AT Parenting Survival | Raising Kids with OCD & Anxiety

When parents disagree on how to approach their child’s anxiety or OCD, they do more than irritate each other, it impacts their child’s progress with anxiety or OCD. In this week’s episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast I dive into the top 5 topics parents often disagree on when it comes to their child’s OCD or anxiety. We’ll also dive into why these are such common topics for disagreement as...

Trying to help a child with OCD or anxiety is not an easy task. One reason for that is because we are not steering the ship. This is not our battle. This is not our struggle. Although trust me, I know we have our own struggles on this journey raising a child with OCD or anxiety. But, we don’t get to override our child’s autonomy to smooth things out. I wish we could. The single hardest part about...

We all want our kids with anxiety or OCD to believe in themselves. We want them to try hard things. We want them to push through their fears. But we only have so much control on how motivated they are to do those things to help themselves. We do, however, have control over how we show up to our child’s battle with anxiety or OCD.  When we over accommodate, over enable and cocoon our kids from...

How we reframe anxious thoughts vs OCD thoughts are vastly different. Understanding the nuances of how we talk to these two disorders differently is crucial for any parent trying to help their child. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore the differences between anxiety and OCD and how we would coach our kids through anxious thoughts versus OCD thoughts. 🌸 Want in-depth support he...

Does it really matter if you understand the core fear related to your child’s anxiety or OCD. The short answer - yes.  Of course we will treat anxiety with anxiety tools regardless of theme or core fear. And we will treat OCD as OCD regardless of theme or core fear. But understanding the core fear in anxiety or OCD is like the difference between using a compass to get where you are going vers...

Just because it is the holiday season doesn’t mean our child’s anxiety and OCD take a break. The holidays can stir up a variety of issues for our kids depending on their particular anxiety and OCD themes.  Down time can cause more anxious or intrusive thoughts. The whirlwind of parties, overstimulation and no routine can make emotions run high. It can be tricky to deal with contamination, res...

As parents we can be hard on ourselves. The parenting journey raising kids with anxiety and OCD can come with many ups and downs. Many of us blame ourselves when our child’s anxiety or OCD doesn’t get better. But the truth is you can do absolutely everything to help your child with anxiety or OCD and they still don’t improve. We are only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to our child’s anxiety...

Often it is hard to get our kids into OCD therapy, and when we do, it can be an uphill battle to get them to practice those skills in between sessions. That is why I’m so excited to offer another tool to your at-home toolbox!  In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I’m sharing with you my latest resource, the OCD Card Deck.  We’ll explore how you can use this card deck at home and...

We all want our kids to have strong sibling relationships, but often anxiety and OCD can get in the way. Siblings might feel targeted by the child with anxiety or OCD. They might be on the receiving end of aggression or they might just feel sidelined by how much attention their sibling requires. Just like with anxiety and OCD, we have our role to play when it comes to facilitating strong sibling b...

Are you able to experience happiness while your child is struggling with anxiety or OCD? Do you feel guilty or tell yourself stories about your ability to be “happy” while your child is suffering? Many of us tell ourselves things like, “we can’t be happy if our child is struggling with anxiety or OCD.” But is that actually true? And more importantly, is that belief even helpful? In this week’s AT...

It can be hard enough to help a child with OCD, but what if they are autistic as well? It can be confusing to figure out where autistic traits end and OCD compulsions begin. It can also be a struggle to navigate two worlds that don’t always intersect. That is why I was thrilled to invite Jan Stewart to the AT Parenting Survival Podcast. Jan is a highly regarded mental health and neurodiversity adv...

We may not have full control over our child’s recovery around anxiety or OCD, but we can control how we show up to their struggles. This can be tricky when our mind is bogged down with what-if scenarios.  That is why it is so important to pay attention to the narratives we are spinning around our child’s anxiety or OCD and tap into what emotions are showing up for us , as we show up for them...

