Kathryn Hecht

I don't just do it for fun.

Although, believe it or not, sometimes it's very fun.

I do it for kids like Sammy, because there is a method to this madness.

And after a decade of clinical practice helping kids be brave, it's become clear to me that the method, exposure therapy, isn't just the gold standard treatment for child anxiety and OCD.

It is a secret parenting playbook for raising kids that thrive.

I want to share that secret playbook with you today.

But before we talk about what to do, we need to talk about what we are up against.

It's a wild, worried world out there, folks.

According to the National Survey of Children's Health, pediatric anxiety diagnoses rose by nearly 30 percent from 2016 to 2019.

And that was before COVID.

But you don't need stats or lists.

You have felt this, because thanks to evolutionary biology, when kids get anxious, adults get anxious too.

Now, I have two girls, and home is the hardest clinic that I have to work in.

When one of my little gals looks up at me with the big, teary eyes, aka the mommy bat signal, my nervous system does the same thing that yours does.

It responds as though I have discovered that the kitchen is on fire.

The amygdala, the watchdog in our brain, starts barking, and the fight-or-flight system kicks in, and adrenaline surges, and there is this instant, magical transfer of distress.

Her emergency becomes my emergency.

And in an emergency, what do you do?

You rescue the child.

Now, I am proof that professional degrees do not make you immune to this.