the thing, right? So you've got this right? Like they don't realize they think they're being reassuring, but actually they're sending the message of their kids. I don't think she thinks I can do this. So you can have a lot of those feelings. I always say I can go to my husband with all of my fears and all so that I don't visit them on my kids, right? So I say to the kids, you got this, what's going on? You need to have an outlet. Have an outlet and a place for your own fears too. But don't visit them on your kids
Laura: And project that confidence.
Dawn: Oh, it's hard work. We can we can do hard things.
Laura: We can. It is so, oh my gosh, don this was such a great conversation, thank you so much for this. I want to make sure I have your links already. We'll put them in the show notes. But I do just why don't you let people know where they can find you because some people like to hear it verbally where they can find you on Instagram and figure out how to get to work with you. Your membership sounds amazing.
Dawn: I'm pretty being excited about this membership. So you can find me on Instagram at Dawn Friedman MSED. And you can find me on Facebook at child anxiety support and my website is childanxietysupport.com. If you go there you can download an anxiety assessment and once you've done that you can schedule a 20 minute call with me if you want to talk about the assessment and I'm not always gonna tell you that the membership is a good fit for you. Sometimes I'm gonna recommend you do something else first because I want you to do, it's going to be most effective.
And then if the membership does seem like a good fit, It's 30 days free because we're parents were busy and I wanted to give you lots of time to forget to log on to the membership and then remember to log on to it. And then the Child anxiety Support program has a course called Strong Kids Strong Families, which is about managing accommodations, turning those into supports and CBT Family, which is a library of resources, of ways to bring CBT learning to your family and a bunch of other stuff too. Plus people who understand where you're coming from and I'm always available in the membership.
Laura: I love that. I think community is really important. I think that parenting these kiddos can feel really, really lonely, especially like it's lonely enough when we're doing things differently than the mainstream parenting anyway. And then to add in this extra layer of having an anxious kiddo, it can be really lonely. I think that community is so beautiful and, and Dawn I really appreciate the the integrity that you just spoke about this with. I think so many people, you know, just want more people in their programs. I really appreciate finding someone who I can share with my community who is going to have integrity.
It's not the right fit for everybody, and I want you to find the right fit for your family and that there's lots of options out there and I will work for some people and I won't work for others. I feel the same way I have a membership as well, and it's not for everyone. Our goals aren't always aligned and it's okay to find I know that, you know, some of the guests that I've had on here, people who listen, go and work with them and take their courses, and that's wonderful instead of mine, I really appreciate finding people who feel the same that
Dawn: I love when I'm able to refer somebody to a better fit therapist like that.
Laura: Yes, I think it speaks to that. I don't know about how it is for you, but for me, I really just love parents and kids and I really just want them to find the home and the support that's right for them. That's really all I want.
Dawn: Yes. I want to say my favorite client is a struggling mom, an unhappy mom. She's my favorite client.
Laura: Okay, well, so this was so wonderful. Don I so appreciate you sharing all your wisdom and knowledge with us. Thank you.
Dawn: Thank you. I had so much fun.
Laura: Me too.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out um and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!