Complicated Kids

Repair matters more than getting every interaction right the first time.
My good friend Jenn Glacel is back on Complicated Kids, and this time we are talking about something adults are not always very comfortable doing with children:
Apologizing.
Jenn makes the case pretty simply. Humans get things wrong. We hurt people sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally. And if we want our kids to learn how to take responsibility and apologize when they make a mistake, they need to see us do it too.
Kids learn a lot more from what we model than from what we tell them.
Of course, this immediately brings us to the question some parents have about authority. If I apologize to my child, am I somehow weakening my position as the adult?
Jenn and I would argue the opposite.
Being the adult means having more responsibility in the relationship, not less. We have more life experience, more tools, and more capacity. Our kids have equal worth and agency, but they are still developing the skills they need to manage themselves and their relationships.
So what does an actual apology look like?
Jenn gives a wonderfully simple example from her own family. She had been overwhelmed, her child was overwhelmed, and she pushed in a way that made the situation worse.
Later, she came back and owned it.
She said she was sorry. She named what she had done. And then she stopped.
No long explanation.
No "but you were also..."
No expectation that her child reassure her that everything was fine.
That last part is important.
A clean apology keeps the responsibility with the person who caused the harm. If I say, "I'm such a terrible parent," and now my child has to tell me, "No, you're not," I have handed my emotional work right back to them.
Not their job.
We also talk about what happens before the apology.
Sometimes you are not ready to apologize yet.
Jenn talks about needing a couple of days to work through her own frustration before she could honestly say she was sorry. That matters because we are not talking about teaching kids to perform the words "I'm sorry" whether they mean them or not.
We are talking about being honest.
Sometimes the honest answer may be, "I know that did not go well, and I'm still figuring out what happened for me."
That is still relationship.
And then we get into repair.
Families are not healthy because nobody ever yells, gets dysregulated, loses patience, or causes hurt. Conflict is part of being in relationship with other humans.
What matters is what happens afterward.
Can we own our part?
Can we reconnect?
Can we learn something about what we need so we have a better chance of handling it differently next time?
Jenn makes an important point here: an apology means more when there is some effort toward change. That does not mean we promise never to make the same mistake again. It means we take responsibility for understanding what happened and think about the support we may need to respond differently.
And yes, adults have more responsibility here.
That may feel wildly unfair some days.
It is.
But as I say in the episode, if we want the power that comes with being the parent, we also get the responsibility that comes with it.
Sometimes that responsibility is saying, "That wasn't my finest moment. I'm sorry. I'd like to do it differently next time."
And then letting the apology stand on its own.
Key Takeaways
Children learn how to apologize by watching adults model what it looks like to acknowledge mistakes and take responsibility for harm.
Apologizing to a child does not require giving up parental authority; being the adult means carrying more responsibility for how we show up in the relationship.
A clean apology names what happened and owns the adult's behavior without blaming the child for causing the reaction.
Parents do not need to give a long explanation after apologizing, especially when the explanation starts turning into justification for what happened.
Children are not responsible for reassuring, comforting, or forgiving a parent after the parent apologizes.
An honest apology may need to wait until the adult has had enough time to process their own feelings and genuinely take responsibility.
Healthy family relationships do not require the absence of conflict; they require the ability to repair and reconnect after conflict happens.
Repair teaches children that relationships can survive mistakes, disagreement, dysregulation, and moments when people do not treat each other the way they intended.
Adults have greater responsibility for regulation because children are still developing those skills and rely on adults for co-regulation and support.
An apology becomes more meaningful when it includes reflection on what happened and an effort to understand what might help us respond differently next time.
About Jenn Glacel
Jenn Glacel is an autistic licensed clinical social worker and registered play therapist supervisor whose private practice, Seven Corners Psychotherapy, is based in Falls Church, Virginia. She works with children, adults, parents, and families through a radically neurodiversity-affirming lens.
