What is SPACE?
SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. It is an entirely parent-focused program that was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center.
What exactly will I learn?
The course will guide you through understanding how anxiety works so you are prepared to tackle it. You will learn how to make changes in two primary areas that impact anxiety and OCD: support and accommodation of anxiety. I will teach you how to increase support for your child and the common parent-pitfalls that make it hard to offer support sometimes. I will then teach you how to identify accommodation behaviors that might SEEM like they are helping, but are likely just making the anxiety more likely to stick around. I will walk you through, step by step, how to make a solid plan for increasing support and decreasing accommodation. This will include the plan, letting your child know about the plan, and how to follow the plan when inevitably your emotions and your child's emotions will be working hard to derail you.
What is the breakdown of the course content?
Course Introduction
1. Welcome to the Course
2. What exactly is SPACE all about?
How Anxiety Works
3. The Vicious Cycle of Anxiety
4. Personal Boundaries
The Two Pillars of SPACE
5. Support
6. Accommodation
Making a Plan
7. Choosing a Target
8. Writing Your Plan
9. Letting Your Child Know
Implementing the Plan
10. Child Reactions, Parent Tools, and Supporters
Adjusting the Plan
11. Adjustments When Change is Needed
The SPACE Mindset
12. Critical Mindset Reminders
Course Wrap up and Next Steps
13. Wrapping Things Up
How long is the course and how do you recommend I approach the course?
There are two hours and 40 minutes of video content plus supporting documentation to help you apply the steps in the course. I recommend that you give yourself plenty of time between the modules with the action items to thoroughly implement these and not rush through to completion. To complete this course properly, this will likely take at least 1 week with the appropriate amount of time spent in practicing and planning.
What ages is this appropriate for?
This program is appropriate for children of all ages, even teenagers to young adults. The real question to ask to know if it will be helpful to you is whether or not you are accommodating your child's anxiety. If you do any of these things with your child of any age, this course could help:
Reassure your child a lot?
Provide assistance to your child because of their anxiety?
Participate in behaviors that are related to your child's anxiety?
Assist your child in avoiding things that create anxiety?
Avoid doing things for yourself because of your child's anxiety?
Change parts of your family, work, or leisure routine/activities because of your child's anxiety?
Do things that would usually be your child's responsibility because of their anxiety?
What if I can't make it at the time of the course?
This course is completely on-demand which means that once you purchase it, you will be able to log-in and complete it at your own pace, whenever works for you.
What if I need more help than just this course?
I offer parent consultation after the course is completed if you need additional assistance. You can reach out to me at
[email protected] to schedule a time to meet.
Should you need more assistance than a consultation, I can refer you to a SPACE trained therapist in the state that you reside in. Due to state licensing laws, I am only able to provide on-going therapeutic services to those in states that I am licensed in (Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana).
In addition, Dr. Eli Lebowitz has a wonderful book called Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD that is a wonderful guide in all of these concepts.
