Have you ever experienced anxiety so terrible that you felt like you spent every moment of every day worrying? That the daily feelings of panic you experienced would never go away? That basic activities that you used to do with no problem seemed entirely insurmountable?

Well I have, and it started the day we launched The Childhood Collective. Well, to be honest, my anxiety has been around for most of my life, but the launch of our business brought it all painfully to the surface.

I know with this past year, many of you might be experiencing an increase in your own anxiety and depression. When you have a child with ADHD or anxiety, parenting is A LOT. Most of the time, your own mental health gets put on the backburner so you can attend to your kids. But I can tell you from experience, when you do take the time for yourself, you can free up a lot of bandwidth to focus on so many other things in your life—including your children.

How My Anxiety Started

My whole life I would have be...

A few years ago, I was at a friend’s house hanging out for a much-needed girl’s night (ahhhh…remember those carefree, pre-COVID days). One of the women there started talking about her son’s test anxiety at school. Her son would panic during tests and could not complete the work. When the mother had a meeting with the school to discuss her son’s test anxiety, she was met with an unexpected response.

One of the school staff stated that children don’t have anxiety!

Wow, I felt for this mom. She had painfully endured hearing her son complain of tummy aches at school, freezing and not being able to write during tests, and trying to hide tears running down his cheeks, so his friends couldn’t see. And now, it was affecting his grades because he was not able to show his knowledge. When she finally met with the team, she was met with misinformation and resistance.

To set the record straight, children DO experience anxiety (and every other emotion that we adults feel!). In fact, the CDC es...

I once had a patient named Jerry (a fake name to protect his identity, but with permission to share his story from Jerry and his family).  Jerry was in high school and was very anxious anytime he went out in public. 

His mother reported concerns that they were not able to live a life they wanted because of Jerry’s anxiety. They couldn’t go to the mall, eat out at a restaurant, or go out to stores because he just felt too overwhelmed. And when he did go out, he would wear earplugs AND headphones to avoid his anxiety, neither of which helped. Needless to say, he and his family were ready for change!

I can tell you that after some therapy and LOTS of hard work, I received an email filled with pictures of Jerry at prom, which was attended by over 1,000 people. Now when Jerry goes places, he states, “I’m gonna Lori Long this sh**!"

As much as I love that Jerry made my name into a verb, I can’t take the credit. The techniques we used were from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). And today...

As a parent, the stress of facing repeated mornings of your child crying and refusing to go to school can be incredibly overwhelming. Some days you may feel empathy and want to keep your child safe at home. But other days you totally lose your cool and desperately want to pick them up and force them in the car in their pajamas. It can be hard to know what to do when your child refuses to go to school and how best to handle the situation.

Last week, we covered several reasons why your child might be refusing to go to school. If you missed it, check it out here. This week, we are diving into our top 10 strategies to consider if your child is refusing school.

Top 10 Strategies for School Refusal

1) Validate Emotions

Always start with validating your child’s emotions. Let them know that it’s ok to be worried or afraid. It happens to everyone, including you. Anxiety thrives and grows when it is hidden. Talking about it gives it less power in your child’s life. Your child nee...

Seeing your child anxious can be one of the hardest things as a parent. It is hard because none of us like to see our children in pain, and we often don’t know the best way to respond or help. In our last blog post, we discussed ways to teach your child to talk back to anxiety. If you didn’t have a chance to read the blog, check it out here.

Now, we are going to be diving deeper into arguably one of the best ways to help your child minimize anxiety, which is something we call exposure. Exposure simply means taking steps to intentionally do the things your child fears. Remember what we learned in the last blog — Anxiety grows bigger through avoidance. Thus, the primary way for your child to learn that their fears don’t come true is by putting themselves in the feared situation, so they can learn through experience. No more avoidance! And in that process, sometimes your child’s fears do actually come true. However, what children often learn is that it wasn’t as bad as they thought, and ...

Years ago, I worked with a little boy who was terrified to separate from his mother. Even in their home, his mother could not go into another room (not even the bathroom!) to be by herself. Her son was extremely fearful, and she was beyond exhausted by it. After the first session with me, the little boy refused to come back to see me. He didn’t like me, and I had offended him in some way. The mother asked for referrals to another therapist, but I told her to try and give it a shot a little longer. I explained that sometimes children avoid going to therapy because it causes them anxiety to come and talk about their anxiety. The mother agreed, and we continued.

The second meeting, we named his worry and talked about what his worries were telling him. After several questions, he began telling me that his worries told him that while he was in the office with me, his mother would leave and never come back. We then used a worry thermometer to identify how worried he was that this would happ...

At the beginning of the school year, my 5-year-old daughter seemed to have an endless amount of worries every night before bed. She had just started kindergarten, and it was her 3^rd new school over the past couple of years. Every new situation that came up during the week, she expressed concerns. Separation from me all day was a concern. Uncertainty in general was a concern. After a period of a few months, the worries eased, the separation anxiety lessened, and nighttime fears seemed to go away.

Then, over the holidays, we had a solid few weeks of almost constant worries about 1^st grade. What would it be like? Would she know anyone? Who would her teacher be? What would the work be like? The list seemed to go on and on. And then, after we arrived home from traveling and caught up on some rest, the worries slowly disappeared.

In the midst of all of my daughter’s anxiety though, I felt a burden. Naturally, I began to worry about my daughter’s worry! If any of you parents out there have ...