TPP 288: Natasha Daniels Talks About How to Help Kids with Anxiety or OCD
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
41 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 13 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main focus of this episode and who is the guest?
A lot of times intuitively as a parent we think if I can just not have my child triggered then they're gonna be okay. If I can have my child with sensory motor O C D just go to the bathroom whenever she feels like it or or guarantee her that there's a bathroom. it will go away. Or if I can tell my child, you're not a bad kid, you know, you didn't say the F word, don't worry about it, that it will just go away. And and sadly, the more we intuitively just reassure our kids or we accommodate them by giving them access to whatever they need to do for their compulsion, the O C D grows.
Welcome to Till Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rieber. Many members of the Tilt community requested that I bring child anxiety and OCD therapist Natasha Daniels onto the show, so I'm excited to be sharing this episode with you. Natasha is mom to three kids with anxiety and OCD, the author of Anxiety Sucks: A Teen Survival Guide, How to Parent Your Anxious Toddler, Social Skills Activities for Kids, and It's Brave to Be Kind. She's also the creator of AT Parenting Survival.com, the YouTube channel Ask the Therapist, and the host of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast.
Natasha has been featured In the Huffington Post, Scary Mama, Psych Central, The Child Mind Institute, and The Mighty. So in this conversation, we look at OCD and anxiety, how they're similar, how they're different, the common and not so recognized ways OCD shows up, and why it's sometimes misdiagnosed, what OCD and anxiety might look like in younger kids, and best practices for supporting kids with anxiety or OCD. I really love this episode because I was that parent who completely missed the fact that my own child was struggling with anxiety because I had a totally different idea of what it actually looked like. As you'll hear Natashan explain, my experience was not unusual. So I hope that this episode is helpful in broadening our definitions of anxiety and OCD and maybe even connect some dots for listeners.
All right, here is my conversation with Natasha. Hey Natasha, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Yes, you are a requested guest, by the way. You were already on my list of people that I needed to have on the show and then I I got a couple emails even in the past couple months, maybe because anxiety is, I imagine, skyrocketing right now. But people really wanted to hear from you, so I'm excited to be having you on the show.
Well,
well that's nice to hear. Yeah. You've got fans out there. So can you tell me a little bit about just your work in the world? I've already read your bio, but talk more just about your sweet spot and your why for doing the work that you do.
Sure. So I am an anxiety and OCD child therapist and I did have a private practice, which I recently closed, and provide online resources for parents who are raising kids with anxiety or OCD of all ages. I do have three kids with anxiety and O C D so I, you know, kinda eat, live and breathe it. And I grew up with anxiety myself. But ironically I went into this before I had my first child. So it happened kind of backwards. Some a lot of people think I got into this because of my kids, but it actually It's just the universe laughing at me. So my why is like my actually my dad was severely mentally ill and so I went into my graduate program thinking I was gonna help adults and they kept putting me accidentally in kid programs and then I fell in love with kids.
So that was kind of the the beginning.
So I have to ask you a question then. I before I started TILD, I used to write books for teens, self help empowerment books for teens. And so I kind of assumed that I'd really know what I was doing by the time I got to parenting a teenager. I'm just wondering, you started this before you had kids. Did you feel really prepared to handle whatever came up and has that bared out?
No is the the short answer, which I think it's probably for all of us.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main focus of this episode and who is the guest?
0:00–6:19
2
How does Natasha Daniels describe the different ways OCD can appear in children?
6:19–11:09
3
What are some uncommon forms of OCD (e.g., moral, scrupulosity, symmetry) that parents often miss?
11:09–15:53
4
Why are OCD and anxiety frequently misdiagnosed or overlooked in kids?
15:53–21:06
5
How are OCD and anxiety similar and how are they fundamentally different?
21:06–25:36
6
What exposure‑based strategies (ERP) does Natasha recommend for treating child OCD?
25:36–29:58
7
How can parents support highly gifted or philosophically‑inclined children with anxiety and OCD?
29:58–38:55
8
What resources and community tools does Natasha offer to help parents navigate anxiety and OCD?
38:55–40:54
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
TPP 266a: A Conversation with Poet and Advocate LeDerick Horne
TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids