The Worry Free Parent

If you have a daughter, it would be surprising if she doesn't struggle with anxiety and worry--either in short episodes or for longer periods. For a variety of reasons, childhood anxiety rates are soaring, especially among girls. Today's parents need to know what contributes to anxiety and worry and how they can empower their daughters to overcome troubling emotions. In this immensely practical book, veteran counselor Sissy Goff shares how you can instill bravery and strength in your daughter. Addressing common age-specific issues, Goff gives you the tools to help you and your child understand why her brain is often working against her when she starts to worry, and what she can do to fight back. With your help, she will find the anchoring truth of God's strong, safe love for her and the confidence she needs to thrive.

Worry is contagious... but you can stop its spread Anxiety has an amazing ability to spread. Time and time again, when veteran counselor and parenting expert Sissy Goff has an anxious child or teen in her office, she's found they have at least one very well-intentioned but anxious parent. Anxiety is contagious, and it's likely affecting your kids, distracting you in the present, and making you feel like it will define your family's future. It doesn't have to be this way. With over 30 years of experience helping both children and adults, Sissy offers you practical, well-researched tools that will make a difference in your life--and the lives of your children. Learn how to · uncover the roots of your own anxiety · process anxiety in healthy ways rather than passing it on · model bravery · discover a place of deeper, freer connection to your kids Here is the help you need to experience freedom from anxiety, raise confident, courageous kids, and become a worry-free family in an increasingly anxious world. "When meeting with parents who express worries about their kids (or themselves), I first offer encouragement and then a resource--a tool to help them feel calmer and more equipped. This gem of a book does both."--CHINWÉ WILLIAMS, PhD, therapist and coauthor of Seen: Healing Despair and Anxiety in Kids and Teens through the Power of Connection "Goff's therapeutic know-how adds authority to the text, and her conversational tone and client stories will help readers see themselves in her advice. Parents concerned about their kids' stress will find this a valuable resource."--Publishers Weekly Also available: The Worry-Free Parent Workbook, a companion resource that provides clinically proven exercises to help you pinpoint the best anxiety-fighting tools for you and your family

With anxiety at epidemic levels among our children, Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents offers a contrarian yet effective approach to help children and teens push through their fears, worries, and phobias to ultimately become more resilient, independent, and happy. How do you manage a child who gets stomachaches every school morning, who refuses after-school activities, or who is trapped in the bathroom with compulsive washing? Children like these put a palpable strain on frustrated, helpless parents and teachers. And there is no escaping the problem: One in every five kids suffers from a diagnosable anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, when parents or professionals offer help in traditional ways, they unknowingly reinforce a child's worry and avoidance. From their success with hundreds of organizations, schools, and families, Reid Wilson, PhD, and Lynn Lyons, LICSW, share their unconventional approach of stepping into uncertainty in a way that is currently unfamiliar but infinitely successful. Using current research and contemporary examples, the book exposes the most common anxiety-enhancing patterns—including reassurance, accommodation, avoidance, and poor problem solving—and offers a concrete plan with 7 key principles that foster change. And, since new research reveals how anxious parents typically make for anxious children, the book offers exercises and techniques to change both the children's and the parental patterns of thinking and behaving. This book challenges our basic instincts about how to help fearful kids and will serve as the antidote for an anxious nation of kids and their parents.

Anxiety-Free Kids (2nd ed.) offers parents strategies that help children become happy and worry-free, methods that relieve a child's excessive anxieties and phobias, and tools for fostering interaction and family-oriented solutions. Using a unique companion approach that offers two books in one—a practical, reader-friendly book for parents and a fun workbook for kids—this solutions-oriented guide utilizes the cognitive-behavioral approach to therapy and integrates the parent in the child's self-help process. Research has shown that if left untreated, children with anxiety disorders are at higher risk to perform poorly in school, to have less-developed social skills, and to be more vulnerable to substance abuse. Covering the six most commonly occurring anxiety disorders—generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, specific phobias, social phobias, panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder—this book gives kids and parents successful strategies for achieving relaxation, conquering worries, challenging faulty thinking patterns, developing positive self-talk, and facing one's fears. Educational Resource

How to avoid being a helicopter parent—and raise well adjusted, truly independent children In an age of entitlement, where most kids think they deserve the best of everything, most parents are afraid of failing their children. Not only are they all too willing to provide every material comfort, they've also become overly involved in their children's lives, becoming meddlesome managers, rather than sympathetic advocates. In Drop the Worry Ball, authors Alex Russell and Tim Falconer offer a refreshing approach to raising well-adjusted children—who are also independent and unafraid to make mistakes. In this practical sensible book, parents will truly understand the dynamics between parents and their children, especially the tendency of children to recruit their parents to do too much for them. The book also counsels that failing—whether it's a test, a course, or a tryout for a team—is a natural part of growing up, and not a sign of parental incompetence. Shows how to resist the pressure to become over involved in your child's life How to retire as a gatekeeper or manager of your child's life, and become a genuine source of support Build trusting relationships with teachers, coaches, camp counselors, and other authority figures—so they can play an effective role in your child's life Understand problems such as ADHD, anxiety, and substance abuse A guidebook for parenting courageously and responsibly—allowing your kids to be who they are while building structures that keep them safe—Drop the Worry Ball is a must for any parent who wishes to be and do their very best.

"My six-year-old fusses with her hair for hours. Is this normal?" "Yesterday my seventh grader was all sunshine. Today she's wearing black and won't leave her room." "I'm worried my teenager may have an eating disorder." In today's complex world, parenting a girl is harder than ever. It takes more than love. It takes insight into the things that make your daughter tick as she grows from childhood to young adulthood. Drawing on the authors' fifty-plus years of combined counseling experience, Raising Girls takes you inside the mind and soul of your girl. You'll obtain seasoned, expert insights on Your daughter's different stages of development from ages zero to nineteen How you can effectively relate to her at each stage What is normal behavior, what isn't, and when and how to intervene How to deal with self-destructive behavior such as eating disorders, cutting, or experimentation with alcohol . . . and much more Spiced with stories, humor, and much reassurance, Raising Girls will help you encourage your daughter, challenge her, love her, and help her discover who God is creating her to be.

Why does my child seem to worry so much? Being the parent of a smart child is great—until your son or daughter starts asking whether global warming is real, if you are going to die, and what will happen if they don't get into college. Kids who are advanced intellectually often let their imaginations ruin wild and experience fears beyond their years. So what can you do to help? In Why Smart Kids Worry, Allison Edwards guides you through the mental and emotional process of where your child's fears come from and why they are so hard to move past. Edwards focuses on how to parent a child who is both smart and anxious and brings her years of experience as a therapist to give you the answers to questions such as: •How do smart kids think differently? •Should I let my child watch the nightly news on TV? •How do I answer questions about terrorists, hurricanes, and other scary subjects? Edwards's fifteen specially designed tools for helping smart kids manage their fears will help you and your child work together to help him or her to become more relaxed and worry-free.

As a parent, you can use certain strategies to help your elementary-aged daughter when she struggles with worry and anxiety. But it is also important that she learn how to work through her emotions on her own. This illustrated guide--created for girls ages 6 to 11, the stage when anxiety issues often surface--will help your daughter see how brave, strong, and smart God made her. Through easy-to-read stories and writing and drawing prompts, she will learn practical ways to fight back when worries come up. She will feel empowered, knowing she is deeply loved by a God who is bigger than her fears. This level of trust is the spiritual antidote to anxiety and the path to feeling capable and confident in any situation.