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Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD

A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents

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Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD

By: Eli R. Lebowitz
Narrated by: Barry Abrams
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About this listen

Parenting an anxious child means facing constant challenges and questions: When should parents help children avoid anxiety-provoking situations, and when should they encourage them to face their fears? How can parents foster independence while still supporting their children? How can parents reduce the hold their child's anxiety has taken over the entire family?

Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD: A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents is the first and only book to provide a completely parent-based treatment program for child and adolescent anxiety. Parents will learn how to alleviate their children's anxiety by changing the way they themselves respond to their children's symptoms - importantly, parents are not required to impose changes on their children's behavior. Instead, parents are shown how to replace their own accommodating behaviors (which allow anxiety to flourish) with supportive responses that demonstrate both acceptance of children's difficulties and confidence in their ability to cope. From understanding child anxiety and OCD, to learning how to talk with an anxious child, to avoiding common traps and pitfalls (such as being overly protective or demanding), to identifying the ways in which parents have been enabling a child's anxious behaviors, this book is full of detailed guidance and practical suggestions. 

©2021 Oxford University Press (P)2021 Tantor
Anxiety Disorders Compulsive Disorders Mental Health Parenting & Families Personal Development Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Relationships Health Child Anxiety
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What an insightful message to parents, the offering and understanding of how to work with anxiety and its behaviour gives hope that all is not lost and there is light in the tunnel. Thank you for lifting my heart with this hope.

Outstanding!

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A great book but very frustrating that it does not come with a PDF for the worksheets which you get in the book. This means I need to buy the book too

Brilliant book but no pdf!

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I read the book as I work with families who are vulnerable. I am always looking for strategies for the many unique and complex situations I find myself and my families enduring.
I loved this book as it tackles the subject confidently without assigning blame. I could also visualise how helpful this will be for my families and give them the language to increase their confidence. I would definitely recommend for anyone, my own children are in their mid twenties and it helped me to reflect on their childhood, some of my misgivings and supported me to break some of my own guilt in how I felt I should or shouldn't have handled different situations. Thus book will last a life time. Thank you.

Great support and easy listening

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While I understand that constantly accommodating an anxious child and avoiding all triggers can sometimes reinforce anxiety, I was disappointed with how heavily this book focuses almost entirely on reducing accommodations — without offering enough guidance on emotional support.

To be fair, the book does provide scripts, but they are mostly centred around how to tell your child that accommodations are being reduced. These scripts tend to follow a similar pattern: acknowledging that it’s hard, validating feelings, and encouraging the idea that the child will become more confident over time. While that has value, it’s not the kind of support I was hoping for.

What’s missing are practical, real-life examples of how to comfort a child while they are experiencing anxiety. For instance, if a child is scared to sleep alone, the focus shouldn’t just be on removing support, but on how to gently guide them through that fear. Things like sharing relatable experiences (“I was scared too when I was little”), normalising their feelings, or offering gradual steps (reading a story together, staying for a short time, then slowly reducing support) would have been much more helpful.

Similarly, when a child is stuck in a spiral of anxious thoughts, there is very little guidance on what to actually say in those moments to help them feel safe and reassured while still building resilience.

The overall message often feels like: reduce accommodation and the child will adapt. But without enough emphasis on emotional safety and connection, this approach can feel too abrupt and, in some cases, potentially distressing for a child.

I believe children need to feel safe and supported in order to build confidence — not simply left to cope on their own. This book would have been much stronger if it balanced reducing accommodations with clear, compassionate guidance on how to emotionally support a child through those changes.

Advice to reducing help to the child , dissapointed

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