AT Parenting Survival | Raising Kids with OCD & Anxiety

She was visibly shaking. Her hands were trembling and she was asking me to help. Her face was so pale that my own panic started to set in.  This was the start of an anxiety attack. Anxiety and panic attacks can overwhelm both the person having them and the person trying to support them. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I’ll explore how anxiety and panic attacks grow and what we ca...

Anxiety and OCD are hard enough to deal with, but when you sprinkle ADHD into the mix everything can be magnified. As parents raising kids with comorbid conditions, this adds another layer of struggle. You might find things that work for other kids with anxiety or OCD doesn’t work as easily for your child. It can require a different way to approach anxiety or OCD. In this week’s AT Parenting Survi...

It is already tough trying to help our kids with anxiety or OCD, but it is even harder stomaching unhelpful comments and advice. Sometimes people are trying to be helpful and don’t mean to be upsetting. Some people are uneducated. And some people are judgemental and critical. Some people deserve education. Some people deserve boundaries. And some people should just be ignored. In this week’s AT Pa...

It has been so nice to see all these films addressing our children’s mental health issues. The more these struggles can be normalized, the less stigma they’ll be for our kids! A couple of week’s ago I discussed whether you should show your child with OCD the film Turtles All the Way Down . If you missed that one, you can check it out here. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore how...

Raising a child with anxiety or OCD can bring with it so many struggles, including our own grief and overwhelm. It is easy, and tempting, to bury our own raw emotions around our child’s anxiety or OCD struggles. But honoring and processing our feelings is equally important. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I have an honest conversation about the thoughts many of us struggle with but ha...

John Green’s new movie Turtles All the Way Down goes a long way in helping the OCD community educate the world about OCD. But should your child or teen with OCD see the movie? Well, I have mixed thoughts on that. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I dive into the pros and cons of the movie Turtles All the Way Down and which kids would benefit from watching it. 🌸 Sign up for my FREE seri...

It can take so much energy to find a qualified OCD specialist to finally assess and diagnose your child with OCD. But what are you to do when your child rejects the OCD diagnosis?  In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about some common reasons why a child might reject an OCD diagnosis and where to go from there. 🌸 Get in-depth support to help your child with OCD in my online c...

Anxiety and OCD can rob our kids of so many things, including their self-esteem and self-worth. It is easy for them to feel hard on themselves when their anxiety or OCD is knocking them down. Often kids are extra hard on themselves during these times. As parents we are intensely focused on helping our kids navigate anxiety or OCD, but there are some things we can do to boost their self-esteem as w...

What will your anxious kids look like when all grown up? Amanda Stern and I are two possibilities. Amanda Stern is the author of the beautiful and raw memoir, Little Panic , a story about growing up with an undiagnosed panic disorder. I invited Amanda back onto the AT Parenting Survival Podcast to discuss what it was like growing up with anxiety. We discuss what we wish our parents did differently...

There are many assumptions about ERP, Exposure Response Prevention, the go-to approach to treat OCD in kids. Some parents (and therapists) don’t understand how ERP is supposed to work, how it is done and what one should expect. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore the most common assumptions about ERP that are incorrect. 🌸 Get in-depth support to help your child with OCD in my o...

When you bring your child to a cardiologist, you expect they know all the evidence based treatment interventions to help your child. When you bring them to an endocrinologist you assume they are an expert in all things endocrinology. But sadly you cannot assume the same when seeing a mental health therapist. The truth is not all therapists are properly trained and informed on how to assess, diagno...

There is nothing worse than seeing the first signs of anxiety or OCD return. It is a stomach dropping kind of feeling. It can bring all those old emotions flooding to the surface.  But the good news is the return of anxiety or OCD doesn’t mean your child is starting from scratch. All those past skills are still there under the surface. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore wh...

It can be a struggle to know how to help a child with separation anxiety. Separation anxiety impacts the whole family. Often parents jump into doing exposures or challenges around separating, without fully understanding the core fear behind their child’s struggle. In this week’s episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore two most common core fears around separation anxiety and what ste...

