TED talk – Anne Marie Albano : How to raise kids who can overcome anxiety.

“Today’s hyper-anxious youth are not being helped by overly protective parenting. Calmness and confidence are not just emotions. They are coping skills that parents and children can learn.”

Anne Marie Albano (2020).

To introduce this conference, Anne Marie Albano, child and adolescent clinical psychologist and anxiety awarness expert, explains that she had many fears when she was young. Like many children, she had developed two severe phobias of doctors and injections. Subsequently, the psychologist explains that she encountered situations of humiliation when she was in high school and cried a lot about. Faced with these many difficulties, fears and anxieties, her parents still pushed her to confront them; they continued to take her to the doctor, held her during vaccinations and did not change her high school. Finally, although it may seem incongruous, the expert tells us that her parents made the right choice and we will understand why.

Anxiety is the most common psychiatric disorder among young people. It is a disorder that can manifest itself as early as 4 years old. Anne Marie Albano informs us that in adolescence, one in twelve young people with anxiety disorders can see their ability to function at home, at school or with their peers seriously diminished. Anxiety can cause a great deal of suffering in children and can have a real impact on their lives. An anxious child will find  difficult to pay attention at school, to relax, etc. When anxiety is excessive, it increases more and more and leads to co-morbidities. Thus, a child who suffers from anxiety can also develop separation anxiety, specific phobias and social anxiety, all together. Untreated anxiety in early childhood can lead to depression in adolescence and increases the risk of substance abuse and suicidal tendencies. It is therefore very important to take care of an anxious child, and parents are the first witnesses to this.

Finally, Anne Marie Albano explains that her parents made the right choice. By pushing their child to deal with occasional anxieties, the psychologist’s parents helped her to face stressful situations and learn to accept them. These situations made the child uncomfortable but did not endanger her, and the anxiety that she felt would have increased if she had spent her time avoiding the stressful situations. Unknowingly, by confronting their child with her fears, the psychologist’s parents used a version of exposure therapy that is an essential element in the cognitive and behavioural treatment of anxiety. Exposure therapy involves exposing a person with an anxiety disorder to anxiety-provoking or phobic stimuli according to certain rules in order to decrease the associated anxiety response.

In one study, Anne Marie Albano and colleagues evaluated the effectiveness of anxiety treatments in children aged 7 to 17 years old. This study showed that by combining exposure therapy with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, 80% of the children improved within three months. However, when the study ended, a follow-up study showed that many of these children had relapsed. In addition, more than 40% of the children experienced no improvement during this period. Finally, Anne Marie Albano and her collaborators decided to include the parents in the treatment.

Some parents tend to make too many concessions to their children by letting them escape from many stressful situations. However, by constantly doing this, the child is not prepared for the difficult situations he or she may encounter in life. Children who suffer from anxiety  do not take risks and do not know how to deal with situations that put them in difficulty. The reason they don’t know how to deal with it is because it is learned through repeated exposure to the situation. It is important that the child be able to discover and learn how to respond to a stressful situation by calming down on his own. It is by confronting risky situations or situations that require patience that the child will build a capacity for self-efficacy. This capacity will allow him to know, deep down, that he is capable of overcoming difficult situations. While an anxious child will tend to avoid these situations by calling on someone else, such as his parents, to manage them for him.

This is why, finally, Anne Marie Albano suggests to the parents of children who suffer from anxiety to help them to confront their fears and learn how to solve their problem so that they can begin to develop their own coping mechanisms to manage their anxiety. In case of danger, parents should intervene, but for the usual and typical anxieties, parents should accompany the child and not respond for him/her. It is very important that the child remedies the situation himself. So finally, to raise kids who can overcome anxiety, parents must teach the child to respond alone to stressful situations, even if it can break their heart, the child is able to cope by himself, sometimes it is enough to simply let him do it.

As a psychologist or future psychologist, it is important to be aware of existing therapies such as exposure therapy, which is most often used for severe phobia or anxiety in children. It is also important not only to work with children who suffer from anxiety but also to include parents in the therapy. As Anne Marie Albano has shown us, taking care of the child alone will not be enough in the long term. It is also necessary to provide support to the parents and psycho-education on the importance of letting their children confront their fears.

Sabrina Benzina.

Source : Albano, A.M. (2020). How to raise kids who can overcome anxiety[Conference]. TEDMED, New York. https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_marie_albano_how_to_raise_kids_who_can_overcome_anxiety/up-next

WORDS I HAVE LEARNED

• A witness = Un témoin.
• Exposure therapy = Thérapie d’exposition.
• A follow-up study = Une étude de suivi.
• Self-efficacy = Auto-efficacité.
• To overcome = Surmonter/surpasser.
• To intervene = Intervenir.