With anxiety at epidemic levels among our children, Anxious Kids,
Anxious Parents offers a contrarian yet effective approach to help
children and teens push through their fears, worries, and phobias to
ultimately become more resilient, independent, and happy.
How do you manage a child who gets stomachaches every school morning,
who refuses after-school activities, or who is trapped in the bathroom
with compulsive washing? Children like these put a palpable strain on
frustrated, helpless parents and teachers. And there is no escaping the
problem: One in every five kids suffers from a diagnosable anxiety
disorder.
Unfortunately, when parents or professionals offer help in traditional
ways, they unknowingly reinforce a child's worry and avoidance. From
their success with hundreds of organizations, schools, and families,
Reid Wilson, PhD, and Lynn Lyons, LICSW, share their unconventional
approach of stepping into uncertainty in a way that is currently
unfamiliar but infinitely successful. Using current research and
contemporary examples, the book exposes the most common
anxiety-enhancing patterns--including reassurance, accommodation,
avoidance, and poor problem solving--and offers a concrete plan with 7
key principles that foster change. And, since new research reveals how
anxious parents typically make for anxious children, the book offers
exercises and techniques to change both the children's and the
parental patterns of thinking and behaving.
This book challenges our basic instincts about how to help fearful kids
and will serve as the antidote for an anxious nation of kids and their
parents.
