What is SPACE?

SPACE: Supportive Parenting for Childhood Anxious Emotions

Evidence-based, parent-based treatment that helps children and teens overcome anxiety by empowering caregivers to become a powerful source of change.

A compassionate approach that helps families build confidence, strengthen connection, and foster greater independence, even when a child or teen is unwilling or unable to participate in therapy.

Why Families Choose SPACE

SPACE is different because it focuses on empowering caregivers rather than changing the child. By making supportive changes at home, parents learn how to respond to anxiety in ways that reduce its hold while helping their child develop confidence, resilience, and independence.

Instead of working against anxiety, families learn how to move through it together, creating stronger relationships and lasting change.

What You'll Learn

SPACE helps caregivers develop practical skills to respond to anxiety with confidence while supporting their child's growing independence. Through the program, you'll learn how to:

✓ Understand how anxiety affects your child and the entire family.

✓ Recognize and gradually reduce accommodations that unintentionally maintain anxiety.

✓ Respond in ways that build confidence rather than reinforce anxiety.

✓ Foster resilience, flexibility, and greater independence in your child.

Is SPACE Right for My Family?

SPACE may be a good fit if your child's anxiety is affecting daily life, family relationships, or independence. It can be especially helpful if you:

  • Are looking for practical tools to reduce family stress and respond to anxiety with greater confidence.
  • Have found that traditional child-focused therapy hasn't been effective or isn't possible right now.
  • Want to help your family experience greater calm, stronger connection, and improved daily functioning.
  • Have a child or teen who is resistant to therapy, unwilling to participate, or too young to engage meaningfully in treatment.

Who participates in SPACE? 

SPACE is a unique, parent-based approach to treatment. While your child, teen, or young adult remains the client, they do not need to attend the sessions. Instead, treatment focuses on empowering parents and caregivers with practical strategies to support meaningful change at home.

Through SPACE, you'll learn how to respond to anxiety in ways that reduce unhelpful accommodations, build your child's confidence, and foster greater independence.

Although children don't attend the sessions, they remain at the center of the treatment. As caregivers make supportive changes, children often experience less anxiety, increased confidence, greater independence, and improved functioning in everyday life.

SPACE Can Help With

SPACE is an evidence-based treatment for a wide range of anxiety-related concerns in children, teens, and young adults, including:

  • Separation anxiety
  • Social anxiety
  • Generalized anxiety
  • Specific fears and phobias
  • Panic disorder and agoraphobia
  • Selective mutism
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
  • ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder)
  • School avoidance and school refusal
  • Failure to Launch and difficulty transitioning to independence in young adults

Backed by Research

SPACE was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center and is supported by years of research demonstrating its effectiveness in reducing childhood anxiety and improving family functioning.

Learn more:

 

Ready to learn whether SPACE is right for your family?

Schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation to discuss your family's needs and determine whether SPACE is the right fit.