The number one struggle I hear from parents is, “My child won’t accept help for their anxiety or OCD.” What are we supposed to do when anxiety or OCD has hijacked the house and everyone who inhabits it? Dr. Alec Pollard has dedicated his career and research to this very question. He is the co-developer of the Family Well-Being Approach (FWBA) and is the founding director of the Center for OCD &amp...

Anxiety and OCD can take a TON of resilience. So when we have kids who generally give up easily, this can impact how they handle their mental health struggles. Some kids have this go get’em attitude and get up every time they are knocked down, while other kids give up before they even begin. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast we’ll discuss why some kids give up so easily and what co...

Many of our kids thrive in non-traditional learning environments. And some of our kids are not able to go to an in-person school due to the acuity of their anxiety or OCD. One of the cons of at-home learning is the isolation it can bring. Isolation can increase anxiety and OCD and make our kids feel disconnected. It is helpful to have a proactive plan on how to connect our kids with others so we r...

It is hard enough supporting our kids with anxiety or OCD, but what happens when they go away to college? We still need to support our kids, but our relationship and physical proximity has changed.  In this week’s AT Parenting Survival podcast I explore the many ways in which our mindset and role shifts when our kids go off to college. We’ll discuss effective ways to support them and foster i...

It is not uncommon for kids with anxiety or OCD to also have issues with picking their skin or pulling their hair. These behaviors are classified as BFRBs, body-focused, repetitive behaviors. Although BFRBs are a common comorbid condition to anxiety and OCD, it is a separate disorder with its own set of therapy approaches. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast, we celebrate BFRB week b...

Often parents who are raising kids with both PDA and OCD get conflicting advice. This can push a parent who is already stressed, over the edge. Are accommodations good or are they bad?  One set of advice talks about leaning into accommodations, while the other set says accommodations are something to eventually stop. The reality is PDA accommodations and OCD accommodations aren’t the sam...

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Stuart Ralph, from the podcast The OCD Stories to talk about his journey from OCD sufferer, OCD podcaster to therapist. We explore how treating kids and teens with OCD requires a different, more flexible approach. Stuart also offers some helpful tips on how to navigate the UK mental health system. Stuart Ralph’s practice, Integrative Centre for OCD offers th...

OCD doesn’t live in a bubble; it lives in our home. It lives in our families. It is not an isolated disorder. It involves the whole family system. That is why family involvement is key to a child’s OCD long term success. Often this is the missing component, even when a child is being treated for OCD. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore how OCD involves the family and what parent...

Anxiety and OCD can create hopelessness. It can feel like such an overwhelming task to overcome these struggles. Often we focus on the end goal. Get them to school. Get them to eat. Get them to be fully functioning. But there are a million smaller goals that get them to that bigger goal. It is easy to focus on the big picture instead of looking at the minute day-to-day goals. But it is in those sm...

OCD doesn’t just involve our kids, it involves us. OCD reassurance seeking is a sneaky compulsion. It gets us to do OCD’s dirty work. We often don’t even know we are talking to OCD. It can feel bad to pull back our reassurance, even if we know it is OCD. It can also be tough on our kids. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about a tool I created to help kids reduce their OCD reassu...

It can be so hard to see our kids tumble and fall. No one wants to see their kids fail. But we rob our kids the ability to learn when we protect them from failure. This can impact how we show up for their anxiety or OCD. It can impact how much freedom we give them. It can also decipher how much we micromanage what they eat, how much they sleep and how long they are on electronics. In this week’s A...

Sometimes we have to do something really scary in order to be our true selves. I started working on a memoir about social anxiety about five years ago. I finally finished the memoir but then six days later my husband passed away.  The memoir collected dust as I tried to piece myself and my family back together. A year and a half after he passed, I revisited the project. I wrote an epilogue de...

If we are openly discussing our child’s anxiety or OCD with them, we might assume that we aren’t missing anything. But it is important to note that just because we see the tip of the iceberg, doesn’t mean we see everything. I am constantly missing, and then discovering, yet another thing that is actually my child’s anxiety or OCD in disguise.  In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast,&nbs...