Coping with School Anxiety

Aug 9, 10 11:49 AM

The start of the school year often brings worry and anxiety for both kids and parents. The following tips are designed to help parents ease the transition for a child who may be prone to separation anxiety.

Avoid reassurances at the point of separation as such often has the opposite intended effect

A reassurance suggests, to an anxious child, that there is something threatening about to happen. Imagine I said to my clients  “Please don’t worry about the ceiling crashing down on us. I’ve made sure that we are in a safe environment.” Would their anxiety not be heightened as their eyes darted upwards and they wondered why the heck would I say that?

Try to calm any of your own anxiety as our kids often take their cues from us.

If I’m anxious about my son going to school–which is certainly an understandable thing to feel for that first-time departure–he is more likely to feel anxious as well. I do well to try to try to calm myself first and then imply that his going to school is as dramatic as a trip to the grocery store.

If your child is vulnerable to anxious reactions, try to familiarize her with the new setting as much as you can.

Familiarity can soften anxiety. Hence, see if you can arrange for a trip to your child’s classroom in advance. (Actually, the school may have already initiated an invitation along these lines.) It is difficult to imagine that competent school personnel would experience this as an intrusion or an odd request. Should you be unable to reach them take your child for a few dry runs up to the point of the hand off. Moreover, the Scaredy Squirrel books by Melanie Watt can be very helpful to read together.

Teach your child muscle relaxation and belly breathing.

Muscle relaxation and anxiety mix about as well as oil and water. Suggest to your child, if she is vulnerable to separation anxiety, that she is less likely to be afraid if her muscles are like a cooked piece of pasta instead of the uncooked variety. Moreover, she is less likely to experience fear if she breathes into her belly instead of her chest.

Consider arranging for someone less engaged with your child’s anxiety to manage the first few days.

If you anticipate that your child will do a white-knuckled clutch of your leg at the bus stop or at school, try to arrange for another caring and responsible adult to take him from your home to the separation point. By itself, this can reduce your child’s distress as (1) he has accomplished separation from you in a familiar setting (i.e., your home) and (2) he will be accomplishing the separation from someone less engaged with his anxiety.

Make the separation clean and quick.

If there is a significant chance that your child will be distressed at the point of separation arrange for a particular adult to take her hand from yours (or whoever else might be bringing her). Then, make this exchange efficiently. Try to avoid offering reassurances or waiting until your child seems calm. Actually, you might do well to expect some crying/screaming and to steel yourself to leave anyway. You could always call the school later to see how she’s doing; if your experience is typical, you’ll likely be told that she cried for a few minutes after you left and then was fine.

Please also see my post “My Child Gets Afraid A Lot. What Can I Do?”

If the above strategies fail, or are otherwise not indicated, please consider consulting with an experienced child psychologist or like professional.

For a referral in your area, click here.

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Using Our Screw Ups to Help Our Kids

Aug 6, 10 1:03 PM

With this entry I hope to illustrate the truth of two psychological formulas: crisis = pain + opportunity and comedy = pain + time.

Our children, as they negotiate awkward developmental challenges, often feel as if they are the first human to go through the turmoil and awkwardness that is at hand. For this reason it can be very comforting to them to hear our related stories of failings and difficulties, assuming they see us as being generally competent. To demonstrate what I mean I offer the story below. I’ve used it with not only my own children, but with many teen clients, to help quell the terror that is often associated with first dating experiences.

At this point in the story I was 16 years old. Having never dated before, and being tormented by my father’s repeated choruses of “16 and never been kissed,” I felt desperate to put the experience of “the first date” in the rear view mirror. So desperate was I that I asked my next youngest sister–with whom I was generally at war–for help. Probably sensing that teasing me about this would be too easy, Sharon took pity on me and put forward a candidate for a first date: Molly (her name has been changed to hide the fact that I cannot remember her name).

