Dr. Regine Galanti and 'Parenting Anxious Kids'
On knowing when not to swoop in, the truth behind the stomachache your kid gets before school every day, and the things we wouldn't do for 10 bucks.
Anxiety is kind of my whole thing, so I was thrilled to have the chance to speak with psychologist Dr. Regine Galanti about her new book, “Parenting Anxious Kids: Understanding Anxiety in Children by Age and Stage.” This conversation and this book made me feel so hopeful and empowered! If you love an anxious kid, I hope you will check it out.
Tell me a little bit about yourself and your background:
I’m a clinical psychologist specializing in clinical behavioral psychology, working with parents and kids. I’m in private practice in Long Island.
The need is so great that at some point I started thinking about what else I can do to help people, because even if I were to not sleep, I still couldn’t even meet the needs of the people in my direct area, much less outside of that. And I think a lot of psychologists feel this way. So I started writing books.
What led you to write “Parenting Anxious Kids,” and what do you hope readers will take away from it?
Often, parents want what we call ‘dry cleaner therapy’ — you drop off your kid and pick them up and they’re ready to go. I think therapists have always known that we need parent involvement, but COVID really drove that home for us. And it’s true at almost all ages. Even if you think, my 16-year-old is old enough to go and get their own skills, there are still these parallel skills that parents can get that are different than being your child’s therapist.
The goal is for parents to develop the skills that, if you have an anxious kids, you can use these skills alongside therapy or before therapy or after therapy or while your kid is doing the difficult things they need to do.
I also realized that parents don’t really realize what anxiety looks like. They show up and said something like, My kid has a stomachache every single day and we’ve been to all the doctors. And I’m like, You know that that’s textbook anxiety, right? So I broke up the second half of the book into ages and stages to really say, This is what anxiety looks like.
I have always felt that anxiety is good at hiding in plain sight. What are some of the things that make it hard to spot?
Just knowing what to look for is one of the biggest reasons anxiety hides in plain sight. So many times, a parent comes in and describes their own behaviors and I’m like, That’s anxiety. And they’re like, No, I’m just shy, or I just hate dogs. We really are lacking that basic anxiety awareness.
There are three pieces that make up anxiety. It’s set of thoughts, it’s physiological symptoms, and and it’s behaviors. People think getting worried is the hallmark. And it is. But we can tell when a 4-year-old is anxious, even though I have no idea what a 4-year-old is thinking most of the time. So if we’re relying on a lot of pieces.
One thing I look for is avoidance. Do you not want to do this? That piece gets tricky. Anxiety has its own mythology. You might think, I don’t want to do this, because I have a perfectly good reason that a non-anxious person would agree with. But if someone gave you 10 bucks, would you do this? Let’s try it a couple of times and if you still don’t like that, I’ll accept that answer.
So many times, a parent comes in and describes their own behaviors
and I’m like, That’s anxiety.
What are some things that can make this challenging for us as parents to navigate?
Anxiety pulls for you wanting to protect your kid at all costs. You want to save your kid from this thing that is not dangerous and that’s where the pitfalls lie. When you try to save someone from something that’s not dangerous, you teach them that it’s dangerous.
So as a parent, your kid is suffering, and you want swoop in and make them feel better. And the tricky thing is, you probably can. If my kid is anxious about riding the school bus and I drive them there, they will feel better. But if you do that, they won’t develop the skills they need to cope with that situation in the future.
For parents, there are a million books out there, and you don’t know which way to lpok or what to do. So my goal was to help parents take a minute and say, How did I learn my parenting? What do I want to do here? And now let’s transpose how anxiety works on top of that so that you can still parent in a way that’s in line with your own values.
Is there anything you wish that the school system could maybe do to support anxious kids more effectively?
In terms of the school refusal, we know that getting kids back into school however you possibly can is the best way to make sure they don’t spiral into more school refusal. The more they lose out, the more they miss out on development and social stuff and academic stuff, and the harder it is to catch up both emotionally and academically. There is a huge negative spiral going on.
Sometimes what I see from schools is that a kid will finally get their foot in the door and they can be met with something really tough like, You failed because you’re late. And it’s so frustrating because we JUST got them back into the building. Sometimes accommodation is necessary to catch up, as long as the goal is to remove the accommodation eventually. So schools should understand the nature of anxiety and how it pulls for avoidance and how we need to make it a little easier to get kids back into the classroom would help.
On the other side, I see some schools being a little too accommodating and not putting any demands on the child whatsoever. Sometimes you need to initiate some demands and see how the child handles it.
I want to end on a positive note here, so I’d love to hear from you, what does the light at the end of the tunnel look like for parents of anxious kids?
That’s why I love working with anxious kids, because I know that we have the tools to help them live full meaningful lives, and get to every goal that they want to get to. It’s not something that has to get in the way of their lives forever.
It doesn’t mean that I’m going to take the most anxious kid in the world and make them not anxious. Anxiety is an emotion, but it’s also manageable if you have the right skills. I’m drawn to treating these kids because if you give them the skills, they can succeed. There is a different path forward.
Thanks to Dr. Galanti for speaking with me! You find Dr. Galanti’s other books and social media profiles at longislandbehavioral.com/media.