Parenting a Child with Anxiety or OCD
Parenting a child with anxiety or OCD can be emotionally exhausting. You want to comfort and protect your child from distress, so you find yourself constantly on alert, trying to anticipate their fears before they overwhelm them. At the same time, you may notice your child avoiding more and more, and worry they are missing out.
Children and teens with anxiety may avoid school, social activities, speaking in public, or being alone. They may seek constant reassurance from you, ask repetitive “what if” questions, ask you to speak for them, or melt down when routines change.
Children and teens with OCD become distressed by intrusive thoughts or fears that don’t seem to make sense. You might notice rituals like repeated washing, checking, mental “reviewing,” or intense reactions when things don’t feel “just right.” At times, your child may try to involve you or other family members in their avoidance or rituals and may become highly distressed when you don’t respond in the way they want.
Over time, it’s common to feel worn down, worried, and unsure how to help—especially when your best efforts don’t seem to ease your child’s distress.
How We Can Help
For parents of children struggling with anxiety and OCD, we use Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE), a research-backed program that teaches you to:
respond to your child in ways that helps reduce their anxiety, and
reduce behaviors that may unintentionally keep anxiety or OCD going.
In SPACE, we will focus on changes you can make to your own behavior that will help reduce your child’s anxiety; you will never be asked to make your child change their behavior. Although children do not attend sessions in SPACE treatment, they remain the focus of care. In other words, you are attending counseling to help reduce your child’s anxiety or OCD symptoms and to increase their functioning. Helping your child is at the heart of the work we will do together.
A core part of SPACE involves helping you respond to your child’s distress with supportive, confidence‑building statements. Rather than trying to eliminate anxiety or fix fears, you will learn how to communicate belief in your child’s ability to handle discomfort and uncertainty. This helps children internalize confidence and gradually face fears on their own, even when anxiety is present.
In a well‑intentioned effort to help their child feel better, parents often begin to accommodate anxiety or OCD, for example by answering repeated reassurance questions, modifying family routines, avoiding triggers, or helping with rituals. While these accommodations are completely understandable—and are the norm not the exception in parents of anxious kids—they can inadvertently reinforce anxiety and OCD over time. In SPACE, we work together to gently and thoughtfully identify which accommodations may be maintaining your child’s symptoms and create a plan to reduce them in a way that feels manageable and supportive for both you and your child.
It’s important to know that in SPACE treatment parents are never asked to be harsh or sudden in their approach. SPACE is delivered in a collaborative, supportive, and compassionate manner, and is paced carefully to build your child’s confidence and support their healing from anxiety or OCD.
For parent counseling sessions you have the option to either meet in person at our office or online via telehealth.
How to Get Started
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Click the button below to choose between booking a free 15‑minute consultation or sending us a message with any questions.
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During our free 15-minute call, I’ll invite you to share why you’re seeking services and answer any questions you may have. If we both feel it’s a good fit, we’ll schedule your first session.
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We’ll typically start with weekly 53-minute sessions. Sessions are available in person at our Northeast Seattle office (near University Village) or online via telehealth.
