Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children

With anxiety at epidemic levels among our children, Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents offers a contrarian yet effective approach to help children and teens push through their fears, worries, and phobias to ultimately become more resilient, independent, and happy. How do you manage a child who gets stomachaches every school morning, who refuses after-school activities, or who is trapped in the bathroom with compulsive washing? Children like these put a palpable strain on frustrated, helpless parents and teachers. And there is no escaping the problem: One in every five kids suffers from a diagnosable anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, when parents or professionals offer help in traditional ways, they unknowingly reinforce a child's worry and avoidance. From their success with hundreds of organizations, schools, and families, Reid Wilson, PhD, and Lynn Lyons, LICSW, share their unconventional approach of stepping into uncertainty in a way that is currently unfamiliar but infinitely successful. Using current research and contemporary examples, the book exposes the most common anxiety-enhancing patterns—including reassurance, accommodation, avoidance, and poor problem solving—and offers a concrete plan with 7 key principles that foster change. And, since new research reveals how anxious parents typically make for anxious children, the book offers exercises and techniques to change both the children's and the parental patterns of thinking and behaving. This book challenges our basic instincts about how to help fearful kids and will serve as the antidote for an anxious nation of kids and their parents. ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Reid Wilson, PhD, is a licensed psychologist who has an outstanding reputation in the field of anxiety treatment. He directs the Anxiety Disorders Treatment Center and is the Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Wilson has written two well-received publications in the field of anxiety, translated into nine languages and endorsed by the most highly esteemed professionals in the field. He is author of Don't Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks and the coauthor of Stop Obsessing! How to Overcome Your Obsessions and Compulsions. He is also the coauthor of Achieving Comfortable Flight, a self-help kit for the fearful flier. He designed and served as lead psychologist for American Airlines' first national program for the fearful flier. He served on the Board of Directors of ADAA for twelve years and was Program Chair of the National Conferences on Anxiety Disorders for three years. Lynn Lyons, LICSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist in private practice. She specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders in adults and children, including generalized anxiety, phobias, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and performance anxiety. She is a sought after speaker and consultant who presents nationally and internationally on the topics of the anxiety in the family, managing childhood anxiety in schools and medical settings, and pediatric hypnosis.