Parent Skill-Building Programs
Straight Up Treatment offers a variety of parent support and skill-building programs including behavioral modification and SPACE, which stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions
The treatment focuses on changes that parents can make to their own behavior, they do not need to try and make their child change. Children and teens typically do not have to participate in treatment. This approach has been clinically tested and found to be just as effective as individual CBT therapy for children struggling with various forms of anxiety.
SPACE treatment is our frontline treatment approach to helping children who are ambivalent, unmotivated, or resistant to participating in individual therapy, and are struggling with anxiety related challenges. We also often recommend SPACE treatment for young children under the age of 11 years old, that require significant emotional and behavioral support from parents.
Starting on parent-skill building first allows parents to respond more skillfully to their child’s anxiety driven behavior, and to learn how to model more adaptive ways to respond to anxiety triggers. Children and teens learn most about how to manage distress, by observing and modeling parent responses. SPACE also helps parents learn how to stop enabling and reinforcing anxiety interactions.
What does SPACE treatment look like?
One of our specialized clinicians would meet with either one or both parents (ideally), for about 8 to 12 sessions, either in-person or virtually. Children may also be invited to join a session, if further behavioral observation or assessment of symptoms is needed. Treatment length, frequency, and interventions are customized to tailor each client’s needs.
Child Focused Therapy
We also offer individual CBT for children and teens struggling with anxiety, depression, OCD, social and academic challenges, and self-esteem issues. We recommend considering individual therapy for children ages 12 and older, that are able to verbalize and work through thoughts and feelings without significant parent involvement. We are specialized in helping children and teens with anxiety learn the tools and skills needed to face their fears, increase bravery and resilience, and boost self-esteem.
For child-focused therapy to be helpful and effective, it is important that your child is willing and motivated to participate in therapy. We do not recommend forcing children to see a therapist, as this usually leads to barriers in developing a safe and authentic relationship with their therapist, as well as resistance to learning helpful ways to manage stress, anxiety, and difficult emotions. We want to ensure that therapy feels like a collaborative and intentional experience, which we find to be most successful when working with clients of all ages.
We may also recommend a integrative family therapy approach in which parents work with a parent-specialist on our team to learn parent support skills and tools, while their child works with a different therapist on our team for individual support, in order to have collaborative and cohesive, yet individualized support as a family.