Exploring SPACE Helps Children with Anxiety

A big cat walks through the snow with her cub.

The SPACE approach, by Dr. Eli Lebowitz, is a parent-focused initiative to help children manage their mental health. It teaches parents skills and tools to help their children overcome things like anxiety and OCD. Rather than put the full responsibility on the child, their caregivers are encouraged to analyze and change their own behavior in relationship with their children in order to reduce anxiety. SPACE is a process for parents to move through with a skilled and trained therapist to help parents identify behaviors and interactions with their children that may be inadvertently accommodating a child’s anxiety or other related symptoms.  It then goes several steps further by coaching parents to formulate a way to propose and enact change that will shift their relationship to the child’s anxiety or related symptoms and then identify and engage a network of supporters to support parents’ efforts to sustain these important changes.   The process creates a pathway for anxious children to be able to better understand themselves and work through their overwhelming emotions.

In order to get a better idea of the implementation and effectiveness of the SPACE program, I spoke with Starobin Counseling's Sarah Jaques, LMSW. Sarah has been trained in the SPACE approach and often uses it when working with her younger clients and their parents!

Why do you think SPACE, and focusing on parents, is so important?

Sarah: It really puts the control in the parent’s corner. In this model, we’re not asking the child to change anything like in more traditional therapy. Often kids don’t want to address anxiety, because to them, it’s like “if I’m able to avoid it, then why would I want to face it?” So, SPACE helps parents ask themselves, “Are there things that we are doing in our family system that might be accommodating that anxiety?” A lot of times parents’ natural instinct is to want to protect their kids when they feel like they’re in danger or distressed. So, their natural response can be to help their child avoid that anxiety.  Protecting children is a constructive parental move in dangerous situations and circumstances.  But when a child is experiencing anxiety and there is no actual threat to personal safety,  avoidance functions in a way that feeds the anxiety.  The child doesn’t get to face their fears and see that they can overcome them, so it makes the anxiety bigger and bigger. With SPACE, what parents get to do is recognize when they are letting their child avoid situations, and if so what are some of the ways that they can change that up and talk about removing some of those accommodations. This is something the parents can control so that the child can start to face some of those anxieties themselves. Another thing I love about the focus on parents is that SPACE makes it really clear that parents aren’t to blame for their child’s anxiety. Psychology has had a really dark history with blaming parents, especially mothers. SPACE though, talks about how it’s a natural response for parents to want to swoop in and take the pain away from their child but that anxiety makes it different. You have to make your child face the distress.

What drew you to implementing the SPACE program?

Sarah: I chose SPACE because of the focus on what can be controlled, which is parents’ responses. And often, when parents come to SPACE, they’re very motivated. They’re seeing their child in distress, and their own lives are being really affected. And, I’ve had experiences before where kids are brought in to work on their anxiety, and the kids don’t really have motivation to work on it. Avoidance has become a way of coping, so it can be a really big step for them to try and work on facing their fears. Instead, with SPACE, there’s the focus on how it’s not just the child who’s experiencing anxiety, it’s a whole family system of “what are we doing to allow the child to avoid facing their fears?” So, I thought it would be more effective, and do definitely find it to be more effective, in helping to treat, especially little kids, and those children who aren’t really motivated. 

What changes have you seen since implementing SPACE with clients?

Sarah: It’s been really exciting! With SPACE, when you’re phasing out accommodations that parents make, you go step by step. First, taking one accommodation away, then when the child’s doing a bit better, you can take the next one away. But, I found with some of these cases, when you take the first one away the child’s confidence grows to this place of “Wow, I can handle this one thing.” Then, that really generalizes to all other areas, and it’s been really cool to see that! I love hearing, “our child is feeling more confident,” “they’re doing all these different things,” “they’re not so scared all the time.” I also love seeing the parents, who are coming in with their own anxiety and frustration, being able to let go of all of that weight.   

Sheisa Naderi is our Social Media Intern at Starobin Counseling.   She’s a 2nd year student at University of Maryland, College Park majoring in Psychology and is also part of the Media Scholars program at UMD. Sheisa offers peer mental health counseling through a program at UMD and previously volunteered for the International Rescue Committee supporting refugee families as they resettle in the area. 

Sheisa Naderi

Sheisa Naderi is our Social Media Intern at Starobin Counseling.   She’s a 2nd year student at University of Maryland, College Park majoring in Psychology and is also part of the Media Scholars program at UMD. Sheisa offers peer mental health counseling through a program at UMD and previously volunteered for the International Rescue Committee supporting refugee families as they resettle in the area.

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