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

Lynn Lyons · Reid Wilson

Sep 2013 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

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 author

Lynn Lyons, LICSW, is psychotherapist in Concord, New Hampshire. She has been in practice for 30 years specializing in the treatment of anxiety in adults and children. She travels internationally as a speaker and trainer on the subject of anxiety, its role in families, and the need for a preventative approach at home and in schools.

She is a sought-after expert, being interviewed for her insights in the New York Times, Time, NPR, Psychology Today, and other media outlets.

With a special interest in breaking the generational cycle of worry in families, she authored several books and articles on anxiety, including with co-author Reid Wilson Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous & Independent Children, and the companion book for kids, Playing with Anxiety: Casey’s Guide for Teens and Kids.