Jenn's work includes child-centered play therapy, family support, and education for parents and practitioners about neurodiversity-affirming care. Her approach focuses on helping people better understand and trust themselves while building relationships rooted in mutual trust, respect, and acceptance.
About Your Host, Gabriele Nicolet
I'm Gabriele Nicolet, toddler whisperer, speech therapist, parenting life coach, and host of Complicated Kids. Each week, I share practical, relationship-based strategies for raising kids with big feelings, big needs, and beautifully different brains. My goal is to help families move from surviving to thriving by building connection, confidence, and clarity at home.
Complicated Kids Resources and Links:
🌎 www.gabrielenicolet.com
📅 Schedule a free intro call: https://calendly.com/gabrielenicolet/free-15-minute-1-1-session
📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@complicatedkids/featured
👾 Grab Tell the Story (anti-anxiety tool for kids): https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/tell-the-story
📝 Read my latest blog posts: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/blog
🎤  Explore my upcoming live workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/live-workshops
🎥 Explore my on-demand workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/workshop-replays
➡️ Instagram: http://instagram.com/gabriele_nicolet
➡️ Facebook: http://facebook.com/gabriele.nicolet
➡️ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielenicolet/
🌺 Free "Orchid Kid" Checklist: https://www.raisingorchidkids.com/orchid-kid-check-list-sign-up/
Enjoying the show?
If Complicated Kids has been helpful, the best way to support the podcast is to follow, rate, and leave a quick review. It helps other parents find the show—and it means a lot.
If there's a topic you'd love to hear covered on a future episode, you can always reach out at podcast@complicatedkids.com. I love hearing what's on your mind and what would support your family.
Thank you for being here. 💛

Sometimes the clue we are looking for during the day starts with what is happening while a child sleeps.
My guest this week is Dr. Hana Khan, an airway-focused dentist and myofunctional therapist, and we are talking about breathing.
Which sounds straightforward. We all breathe. Moving on.
Except, as Hana explains, the way a child breathes can intersect with sleep, oral development, swallowing, orthodontics, and some of the things parents may be noticing during the day.
Hana came to this work through her own daughter. She was already a dentist when she attended a lecture on airway dentistry and started recognizing things she had been seeing in her child for years. That experience changed the direction of her work and eventually led her to start looking beyond the teeth at the muscles, jaws, nose, mouth, and airway as parts of the same system.
And there is A LOT here.
At one point I actually stop the conversation and say exactly that because airway is one of those topics where you start pulling one thread and suddenly you are talking about sleep, behavior, feeding, swallowing, hearing, teeth, and nervous system regulation.
One of the biggest pieces of our conversation is sleep.
Hana explains that when breathing is disrupted during sleep, the body may repeatedly come out of deeper, more restorative stages of sleep. A child may technically spend plenty of hours in bed and still wake up without feeling rested.
And what does an exhausted nervous system sometimes look like during the day?
Difficulty focusing. Trouble organizing. Big emotions. Restlessness. Irritability.
Those symptoms can have many causes, and Hana is very clear that she is not diagnosing or ruling out ADHD. Her point is that breathing and sleep are pieces worth evaluating when they are part of the picture.
We also talk about some of the things parents can notice at night: mouth breathing, snoring, very restless sleep, sleeping in unusual positions, night sweats, and other signs that may be worth bringing to a qualified provider.
Then we get into the mouth itself.
Hana explains how tongue position, swallowing patterns, oral muscles, jaw development, and breathing interact. This is where myofunctional therapy comes in. The goal is not simply to move teeth. It is to address the muscle patterns and function underneath what we are seeing.
That leads us into orthodontics, because of course it does.
Hana describes a different way of thinking about crowded teeth. Instead of asking only, "How do we make these teeth straight?" an airway-focused approach also asks what may be happening with the muscles, oral development, and breathing.
We also spend time talking about enlarged tonsils and adenoids and why Hana looks for the larger airway picture rather than assuming that one finding automatically tells us what treatment should look like.
