[ad_1]
-
Listening Audio story
The first time Jessica Calise remembers that her 9-year-old son Joseph had an anxiety attack, it was about a year ago, when it was supposed to happen when from a concert to the school. He said that he had a stomach ache and that he could vomit. "We spent all the performance in the bathroom," she recalls.
After that, Joseph struggled every time he had to do something alone, like taking a shower or sleeping in his room. He begged his parents to sit in front of the bathroom door or let him sleep in their bed. "It's heartbreaking to see your child so upset and having the impression that he's going to throw up because he's nervous about something that, in my mind, it does not matter, "says Jessica.
Jessica decided to enroll in an experimental program that was very different from other anxiety therapies for children she knew. It was not Joseph who would see a therapist every week, it would be her.
The program was part of a Yale University study that addressed children's anxiety by teaching their parents new ways to respond.
"Parents' responses are an integral part of anxiety in children," says Eli Lebowitz, a psychologist at the Yale School of Medicine, who developed the training.
For example, when Joseph was afraid to sleep alone, Jessica and her husband, Chris Calise, did what he asked for and comforted them. "In my mind, I was doing what I needed," she says. "I would say:" I'm right outside the door "or" Come sleep in my bed. "I would do everything I could to make sure he does not feel worried or worried. "
But this comforting – what psychologists call housing – may be counterproductive for children with anxiety disorders, says Lebowitz.
"These accommodations exacerbate their child's anxiety, rather than anxiety," he says. This is because the child always relies on his parents, he explains, so that children never learn to cope with stressful situations by themselves and that they can not cope with stressful situations by themselves. they never learn that they have the ability to cope with these moments.
"When you provide a lot of accommodation, the unspoken message is," You can not do that, so I'm going to help you, "he says.
Lebowitz is asked if it would be helpful to train parents to change this message and encourage their children to cope with fears rather than fleeing them.
Currently, the established treatment for anxiety in children is a cognitive-behavioral therapy administered directly to the child.
In the past, when researchers had tried to involve parents in their child's therapy, study results suggested that parent training in cognitive-behavioral therapy did not make much of a difference for the child. recovery of the child. Lebowitz says that this could be due to the fact that cognitive-behavioral therapy requires the child to change his behavior. "When you ask parents to change the behavior of their children, you set them up for very difficult interaction," he said.
Instead, Lebowitz's research seeks to find out if training only parents without including direct child therapy can help. He is conducting experiments to compare cognitive-behavioral therapy in children with training for parents. A study of this approach was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry last month.
Jessica Calise attended a 12-week training for Lebowitz parents as part of a follow-up study whose results are not yet published.
Once a week, she went to Yale University in Norwalk, Connecticut, for an hour-long session with a therapist. Like all parents who attended the Lebowitz training program, Jessica began to develop a plan with the therapist about how she and her husband would stop infiltrating when Joseph became anxious.
According to Lebowitz, the key to doing this is to make children feel heard and loved while using supportive statements to build their confidence. Parents should "show their child that they understand how terrible it is to feel anxious," he said. They have to accept that their child "is really anxious and not just looking for attention," he adds.
The next step is to tell children "that they can tolerate this anxiety and that they do not need to be saved". It helps to give them the strength to face their fears, says Lebowitz.
This approach was difficult at first, says Chris Calise, Joseph's father. He is a construction equipment operator, about 6 feet tall, with a frame as solid as brick. "The most difficult hump for me was the way I was raised," he says, hitting his fingers against the kitchen table. "I've always thought about how you do things [is to say], & # 39; Switch to something else. You're okay. Suck it up. But it was obvious that what we were doing was not working. "
The parents are committed to putting a plan in place for Joseph to feel comfortable sleeping and taking a shower alone.
"It was the first steps I was saying:" I'm not going to stay [outside the bathroom]but I'll come back and I'll check in five minutes, "Jessica said. So, I would say, "I know it scares you, but I know you can do it.You'll do well, recognizing the anxiety and providing the reinforcement statement."
At first, it was slow, says Jessica. But every time she was trained, Jessica praised Joseph when he managed to pass the time alone. "[We’d] Say like "Wow, you're a rock star! You were nervous and scared, but you did it, and you can do it, "she said.
And, slowly, Joseph started spending more time alone, ending up sleeping all night. "It was about halfway when you really started to notice big differences," recalls Chris. "He was becoming more confident, he just acted alone without us having to ask him or tell him."
In the recently published Lebowitz study, many parents had a similar experience. At the end of the study, nearly 70% of the 64 children assigned to the parent training experiment showed no anxiety.
"It's amazing – it's really exciting – these kids had never met a therapist and were as likely to cure their anxiety disorder as children who had 12 sessions of the best therapy available," says Lebowitz of results of his recent published study.
Parent training seems to work because it allows children to cope with their anxieties, while parents bring their love and support from afar, says Anne Marie Albano, a psychologist at Columbia University who did not participate in the study.
"You train a little child, but you do not take over.This helps him find his own way of coping and overcoming the wave of anxiety that they have" , she says. "It reinforces their confidence."
This suggests that parent training has a lot of potential to advance the treatment of anxiety in children, says Albano. "This is preliminary, but this document is very exciting for me because I have worked for 30 years in this field," she said. "This treatment brings parents, finally, and focuses on how parents need [to stop] take charge, to break the cycle of anxiety in children ".
The training of Lebowitz's parents is theoretically similar to traditional therapy, says Muniya Khanna, a psychologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and director of the OCD & Anxiety Institute in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the work. "But it comes from a different angle," she says. "It's about lifestyle change and says, yes, if you change the way of life and family life, it can have almost the same effect as changing the child's theoretical understanding about [anxiety]. "
Khanna thinks that combining this parental program with traditional therapy could yield even better results, especially for children who have not responded to behavioral therapy alone. "It's encouraging for families where children may not be ready, from a developmental or emotional point of view, to take cognitive-behavioral therapy," she says.
The study leaves many questions unanswered, adds Albano. "This is only a short-term result – we need to do a follow-up [with] children at six months, at twelve months, or even at several years, "she explains.It remains to be seen whether the benefits of parental training will continue as the child grows, but It will also deepen research if the same techniques will continue to work as children reach the age of adolescence.
Jessica and Chris Calise say that they even use the techniques they learned as part of the parent training program with Joseph's twin sister and older brother, Isabella and Nicholas. "It's important to validate your children's feelings and show them we care," says Jessica. "I think it taught us to communicate better, I think it made us better parents, very honestly."
Joseph says that he no longer fears being alone. He does not like it, "but it suits me," he says. He learned to banish the frightening thoughts that would come when he was alone and kept him awake at night. "If I have a nightmare, I just change the subject into something fun," he says. "So I'm fine."
New fears arise from time to time – like a fear of vertigo recently discovered. But with the support of his parents, Joseph says, he also learns to confront them. "I think it's going to be okay," he says. "I'm just going to try to do it."
Angus Chen is a journalist based in New York. Follow him on Twitter: @angRchen.
9(MDAxODEwNTYyMDEyNTM4NDM3NDE1NWI3Yw001))
[ad_2]
Source link