As many males who are learning about female creatures have discovered, movies make for good first dates because they reduce the need to come up with things to talk about. So, I asked Molly to Romeo and Juliet and she said yes. Before the movie I considered what rules might apply in such situations. Where I got this from I don’t know, but I decided that a “rule” for such dates was that the guy should put his arm around the girl. Now, I knew Molly about as well as the woman who punched our tickets. However, being a first-born Irish Catholic, I thought it important to follow the rules, so I put my arm around her. Of course, it didn’t take long for my arm to grow as numb and lifeless as a piece of decaying meat…and, then it started to hurt. So, I had no choice but to retract it. But as it was numb and I could not control it well, I bashed the right side of Molly’s head as I withdrew it. A few moments later, as I was feeling badly both about having hit her and for violating the dating rule, I decided to put my arm back. However, as it was still partially numb, I smacked the left side of her head on the return flight. Of course, a few moments later, the pain returned. This time, though, I was determined to gut it out. Finally I could bear the pain no longer and knew that I had to retract it again. This time, however, I resolved, with as deep and as sweaty of a conviction as any 16 year old could muster, that I would clear her head. But, as my arm had become deaf to signals from my brain, I hit her the fullest this second time coming back…trying to salvage some aspect of this date I consulted my mental rule book and remembered that guys should buy snacks, which I offered to do and which Molly quickly accepted (probably just to enhance her safety). With all that had been doing on with my right arm, I didn’t notice that my left leg had gone completely asleep. So, as I got up, I collapsed into the isle. Getting up somehow, I then galumphed my way up to the lobby like some actor playing a hyperbolic version of Igor. Such was my spectacle that when I returned to my seat a couple of people behind me started throwing popcorn at the back of my head.,..needless to say, Molly and I did not have a second date.

As mortifying as that experience was at the time, I have helped so many teenagers feel less alone and consider that maybe he or she is not as big of a screw up as he or she sometimes imagines. Indeed, the pain from that night–in a theater that was subsequently and thankfully torn down– has yielded more opportunities than I can count.

So, think of your mistakes and consider whether sharing them with your child might help you to discover hidden treasures. I would certainly enjoy hearing about any success you have, or have had, along these lines.

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Seven Common Myths About Counseling

Jul 23, 10 8:36 PM

The large majority of adults and kids who might benefit from psychotherapy do not receive it. For example 14-22% of U.S. children meet criteria for a diagnosable psychological disorder, but only about 20% of these kids get effective care. And, even when kids get effective care they usually suffer for years before getting it. Similar statistics are available for adults. This is beneath us as a culture and often yields dramatically painful and unnecessary outcomes (e.g., suicide is the third leading cause of death among people aged 15-24, depression has a higher mortality rate than cardiac disease, etc.).  This post reviews some of the common myths I’ve found that serve as barriers to understanding and healing.

If I enter therapy I might become too dependent on the therapist. Therapy will never end.

The goal of psychotherapy is to foster healthy independence, not unhealthy dependence. So, the aim of evidence-based psychotherapy is to reach measurable treatment goals as fast as possible. Indeed, the chief job of the competent therapist is to make her services obsolete.  While some problems require longer treatment, many do not.

Counseling costs too much money.

Most health insurance polices cover the lion’s portion of psychotherapy. Clients end up being out of pocket only for the part not covered by the insurance company. In addition, the costs are considered a medical expense and may be deductible from taxes. Studies also suggest that trips to a counselor can dramatically reduce trips to the medical doctor, sick days and an assortment of other expensive problems (e.g., divorce, addiction, etc.). Plus, think what it would be like to be rid of any significant psychological pains that inflict you or a loved one. What would that be worth? Finally, there are options for low fee services all across the country; for example, if your local university has a graduate program in the mental health professions they may have a low fee training clinic (the average fee in the clinic I direct is $10/visit), community mental health centers exist across the country, etc.

Only crazy people are in therapy.

This is really a bunch of nonsense. Putting aside the meaning of the word “crazy” for a moment, choosing to be in therapy is often a very rational act. It seems much more irrational to avoid therapy, because of silly myths, when therapy might be helpful in important ways. Effective therapy helps people to identify new methods for overcoming emotional pain and solving life’s problems. What is crazy about the pursuit of such learning?

People who spend significant time and resources on therapy are being self indulgent and selfish.

If effective therapy does anything, it increases a person’s freedom to love. Did you ever try to give to others when you have a sharp toothache? The same thing applies with psychological pain. Those who have been healed in counseling are in a position to be able to love others more and better. How can this be considered selfish?

I’ll get better eventually anyway.

According to studies on counseling, effective psychotherapy promotes healing and recovery. It may not be helpful to wait years for change. Even if change does come, the same problem may resurface later if the central issues have not been sufficiently resolved. Psychotherapy provides a way to confront and resolve problems at their source. It also provides tools for dealing with future problems. Moreover, a competent therapist can direct you to the evidence that supports the methods that he or she is prescribing.