And this is important: not every child has the same constellation of symptoms.
A kid can have an airway issue without checking every box we mention in this episode. And hearing one symptom does not mean you have found the explanation for everything going on with your child.
The point is not to diagnose your kid from a podcast.
The point is to know that breathing is another piece of the developmental picture that may be worth looking at.
Because when something about our child is not making sense, more information can help us ask better questions.
Key Takeaways
Airway-focused dentistry looks beyond the teeth to consider breathing, oral muscles, jaw development, and how those systems function together.
Mouth breathing, snoring, and very restless sleep can be useful information to share with a qualified health professional when you have concerns about your child's sleep or breathing.
Poor-quality sleep may show up during the day as difficulties with attention, regulation, energy, or organization, even when a child appears to spend enough hours asleep.
Symptoms that resemble ADHD can have more than one contributor, which is why Dr. Khan emphasizes evaluating breathing and sleep without assuming they explain every symptom.
Orofacial myofunctional therapy focuses on patterns involving the tongue, lips, cheeks, swallowing, and other muscles involved in oral function.
Children with airway concerns do not all present the same way, so looking at a constellation of symptoms and the individual child matters.
Dr. Khan's airway evaluations may include information about nasal airflow, oral development, sleep-related breathing, tonsils and adenoids, and other possible contributors.
Treatment is individualized and may involve myofunctional therapy, dental appliances, collaboration with other medical professionals, or a combination of approaches.
An airway-focused approach to orthodontics considers not only whether the teeth are straight but also the oral muscle patterns, jaw development, and breathing associated with them.
Parents do not need to diagnose an airway problem themselves. Recognizing patterns such as mouth breathing, snoring, or disrupted sleep can help them know what questions to bring to an appropriately trained provider.
About Dr. Hana Khan
Dr. Hana Khan is an airway-focused dentist and myofunctional therapist in Torrance, California. After beginning her career in general dentistry, her own family's experience led her into airway dentistry and a broader approach to oral development, breathing, and myofunctional health.
In her work, Dr. Khan looks beyond straight teeth to consider breathing, oral muscle function, sleep-related concerns, jaw development, and other symptoms that may be part of a larger airway picture. Her goal is to help families better understand the connections between oral development and overall function and find appropriate treatment for the individual child.
About Your Host, Gabriele Nicolet
I'm Gabriele Nicolet, toddler whisperer, speech therapist, parenting life coach, and host of Complicated Kids. Each week, I share practical, relationship-based strategies for raising kids with big feelings, big needs, and beautifully different brains. My goal is to help families move from surviving to thriving by building connection, confidence, and clarity at home.
Complicated Kids Resources and Links
🌎 Website: www.gabrielenicolet.com
📅 Schedule a free intro call: https://calendly.com/gabrielenicolet/free-15-minute-1-1-session
📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@complicatedkids/featured
👾 Grab Tell the Story (anti-anxiety tool for kids): https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/tell-the-story
📝 Read my latest blog posts: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/blog
🎤 Explore my upcoming live workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/live-workshops
🎥 Explore my on-demand workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/workshop-replays
➡️ Instagram: https://instagram.com/gabriele_nicolet
➡️ Facebook: https://facebook.com/gabriele.nicolet
➡️ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielenicolet/
🌺 Free "Orchid Kid" Checklist: https://www.raisingorchidkids.com/orchid-kid-check-list-sign-up/
Enjoying the show?
If Complicated Kids has been helpful, the best way to support the podcast is to follow, rate, and leave a quick review. It helps other parents find the show, and it means a lot.
If there's a topic you'd love to hear covered on a future episode, you can always reach out at podcast@complicatedkids.com. I love hearing what's on your mind and what would support your family.
Thank you for being here. 💛

The goal of parenting is not to control the path. It is to help our kids learn how to navigate their own.
