Embracing SPACE: Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Anxiety and Its Benefits for Your Family

As parents, it's natural to worry about our children's mental health, particularly when it comes to anxiety. While many approaches focus on individual therapy for the child or teen, a newer, innovative method called SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) has been developed to involve parents in the treatment process. In this blog post, we will explore what SPACE is, how it works, and how it can help your family navigate the challenges of anxiety.

Understanding Anxiety in Teens

Anxiety is a normal and necessary emotion that helps us respond to potential threats or challenges. However, for some teens, anxiety can become overwhelming, persistent, and disruptive to their daily lives. This can manifest in various forms, including generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, separation anxiety, or panic disorder.

Introducing SPACE

Developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center, SPACE is a parent-based intervention program designed to help children and teens struggling with anxiety. The primary focus of SPACE is on the role parents play in supporting their child's ability to cope with anxiety. Unlike traditional therapy that focuses on the child or teen, SPACE empowers parents to become active agents in their child's recovery process.

The Key Principles of SPACE

  1. Reducing Accommodation: Accommodation refers to the behaviors parents engage in to alleviate their child's anxiety in the short term. While these behaviors may provide temporary relief, they often reinforce the child's belief that their anxiety is warranted and that they are unable to cope without assistance. SPACE helps parents identify and reduce these accommodations, allowing the child to confront and manage their anxiety more effectively.

  2. Providing Support: SPACE teaches parents to express support and validate their child's emotions while also encouraging their child to face their anxiety. This approach fosters a sense of security and trust, allowing the child to feel more confident in navigating their anxiety.

  3. Collaborative Problem Solving: SPACE involves working together with the therapist to develop a customized plan based on the family's unique needs and circumstances. Parents learn to set realistic goals, create a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations, and devise strategies to gradually reduce accommodations.

  4. Emphasizing Parental Autonomy: SPACE empowers parents to take an active role in their child's treatment, offering guidance and support while allowing them to make decisions based on their knowledge of their child and family dynamics.

How SPACE Can Help Your Family

  1. Empowering Parents: SPACE enables parents to take an active role in their child's recovery process, fostering a sense of competence and confidence. Parents learn effective strategies to support their child while also reducing unhelpful accommodations.

  2. Strengthening Parent-Child Relationships: By validating their child's emotions and offering support, parents can strengthen their bond with their child. This increased connection can lead to improved communication, trust, and understanding within the family unit.

  3. Enhancing Coping Skills: As parents reduce accommodations, children and teens are encouraged to face their anxiety and develop essential coping skills. This promotes self-reliance, resilience, and a greater sense of control over their emotions.

  4. Promoting Lasting Change: By addressing the underlying family dynamics that may contribute to anxiety, SPACE can create lasting change and reduce the likelihood of relapse in the future.

  5. Flexibility and Adaptability: SPACE can be tailored to suit the unique needs and circumstances of each family, making it an adaptable and versatile approach to treating anxiety.

If you’d like to learn more about SPACE or participate in our SPACE group, reach out to us. We’d love to help!