Being in therapy is a sign of weakness. Strong, effective people don’t need help solving their problems.

Maybe in a Rambo movie. In the real world more vulnerability is often found in the person who fears acknowledging human limitations and faults and is unwilling to take the steps necessary to overcome them. Counseling is no panacea and not everybody is a candidate for counseling. However, those who can acknowledge the possible need for counseling may be stronger, and more secure in themselves, than those who cannot.

If I take my kid in for an evaluation, he’ll get the idea that there is something seriously wrong with him.

Experienced child therapists both know that parents are concerned about this and have developed procedures that minimize this risk (e.g., making sure to assess for your child’s and family’s strengths). Besides, a child or teen with a legitimate behavioral or emotional problem is much more likely to think that there is something wrong with him/her, and to have that reflected in others’ eyes, if she/he does not get help. Also keep in mind, as is the case in medicine, that behavioral and emotional problems are much more easily understood and resolved sooner rather than later.

If you are wondering if counseling might be of benefit to you or a loved one, why not look into it? A competent therapist will be able to evaluate whether or not counseling is advisable and, if advisable, what it might be able to accomplish and how long it might take to complete. What do you have to loose, really? (If you’d like a referral in your community, click here.)

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Top 10 Ways to Get Your Teenager to Clean His or Her Room

Jul 9, 10 11:38 AM

Tell him/her that doing so is the only way she/he can get you to not…

  1. send his cutest picture walking in a diaper to his friends’ cell phones.
  2. dance at the next dance she attends (model making a lasso over your head with one hand and smacking your backside with the other).
  3. hold his hand the next time you’re at the mall.
  4. share the name you had for him when he was a baby the next time you give his friends a ride.
  5. rap when her friends come over.
  6. ”accidently” text her boyfriend asking if she has completed her daily prayers yet.
  7. stand up at the next religious service your family attends, at an appropriate point, and ask if you could offer an example of your teen’s virtuous behavior so that other teens might benefit.
  8. keep clapping, after everyone else has stopped, at her next performance (sports, music, acting, etc.), shouting “woo-hoo! go girl go!”
  9. take out an add in the local paper with the caption “For (name of your teen)” with the words “Remember, mommy and daddy will always love you no matter what!”
  10. show up at her school wearing high water pants and green socks and
  • if you’re a mom: bright pink lipstick that you apply outside of your lip line.
  • if you’re a dad: moussed, spiked hair.

Of course, these are meant for the sake of humor only (well, mostly 😉 ). But, if you really are struggling with your teen’s behavior, perhaps a child therapist could help. One place where you might find a local referral is here.

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10 Strategies If Your Child is Addicted to World of Warcraft (WOW)

Jul 3, 10 11:53 PM

According to the 2010 Guinness Book of Records, World of Warcraft (WOW) is the number one “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” or MMORPG, with over 10 million subscribers world-wide. WOW is a fun open-ended online game that can, for some kids, become an unhealthy obsession.  If you’ve determined that your child is overly engaged in WOW, consider these ways of responding:

  1. Try to understand what human need is being met for your child by taking part in WOW. Is it to be liked? Is it to lead? Is it to be competent? An effective understanding of the reasonable goal(s) your child is trying to reach through WOW can give you insights into what is being frustrated in his or her real world.
  2. Try to partner with your child in expanding upon the success she or he is having in the real world. This may be socially, academically, extracurricularly or within your home.
  3. If your child has not identified areas of top strengths, use tools like the VIA Signature Strengths Survey or StrengthsExplorer to generate theories about what  he or she might be very good at.
  4. If he or she has not done well with popular activities (e.g., sports offered at school, the most readily available clubs, etc.), try activities off the beaten path, using your child’s interests or insights from the previous recommendation to guide you.
  5. Look for partners in generating plans for increasing your child’s success in life. This might include teachers (most of whom are most willing to help), coaches, family, parents of your child’s friends, etc.
  6. Try to limit your child’s sedentary electronic pleasures to two hours a day. This is the sound counsel of more than one authoritative body (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics). If your child is doing more than this he or she may be missing out on other important developmental tasks (e.g., getting enough physical activity, advancing in reading skills, etc.)
  7. Explain to your child why you are putting any limits in place. This is done not to solicit approval (e.g., “thank you mother for being so wise and self-less in the administration of your parenting mission”), but to be respectful and loving. Of course, this will not typically mitigate passionate objections to the court from your child.
  8. Put appropriate electronic controls in place. Blizzard (the company behind WOW), has parent controls available within the game. Please click here to get started. There are also a variety of controls available either within many computers and televisions, just call the relevant technical support person. Finally, there are companies that sell products that make it easier for you to put controls into place (e.g., www.familysafemedia.com).
  9. Try to make sure that you are your child have at least one hour a week together where all you do is pay attention to your child and value either what your child is doing and/or saying. Called “special time” this involves  a more intense dosing of attention than  “quality time” (i.e., something else typically captures a parent’s attention  during quality time, such as shopping, fishing, etc.).
  10. There is an army of lean-mean-healing machines available and willing to help you in your efforts to help your child. If you find that this is complex or difficult for you to resolve on your own or that your child is having a toxic reaction to your efforts to establish loving controls, consider taking the step of identifying a child therapist to help. One place to get local referrals is here.