My guest this week is Elaine Taylor-Klaus, and we are talking about something I wish every parent had access to: basic coaching skills.
Elaine describes coaching as an empowerment-based, strength-based, collaborative way of communicating. Instead of always telling a child what we think they should do, coaching helps them become more aware of who they are, how they operate, what matters to them, and what they want to do next.
That does not mean parents stop teaching.
Elaine made a distinction during our conversation that gave me actual goosebumps: there is a difference between teaching someone and creating an environment that helps them learn.
Sometimes our kids need information from us. And sometimes we can ask a question that helps them discover something for themselves.
"What happens when you try it that way?"
"What do you notice?"
"What do you think might work?"
When the insight comes from the child, they have more ownership of it.
We use the classic school planner as an example. If the goal becomes "use the planner," we can spend an enormous amount of energy trying to get a kid to use a tool that may not work particularly well for their brain.
But the planner is not really the goal.
The goal is for the child to know what they need to do and when they need to do it.
Once we get clear on that, we can problem-solve together. Maybe the answer is a planner. Maybe it is something else entirely. The useful question becomes, "How will you know what you need to do?"
That shift from directing to collaborating requires something else from parents: a willingness to live with some uncertainty.
We start parenting with all kinds of ideas about who our child will be, what they will do, how they will develop, and what their future will look like. And then we actually get to know our child.
They have their own brain, their own timeline, their own strengths, and their own ideas about what they want.
Elaine talks about parenting as a gradual process of letting go of some of our vision so that we can make room for theirs.
That can be especially complicated when your child's path does not look like the paths of their same-age peers. You may feel completely settled about your child doing things differently, and then another milestone or comparison comes along and brings some of those feelings right back.
I describe it as spiraling forward. We are not starting over. We are meeting the same work from a different place.
We also talk about the stories parents tell ourselves.
My child should be doing this by now.
Other kids their age can do it.
I could do it when I was that age.
If they cannot do this now, what happens when they are 24?
Elaine shared the example of a parent who was upset that her 12-year-old kept leaving crumbs on the floor while watching television. Underneath that frustration was a fear that someday her daughter would not be able to keep an apartment clean.
I called it "fearing forward."
We take something happening today and turn it into a story about our child's entire future.
Coaching gives us another option. We can notice the story, ask whether it is helping us understand the child in front of us, and reframe it in a way that gives us somewhere useful to go next.
And finally, Elaine gives us one very practical assignment:
Put the stick down.
A lot of us learned to motivate ourselves with criticism. We beat ourselves up for what we should have done, what we forgot, where we fell short, and all the ways we believe we should be doing better.
Elaine invites parents to literally imagine putting that stick down.
Being kinder to ourselves does not mean ignoring the things that need our attention. It gives us more room to be calm, curious, and available to the child in front of us.
And honestly, that may be some of the most important parenting work we do.
Key Takeaways
Coaching gives parents a collaborative, strength-based way to help children build self-awareness, ownership, and agency.
Parenting naturally begins with a lot of directing, but children increasingly need opportunities to discover solutions rather than simply receive instructions.
Asking curious questions can help children develop their own insights, which often creates more ownership than being told what to do.
A tool should serve the actual goal. If a planner does not help a child know what they need to do, another system may work better.
Parenting involves gradually letting go and making room for children to develop their own vision of who they are and what they want.
Children do not need to follow the same timeline as their peers for their development to be meaningful or successful.
Expectations about what children "should" be doing can come from our own history, other families, or cultural ideas rather than the child in front of us.
Recognizing the story we are telling ourselves gives us the opportunity to choose a perspective that is more useful and actionable.
How parents show up matters as much as the strategies they use, especially when a child's reaction is pulling the parent into their own reaction.
Speaking to ourselves with more kindness can make it easier to stay calm, curious, and available to what our children actually need.
About Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Elaine Taylor-Klaus, MCC, is a globally recognized thought leader at the intersection of neurodiversity, coaching, and parenting. A mother to an ADHD++ family of six, she co-founded ImpactADHD®, now ImpactParents.com, and developed a Neuro-Informed Coaching modality to help families and professionals navigate neurodiversity with greater confidence and compassion.
Elaine is a 2025 CHADD Hall of Fame recipient and an ICF DEIB Committee member. She hosts the Parenting with Impact podcast and is the author of Parenting ADHD Now!, The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids, and Sanity School®.
About Your Host, Gabriele Nicolet
I'm Gabriele Nicolet, toddler whisperer, speech therapist, parenting life coach, and host of Complicated Kids. Each week, I share practical, relationship-based strategies for raising kids with big feelings, big needs, and beautifully different brains. My goal is to help families move from surviving to thriving by building connection, confidence, and clarity at home.
Complicated Kids Resources and Links:
🌎 www.gabrielenicolet.com
📅 Schedule a free intro call: https://calendly.com/gabrielenicolet/free-15-minute-1-1-session
📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@complicatedkids/featured
👾 Grab Tell the Story (anti-anxiety tool for kids): https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/tell-the-story
📝 Read my latest blog posts: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/blog
🎤 Explore my upcoming live workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/live-workshops
🎥 Explore my on-demand workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/workshop-replays
➡️ Instagram: http://instagram.com/gabriele_nicolet
➡️ Facebook: http://facebook.com/gabriele.nicolet
➡️ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielenicolet/
🌺 Free "Orchid Kid" Checklist: https://www.raisingorchidkids.com/orchid-kid-check-list-sign-up/
Enjoying the show?
If Complicated Kids has been helpful, the best way to support the podcast is to follow, rate, and leave a quick review. It helps other parents find the show—and it means a lot.
If there's a topic you'd love to hear covered on a future episode, you can always reach out at podcast@complicatedkids.com. I love hearing what's on your mind and what would support your family.
Thank you for being here. 💛

A student can understand the assignment and still have no idea how to get themselves started.
Carrie Bonnett is back on Complicated Kids, and this time we are talking about executive function in the classroom.
Carrie is an executive function coach and veteran teacher, and she has a wonderfully simple definition of executive function: the brain skills that help us get important things done. That includes organization and time management, of course, but also planning, getting started, staying focused, regulating emotions, getting back on track after a distraction, finishing, and remembering where the finished thing is supposed to go.
In other words, "Go do your work" is asking a brain to do A LOT.
Carrie shares the story of a teacher who suddenly realized that a student sitting through independent work without starting might not be choosing not to work. Getting started is a skill. The student may understand the assignment and still be stuck on the first step, how to organize the page, how long the task will take, or any number of things we cannot see from across the classroom.
Carrie offers one of my favorite questions from this conversation: What if this is a skill thing and not a will thing?
That little shift creates room for curiosity. Maybe the student needs the task broken into a smaller chunk. Maybe they need help identifying the first step. Maybe there is a routine we assumed they knew but never actually taught.
And routines are a big part of this conversation. Carrie points out that brains like structure, consistency, and predictability. Teaching students how to begin independent work or what to do when they get stuck is not wasted classroom time. It is teaching the skills that make the rest of the work possible.
We also get into the language adults use around executive function. Instead of turning a struggle into an identity, Carrie encourages talking about brains: "My brain needs support with working memory," rather than "I'm terrible at this."
I LOVE this.
Kids need to understand how their brains work if we want them to choose useful strategies, advocate for themselves, and develop a healthy sense of who they are.
And yes, somehow laundry makes an appearance, because I currently have clean, folded laundry sitting in a basket on my bedroom floor and apparently that makes an excellent executive function teaching tool.
Adults have unfinished tasks too.
Maybe giving ourselves a little grace for that can help us bring more curiosity to the kids in front of us.
Key Takeaways
Executive function includes the brain skills that help us start, organize, plan, focus on, regulate ourselves through, and finish important tasks.
