What is a Parent Training for Children with Anxiety (SPACE) Group?
Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems. This program was developed by Dr. Eli Leibowitz at the Yale Child Study Center. The goal of this treatment is for parents to learn skills and tools to help their child overcome their anxiety. What we know is that we can’t control other people’s behavior, so SPACE focuses on changing the parent’s behavior to help lessen the child’s anxiety.
This treatment gives the parents the tools and support to respond more supportively to their anxious child and reduce the accommodations that they have been making to their child’s symptoms.
Although the children are considered the patients, the SPACE treatment takes a different approach in that the child or adolescent does not need to attend the treatment sessions.
Who can benefit from a Parent Training for Children with Anxiety (SPACE) Group?
Our SPACE Group is tailored for parents of children who may have a diagnosis of:
- Social anxiety
- Separation anxiety
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Specific phobias
What are the components of a Parent Training for Children with Anxiety (SPACE) Group?
The SPACE Group meets for 8 weeks. During the sessions, parents will learn strategies to reduce accommodation behaviors and develop new skills to support their child’s anxiety management, including:
- Learn specific skills and tools to help your child overcome anxiety.
- Learn how to respond more supportively to your anxious child.
- Learn how to decrease family accommodations to your child's symptoms.
What are the goals of a Parent Training for Children with Anxiety (SPACE) Group?
The Parent Training Group participants aim to achieve:
- Develop a thorough understanding of childhood anxiety.
- Learn concrete parenting skills that can be used to manage your child’s anxiety.
- Improve your self-confidence as a parent.
Group Schedule
Groups run based on interest. If you're interested in one of our groups, please contact us. For skill building and support related to the benefits of this group, MPG can also create a tailored treatment plan based on individual service(s) or other types of support if there is not a group actively running at the time.
Group Leader(s)
- Groups are led by skilled clinicians and/or clinical trainees.