Research suggests that effective parental monitoring is one of the most powerful ways to promote resilience, happiness and wellness in your child. Hence, your well designed  efforts along these lines are usually well worth it!

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Conversation Starters for You and Your Teenager

Jul 1, 10 7:43 AM

Getting a conversation going with a teen can feel like trying to move a building with a crowbar. If you’re having a hard time engaging your teen in conversation, some of what follows may help.

Begin by committing to one hour a week of a unique type of conversation (i.e., one 60-minute period, three 20-minute periods, etc.). In this conversation all you would do is pay attention and express positive thoughts and feelings, including empathy. Try to avoid teaching, correcting, moralizing, etc., during this hour. (Think of this as good practice for when you’re an in-law.) You can sit on your teen’s bed at night, get to a movie before the commercials, use car trips, etc. You could print out the following list and ask your teen to pick some to react to.

Answer both the question, and “how come” you gave that answer:

• The best thing that happened to me so far this year is…

• The worst thing that happened to me so far this year is…

• The thing I like to do the most is…

• The thing I like to do the least is…

• The best thing about you as a father/son/mother/daughter is…

• In 10 years I hope…

• If I had three wishes I’d wish for (avoid wishing for more wishes or cash and it has to be about your own life so “world peace” won’t work)…

• One of my favorite movies of all time is…

• My favorite recording artist is…

• If I could have any job in the world it would be…

• My favorite word is…

• My least favorite word is…

• My favorite TV show is…

• The thing I like best about our family is…

• It would please me if you were interested in…

• The three people who have most influenced my values and thinking are…

• A one-month all expense paid trip I’d like to take anywhere in the world is..

• Three people from history I’d most like to have as guests in our home are…

• An important change I want to see in myself is…

• If I could have any superpower it would be…

• My favorite video game is…

• I think the key to happiness is…

• When I’m on my death bed I hope I can look back and…

• My favorite thing about us as a family is…

• My favorite internet site is…

• Our families top opportunity for growth is…

Three closing thoughts: first, even your teen’s dialogue may seem simplistic (i.e., you want to discuss all the colors of the rainbow but she all she can do is black ‘n white), the value of the exercise is still there as long as you’re attending and valuing. Second, consistent application of this exercise can yield tremendous benefits not only for your relationship with your teen, but also for your teen’s wellness.  Finally, if you find that you cannot reach your teen perhaps your local friendly mental health professional can help. One place to locate someone is http://locator.apa.org/.

Good luck!

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10 Guidelines for Parenting Experts

Jun 27, 10 9:54 PM

Parenting experts abound on the internet, in bookstores and over the airwaves. How is a parent to judge what is sound versus problematic advice, especially when experts disagree? As a way of helping you to judge whether experts are worth paying attention to, I’ve developed these 10 guidelines. As the consumer-parent you can recognize the value of an expert’s advice based on how well she or he complies with these guidelines. (I mean these guidelines for those who offer counsel to parents secondary to their professional qualifications. I do not mean these guidelines to be for parents, or other lay people, who are simply sharing their experience and trying to be helpful in the best way that they can. )