A student who is not starting an assignment may understand the work but still need support with task initiation.
Independent work requires many executive function skills at once, including understanding directions, starting, sustaining attention, recovering from distractions, finishing, and turning work in.
Asking "What if this is a skill thing and not a will thing?" can help adults move from assumptions to curiosity.
Breaking a task into a smaller first step can make getting started more accessible for a student who feels stuck.
Classroom routines support executive function because structure, consistency, and predictability reduce how much students have to figure out in the moment.
Skills such as task initiation should not automatically be treated as things students already know simply because of their age or grade.
Brain-based language can separate a skill difficulty from a student's identity and create a more useful starting point for support.
Helping students understand their own executive function profiles can make it easier for them to choose strategies and advocate for what they need.
Adults struggle with executive function too, and acknowledging our own imperfect brains can normalize those differences for students.
About Carrie Bonnett
Carrie Bonnett is a veteran teacher, lifelong list-maker, and executive function coach based in Bend, Oregon. She works with students and families around the country using a practical, no-shame, brain-first approach that empowers students to thrive, helps parents and teachers better support them, and gives adults tools to stay on top of all that life requires.
In addition to coaching, Carrie creates digital resources, including her signature course Get the Brain on Board and a series of No-Shame Guides for Parents, and provides brain-based workshops and trainings for parents, teachers, and other professionals. She is also an adjunct instructor at the University of Portland, where she supports early-career teachers.
About Your Host, Gabriele Nicolet
I'm Gabriele Nicolet, toddler whisperer, speech therapist, parenting life coach, and host of Complicated Kids. Each week, I share practical, relationship-based strategies for raising kids with big feelings, big needs, and beautifully different brains. My goal is to help families move from surviving to thriving by building connection, confidence, and clarity at home.
Complicated Kids Resources and Links:
🌎 www.gabrielenicolet.com
📅 Schedule a free intro call: https://calendly.com/gabrielenicolet/free-15-minute-1-1-session
📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@complicatedkids/featured
👾 Grab Tell the Story (anti-anxiety tool for kids): https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/tell-the-story
📝 Read my latest blog posts: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/blog
🎤  Explore my upcoming live workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/live-workshops
🎥 Explore my on-demand workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/workshop-replays
➡️ Instagram: http://instagram.com/gabriele_nicolet
➡️ Facebook: http://facebook.com/gabriele.nicolet
➡️ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielenicolet/
🌺 Free "Orchid Kid" Checklist: https://www.raisingorchidkids.com/orchid-kid-check-list-sign-up/
Enjoying the show?
If Complicated Kids has been helpful, the best way to support the podcast is to follow, rate, and leave a quick review. It helps other parents find the show—and it means a lot.
If there's a topic you'd love to hear covered on a future episode, you can always reach out at podcast@complicatedkids.com. I love hearing what's on your mind and what would support your family.
Thank you for being here. 💛

When anxiety starts shaping the whole family's routines, helping the child may need to begin with supporting the parents.
Dr. Lauren Siegel joins me to talk about SPACE, which stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. It is a little different from many treatments for childhood anxiety because although the child is still the focus, the parents are the ones going to therapy and making changes. Rather than beginning with "What skills does my child need?" SPACE asks parents to look at how anxiety is functioning within the family and what they may be able to approach differently.
One of the big ideas in SPACE is accommodation, and we need to be very clear about what that means because this is not the same thing as the accommodations a child may appropriately receive at school. In this context, we are talking about the ways family members can unintentionally organize themselves around a child's anxiety. Maybe the family stops going to certain places. Maybe a parent spends hours helping a child fall asleep or accompanies them every time they go to another room.
And there is zero shame in how we got there.
If your child is distressed, of course you want to help. Lauren points out that parents are biologically wired to respond to their children's distress. That is how we keep babies alive. The question as kids grow becomes whether a particular kind of help is still supporting them or whether it may be reinforcing the idea that they cannot handle the situation without us.
