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Hi!Sometimes children feel their anxiety in their bodies as panic symptoms. It results in physiological symptoms. Sometimes the anxiety comes as “worry thoughts.” These are known as cognitive symptoms. Finally, anxiety can also express itself as a behaviour, such as when a child avoids going to school, going swimming, or doing things that lots of his friends […]

One of my very young (7-year-old) students was experiencing a variety of worries and anxiety symptoms. We learned and practiced a number of strategies, including identifying red thoughts that increase anxiety, and green thoughts that lower anxiety.One of his more challenging symptoms was panicky sensations, such as sweating, shivering, shaking, breathing heavily, heart beating fast,

(30-second read)After completing a school evaluation recently and deciding that a school behavior chart might be very helpful, I showed a lovely mom some sample behavior charts and asked her if she’d have the time to make one for her son’s school staff. She readily agreed.I did not expect it to look this pretty. In

(One minute read)What do you do when a child constantly finds reasons to complain, and does not show appreciation even when you try so hard to please him?Last week, we discussed the strategy of validating the child’s feelings of disappointment, sadness, etc. But what if you’ve done this for weeks on end and the child

Happy Chanuka!! So you made the effort to buy each child a special Chanukah gift that they would hopefully enjoy. And there’s that one child in the family who is never satisfied. She wants what her brother got (a remote control car), or she wants what her sister got (the pink scooter) even though you

When someone asks me what to do about their child or student who has difficulty with transitions, say the child doesn’t want to shower or do homework after playing, or if the child loves to read but then doesn’t want to switch to math in class, or if the child went to a friend’s house

In the last week alone, I shared this sheet with parents almost daily, and sometimes even three times a day! Our children learn our values from the rules we create and live by, and from the seriousness and assertiveness with which we convey these rules. Sometimes, when kids are being “difficult,” it’s because they don’t know our

Last week’s email focused on teaching kids to self-occupy using a sample poster with a variety of activities on each. This week, there’s another “picture” (step #2 of the RGBT 6-step process) depicting a child’s thought process of doing both the reds and greens. These pictures are mostly stick-figure art, which most people already know

Just about every parent of a normal healthy child has heard their child complain, kvetch, or nag at some point in their life, “I’m bored! I’m bored!” Whose responsibility is it to entertain children? I’m of the opinion that it is not a parent’s responsibility to constantly find fun things to do to ensure that our children

(2 minute read) Action Plan is a step-by-step plan that one sticks to until completion. (2 minute read) Have you tried lots of different strategies, different therapies, different therapists, each one for a really short time? Say, you tried praising for one week, time-outs for two weeks, validating for one more whole week, but nothing