  1. Try not to act holier than thou or imply such.  All parents make mistakes (i.e., have performance deficits). By trying to help parents to learn things that are helpful (i.e., to correct for knowledge deficits), and to minimize performance deficits, it’s easy for parenting experts to come across as holier-than-thou. This is why I believe it ‘s highly advisable for experts to share their own stories of vulnerability and to repeatedly make the point that we all have off days and ineffective moments.
  2. Try to make sure that your recommendations have solid research support in peer-referred journals. It’s so easy to be arrogant, to stop reading and to fall in love with one’s own insights., experience and perspectives. It’s much harder to be humble, nuanced and knowledgeable about the state of our parenting science.  We all do well to put in the effort to know the evidence and to craft our recommendations based on such.
  3. Avoid impractical counsel. Parents live super hectic lives these days. So much of what would probably be helpful might be far from practical for contemporary parents. Effective parenting experts are also efficiency experts.
  4. Offer suggestions that are more likely to yield a bigger bang for the parent’s invested time and effort. Tolstoy put it well “happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way.” Tolstoy’s wisdom is supported by our empirical science. Effective parenting experts try to focus on the more important strategies and issues.
  5. Try to be edutaining. It’s possible to entertain without educating, but it is very hard to educate many without also being entertaining. Effective experts invoke laughter, share interesting stories, promote emotional experiences and otherwise engage audiences as they teach.
  6. Support the finding that parents are like shepherds, not sculptors.  So much of how our kids act, what they feel and how they think is influenced by their temperament (i.e., biologically based personality attributes). For instance, about 50% of how happy people are is determined by their “set point” which is heavily influenced by temperament. (I know each of my 3.0 children could not have been more different from each other before my wife and I had any opportunity to mess them up.) Experts know this and don’t create needless pressure and guilt in parents by suggesting or implying otherwise.
  7. Acknowledge, and integrate into your counsel, the truth that each parent numbers among the world’s leading experts on his or her child. Our job is not to try to replace parent intuition or to shout it down  but to partner with it. This is more difficult to do when the information flow is one way, such as in a book. However, effective experts counsel parents to consider their intuition and knowledge of their child as an essential part of decision-making.
  8. Be empathic. The vast majority of parents I’ve met love their child more than their own life. Is it possible to love more? For this reason, when parents act in an ill-advised or hurtful fashion it’s usually for understandable reasons. To understand these reasons is not to justify the behavior, but it does make it less likely that one will scold or shame a parent. This stance also recognizes that a harsh judgment indicates incomplete knowledge. Moreover, It’s much more difficult for me to offer helpful and effective counsel unless I can “feel” what it’s like to be in the other person’s shoes. To be empathic is to be objective and scientific as each engages a search for truth.
  9. Promote the message that child wellness is intimately linked to parent wellness. It’s so easy to focus on what parents can do for their children and lose site of the fact that it’s much harder to act with intention if one is overwhelmed or fatigued; this is why airline attendants counsel adults traveling with children to put their own masks on first before their child’s. Martyrdom works for establishing religions and governments but it rarely works in families.
  10. Encourage parents to understand the incredible power of effective shepherding.  The high points of the relevant scientific literature makes it clear that parents have tremendous power to promote happiness and wellness both in themselves and in their families. This is where your role can be so very helpful: parents really benefit by receiving the best information and just a little bit of air under their wings.

It is my intention to make this blog consistent with these 10 guidelines while also recognizing my fellow parent’s capacity for lunacy (i.e., to be made crazy by the intense love felt for one’s child–please see the preceding post).

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We Parents are Lunatics

Jun 26, 10 3:56 PM

I was working clinically for 10 years with kids and their parents before I had my first child. (I now have 3.0 of them!) It would seem to me that the parents I was working with would become temporarily insane some of the time. We seemed to have a good relationship, and they seemed to value the service I was offering, and yet they would sometimes become so easily offended or hurt. THEN, I had my first child and I understood within a day what was going on. We parents love our kids so much that it can overwhelm us. In other words, our great love intermittently makes us parent-lunatics.

Before having my first child, Morgan, it would seem to me that the loving relationships I had in my life were like soothing waves that I could float in or swim with as I chose. However, this love was like a powerful wave that knocked me knees over elbows and took me where it would. I remember thinking, just after Morgan was born, that the love hurt and made it difficult to breathe. I also remember, in my efforts to be a good father, how crazy I acted (e.g., insisting on not being parted from Morgan so that the nurse could care for her, that we use a wipe warmer, etc.). And, if ever I forget about my own capacity for lunacy, I have only to monitor myself for a week or so. 😉

My primary goal in this blog, my co-parent-lunatic, is to support your mission to promote happiness and wellness in you, your child and family. But, in doing so I promise to remember my own lunacy when offering resources and making suggestions. But, this is not my only central promise. In the ensuing days I will review a few other ones as well.

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