That is where SPACE gets interesting. Reducing an accommodation does not mean withdrawing support or throwing a child into the deep end. Lauren takes a gradual, individualized approach that starts with what the parent and child can realistically handle. Maybe bedtime is not the place to start because that time still feels connected and lovely for the family. Maybe there is another part of the day that is creating much more frustration and feels more workable. There is no universal rule about what a six-year-old "should" be able to do.
We also talk about something that is hard for pretty much every parent: seeing your child upset and not immediately making the upset disappear. Some distress is part of learning that we can do hard things and come out the other side okay. But that does not mean all distress is automatically productive. A child who is overwhelmed by a sensory or nervous system issue may need something very different. The work is figuring out the difference and finding the just right challenge for that child.
Parent regulation matters here too. If one parent is particularly activated by a situation and another has more bandwidth, maybe they tap in. SPACE creates room for parents to look at their own fears, reactions, and pressure points before changing anything with the child. Because the goal is not to white-knuckle your way through a plan while everybody's nervous system is on fire.
What I like about this approach is the message underneath it. Sometimes changing how we respond to anxiety tells a child, "I see that this is hard, and I also believe you can get through it."
That is very different from pretending the anxiety is not real.
It is support with confidence built into it.
Key Takeaways
SPACE is a parent-based treatment for childhood anxiety, so parents attend the sessions even though the child's anxiety remains the focus.
SPACE can be especially useful when anxiety is significantly affecting a child's daily life and the routines of the whole family.
In SPACE, accommodation refers to ways family members may unintentionally organize themselves around a child's anxiety.
Accommodating an anxious child is a natural response to distress, so the goal is understanding the pattern rather than blaming parents.
Gradually changing an accommodation can send the message, "I know this is hard, and I believe you can handle it."
There is no one-size-fits-all expectation for what a child should be able to do. The approach needs to fit the individual child and family.
Parent readiness matters. Starting with a situation the parent feels able and motivated to change can make the process more manageable.
Some distress can be tolerable and part of growth, while sensory overload or significant dysregulation may require a different response.
Parent regulation matters too, and co-parents can sometimes tap in for one another depending on their bandwidth.
Success is not making a child stop feeling anxious. It can mean changing the adult response while continuing to offer support.
About Lauren Siegel
Dr. Lauren Siegel is a licensed clinical psychologist and co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Kingsbury Wellness & Learning Group. She has more than 15 years of experience providing psychotherapy and comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations to children and adults and is passionate about helping families navigate learning and emotional challenges while expanding access to high-quality psychological care.
Dr. Siegel has worked in school settings and has extensive experience helping families and clinicians understand the special education process. Her clinical interests include supporting girls and women on the autism spectrum, middle schoolers developing their identities, children with ADHD, and parents of anxious children using the SPACE model. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and her doctorate in clinical psychology from George Washington University.
About Your Host, Gabriele Nicolet
I'm Gabriele Nicolet, toddler whisperer, speech therapist, parenting life coach, and host of Complicated Kids. Each week, I share practical, relationship-based strategies for raising kids with big feelings, big needs, and beautifully different brains. My goal is to help families move from surviving to thriving by building connection, confidence, and clarity at home.
Complicated Kids Resources and Links:
🌎 www.gabrielenicolet.com
📅 Schedule a free intro call: https://calendly.com/gabrielenicolet/free-15-minute-1-1-session
📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@complicatedkids/featured
👾 Grab Tell the Story (anti-anxiety tool for kids): https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/tell-the-story
📝 Read my latest blog posts: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/blog
🎤  Explore my upcoming live workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/live-workshops
🎥 Explore my on-demand workshops: https://www.gabrielenicolet.com/workshop-replays
➡️ Instagram: http://instagram.com/gabriele_nicolet
➡️ Facebook: http://facebook.com/gabriele.nicolet
➡️ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielenicolet/
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