Workshop 02 - Getting to Work with Anxious Parents: Make First Sessions Count

Anxiety is the most common disorder of childhood and one of the top reasons parents seek out help for their children. We also know that anxiety is generational, with over 65% of anxious children having at least one anxious parent. When these parents arrive in our offices, they are often desperate for help and looking for direction but are still routinely left out of treatment! Working directly with parents in first (and subsequent) sessions is critical for offering concrete direction, building expectancy, and setting the tone for between session work. This workshop will focus on HOW to get families engaged from the start with an active approach that is direct, skill-based, and works to decrease accommodations and safety behaviors. We’ll address how to immediately tackle the physical symptoms that dominate and distract from addressing the key patterns, how to take the focus off the content (the particulars) of the worry, and how to create active assignments that allow children and parents to practice new patterns.

Educational Objectives:
1. Create homework assignments for families that focus on experiential learning to change anxious patterns.

2. Describe three “elimination strategies” that increase anxiety in families.

3. Use three key questions to increase parental engagement in a first session.