The core feature of CBT is helping children and teens realize the link between their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and shed light on how they each affect and drive one another. Children with anxiety frequently experience “thinking errors” that result in more anxiety, avoidance, and being stuck in a vicious cycle.

It is very easy for caregivers to feel overwhelmed and lose their temper when their child is misbehaving, being physically aggressive, throwing temper tantrums, and/or being impulsive and hyperactive. Very few caregivers have had the opportunity to be coached live with their child in a playful manner. PCIT is a program for children aged 2-6 years old in which the therapist partners with caregivers to strengthen the relationship with their child(ren) and learn to set limits in a healthy and effective way. PCIT does so by using child-led play with the parent present to learn skills that increase the child’s self-esteem, improve emotion management, and reinforce positive behaviors.

SPACE is a parent-based treatment program for parents with children and teens with a variety of anxiety presentations and OCD. Parents who participate in SPACE learn specific tools to help their child overcome anxiety by focusing on changes that parents can make to their own behaviors to instigate change in their child’s behaviors. Parents are taught to respond supportively, compassionately, and firmly to their child’s anxiety, so as to decrease getting “tangled up” in the anxiety cycle.

ABFT is the only empirically supported family therapy model that targets both the depressed teen and their caregivers. Designed to decrease depression and suicidality in depressed teens, ABFT is a therapeutic approach that involves strengthening the emotional attachment between the teen and their caregivers by fostering open and honest communication, repairing wounds within the parent-child relationship, increasing mutual respect, and building listening and understanding, to create an emotionally-protective and secure caregiver-child relationship. ABFT is a short-term therapy, typically involving 12-16 sessions.

Rather than learning how to change thoughts, ACT encourages children and teens to stop wishing that their unpleasant thoughts and emotions would “go away.” Instead, ACT teaches children to become mindful and calm observers to their thoughts/feelings, and move in the direction of their values, or what is truly important to them in their lives. Children learn to not to get tangled up in unpleasant thoughts and feelings and move in the direction of their personal values.

ERP is at the core of all anxiety disorder treatments. ERP teaches children and teens to gradually and safely confront the thoughts, images, objects, and/or situations that provoke fear and anxiety. ERP is very active and uses strategic interventions to expose anxious children to their fears, help them realize their immense bravery, and teach them that their fears cannot hurt them.