One of the biggest questions I get from parents is, “Why does my child’s anxiety or OCD show up more for me?” It can be a source of contention when one parent sees all the struggles and the other parent sees nothing. It can cause people to finger point and waste unnecessary energy playing the blame game.   The truth is…that is the norm.  In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I’ll...

Our parenting style directly impacts how we approach our child’s anxiety or OCD. How do you feel about setting boundaries? What emotions do you feel when your child is in distress? How do you feel when you pull back your accommodations around anxiety or OCD? Our parenting style plays a role in these questions.  Your parenting style wasn’t developed out of thin air. We are a mix of our childho...

The wrong therapist can wreak havoc on a children’s OCD. That is why it is so important for parents to understand what are evidenced-based approaches specifically for OCD. It is also key to have the skills to decipher a qualified therapist from a non-qualified therapist.  When Eve started having intrusive thoughts, she privately went to google to figure out what was going on. Fortunately for...

It can be hard to help kids navigate anxiety and OCD. Sometimes adding some creative ways to help validate, normalize and build skills to handle anxiety or OCD can be gold! One of my favorite ways to do that is through storytelling. Storytelling is a powerful tool. It can help kids understand how anxiety and OCD work. It can help talk about anxiety or OCD without discussing it directly. It can be...

Raising a child with Emetophobia, the fear of throw up, can be an isolating experience. It brings with it all sorts of fears. What if they can’t overcome their struggles? What if they can’t go to school? What if they stop eating entirely? It is important that parents don’t feel alone on this journey. That is why I was so thrilled when Lauren, a parent in my AT Parenting Community , reached out and...

Your child is paralyzed with fear. They are nauseous. They are faint. They are immobilized. It is hard to watch as a parent. For many of us it can trigger our own panicky response.  When our kids are spiraling out of control it can be so easy for us to spiral with them. It often takes a concerted effort to remain calm and be the anchor our child so desperately needs. In this week’s AT Parenti...

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been a helpful therapy modality for many people with anxiety and OCD. Often parents wonder how this therapy can be adapted to help children. I invited Dr. Tamar Black to the AT Parenting Survival Podcast to explain what Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is and how it can help our kids with anxiety and OCD. Check out Dr. Black’s books, The ACT Workbook fo...

One of the hardest parts about social anxiety is the feeling you are the only one with these struggles. It actually feeds into the disorder quite well. It is a story that many of us with social anxiety tell ourselves. No one struggles like you do. No one thinks the way you do. No one would understand. When I had Lori and her colleagues, Katie and Mallory, from The Childhood Collective on my podcas...

Self-esteem and self-confidence can play a big role in our child’s journey with anxiety and OCD. When our anxious kids struggle they can feel overwhelmed with emotions of shame and isolation. They might beat themselves up for being different or for having difficulties.  Self-esteem can also play an integral role in how our kids approach anxiety or OCD. Do they have an I can’t attitude or do t...

As parents we are often in the line of fire when it comes to our child’s overwhelm. When dealing with anxiety or OCD we can feel like we are our child’s punching bag. The truth is, physiologically our kids are often looking for a push-pull conversation. It is easier to see you as enemy #1 rather than facing anxiety and OCD head on. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about how to “...

We all lose it at one time or another. Parents are human. You are human. We inevitably will lose our cool and say or do things that we regret. But those parenting moments hold untapped clues to what is overwhelming us. Those moments hold wisdom, if we are able to move past the shame to see the insight underneath. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast we’ll explore how to handle those moment...

As parents we are often desperate to provide our children with tools to help their OCD. We might scour the internet trying to find an OCD specialist; not an easy feat. Or if we are lucky enough to have found an OCD specialist, we might want to know what we can do at home to fill in the gaps. I often get asked, what does that look like? How can I help my child build their OCD skills at home to make...