Parenting Training

Are you noticing behavioral or emotional changes in your child? Are you  unsure how to support your child or navigate their behaviors? Are you feeling frustrated because none of the books you are reading are helping? That is okay. Alexa Wernick Psychotherapy can help you learn how to best support the mental health of your children.

Parent Management Training

Parent management training focuses on providing the necessary skills to manage and understand a child’s behavioral and emotional responses. Sessions will support families in reinforcing the development of their child’s self regulation at home.

  • Who participates in treatment: Parents and caregivers participate in sessions and in most cases, the child does not attend the sessions.

  • Duration of treatment: 45-60 minute sessions, varies depending on the needs of the child

  • Skills taught in session: Positive reinforcement, labeled praise, active ignoring, effective communication, setting routines and expectations, logical consequence, psychoeducation on behaviors, relationship building, supportive statements

SPACE: Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions

SPACE is an evidence-based parent treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems. The treatment program was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center and has been tested and found to be efficacious in randomized controlled clinical trials. When SPACE treatment is successful children feel less anxious and function better following treatment.  Some of the main anxiety disorders treated with SPACE are separation anxiety, social anxiety, generalized anxiety, fears and phobias, panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  • Who participates in treatment: SPACE aims to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although children do not have to attend SPACE sessions - they are the patients. Parents (and other caregivers) participate in SPACE treatment sessions. In most cases the child or adolescent does not need to attend the treatment sessions.

  • What occurs during treatment: Parents who participate in SPACE will learn skills and tools to help their child overcome anxiety (generalized, social, & separation), OCD or related problems. The treatment focuses on changes that parents can make to their own behavior, they do not need to make their child change. The two main changes that parents learn to make in SPACE treatment are to respond more supportively to their anxious child and to reduce the accommodations they have been making due to the child symptoms. 

  • Duration of treatment: In most cases, treatment is between 12-14 sessions, 45-60 minutes each.

To learn more about SPACE and how it works visit http://www.spacetreatment.net/