Hi, I’m Ilia Jones, licensed professional counselor in Suwanee, Georgia, and I wanted to talk to you about a training that I’ve been taking called SPACE, which stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. It is a structured approach where I work with parents whose children are anxious and are being accommodated in lots of ways at home to try to relieve the anxiety symptoms. These accommodations might look like letting your child sleep in your bed at night, walking them into school when you would rather they take the bus or walk themselves, or changing family routines because of your child’s anxiety.

In SPACE, we first work on identifying all of the accommodations you are making for your child’s anxiety. Then we talk about your child’s anxiety itself, what tends to trigger it, and what things actually help in the long term versus what only helps in the moment but keeps the anxiety going. After that, we will write a letter to your child explaining which accommodations you are going to stop doing.

In that letter, you will also include a supportive statement that communicates both empathy and confidence: you will validate your child’s feelings while also expressing your belief that they can handle their anxiety and cope with difficult situations. The focus of SPACE is on changing the parents’ behavior, not the child’s, and the therapy is done with the parents only, not with the anxious child. It is designed specifically for parents of anxious children, but it can also be helpful for parents of young adult children who are struggling with “failure to launch.”

So, if you are a parent who feels stuck in patterns of accommodating your child’s anxiety and you want to help them become more independent and resilient, this might be a good option for you. Let me know if that is something you are interested in, and you can like or subscribe if you want to hear more of my content. Thanks.