Breaking the Patterns of Childhood Anxiety: What Parents, Schools, and Mental Health Providers Must Know (and Do)

Because anxiety is the most common mental health issue in both adults and children, it’s impossible to be in clinical practice, work in a school or see families in a medical practice and NOT have anxious families show up, desperate for help. The problem, however, is that common "coping strategies" that focus on controlling or minimizing symptoms do not address the larger patterns of family anxiety; instead, they often inadvertently strengthen anxiety and reinforce anxious family patterns. This full day in-person workshop will focus on HOW to get families engaged from the start with an active a...Read morepproach that is direct, skill-based, and works to decrease accommodations and safety behaviors. The goal? How schools and parents and clinicians can work together to foster consistency and skill-building.

You'll learn:
• The main reasons that focusing on content and symptoms make anxiety stronger
• How to get a family moving from the first session with concrete steps and plans
• How to address the physical symptoms that dominate and distract from addressing the key patterns
• Why a focus on the content (the particulars) of the worry and the diagnosis keep families stuck
• How to create active assignments that allow children and parents to practice new patterns

Whether you've been to trainings with Lynn before or are new to her approach, this program will ADD skills that both address existing anxiety patterns and prevent them from taking hold. (Attendance numbers will be limited to allow for optimal learning.) Less...

Learning Objectives

• Describe three "elimination strategies" that increase anxiety in families.
• Explain to children and parents how avoidance and accommodation create anxiety.
• List three key components to maintaining school attendance.
• Create resources to share with families that promote a process-based approach to anxiety.
• Create homework assignments for families that focus on experiential learning to change anxious patterns.

Target Audience

Thursday, September 18, 2025

08:15 AM EDT - 02:30 PM EDT