37. Why is a child in therapy on their own a problem?

Today is the first day of my summer series in which I am focusing on emotion regulation and anxiety management skill-building. Over the next two months, the goal here is to help families develop the understanding and skills they need to help children and teens start their new school year off on the right foot.

I have touched on this before, but a major mistake I see is when a therapist is working alone with the child or teen, trying to work on their skill development. However, emotion regulation and anxiety management is a family process. (After all, the greatest predictor of anxiety disorders in kids is having parents who model anxious behaviours.)

When we look at things like resilience and emotion regulation, child skills are the last to develop. (Check out my resilience pyramid: https://drcarolinebuzanko.com/pyramidofresilience/).

Resilience is more about what we receive from the world around us than the skills we have. Therefore, we first need to ensure the environment is set up for emotion regulation success. A key part of that is ensuring that the adults in that child’s life are responding to anxiety and other bog emotions in helpful ways when they show up. And trying to make a child feel better is not helpful.

Parents and caregivers must take the role of active leadership and set boundaries for anxiety and other big emotions. Find out more in today’s episode! And be sure to join me for the rest of the summer where we will be focusing on building parents' and caregivers' co-regulation skills, stress management, and of course, the kiddos' skills in emotion regulation as well.

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