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Anxiety in Children & Adolescents

Feel confident in managing your child’s anxious feelings and overwhelm. Support your child in developing coping mechanisms to manage stress and thrive. Restore balance in your family and focus on creating loving memories.

Dr. Zia Lakdawalla - Foundations for Emotional Wellness - Group Therapy

Common Symptoms of Anxiety in 
Children and Teens:

  • Your child often experiences intense worry or fear
  • They struggle to participate in everyday activities
  • Your child is easily overwhelmed by social situations or separation from you
  • Their anxious behaviors impact the entire family
  • Your child who internalizes their anxiety, appearing withdrawn or irritable, only to have occasional outbursts when overwhelmed

You are not alone.

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, 3% of Canadian children feel different types of anxiety, from minimal to severe anxiety and panic attacks. While it’s a normal part of life to feel a little nervous before the first day of school, recurring feelings of anxiety can be detrimental and must be addressed in a loving, compassionate way.

Common symptoms of anxiety in children and teens:
  • Recurring fears and worries about routine parts of everyday life
  • Irritability and trouble concentrating
  • Self-consciousness or sensitivity to criticism
  • Withdrawal from social activities
  • Avoidance of difficult or new situations
  • Complaints about stomach aches or headaches
  • Drop in grades or school refusal

With proper support, parents can learn how to manage these symptoms and stressors with their children. Your child will build resilience, enjoy a more active social life, andbe able to handle adversity with confidence.

Anxiety in children & adolescents
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric conditions in children and adolescents. At FFEW, we understand the stress and worry that these disorders can pose in the family unit.

We also know that coping skills can be developed and learned. We work with your child to build the skills they need to improve their emotional well-being, the quality of their relationships, and their ability to manage stress. Supporting them will also restore balance within your family and help you reclaim more enjoyable and connected moments with your child.

Parenting children & adolescents with anxiety

As a parent, you play a crucial role in supporting your child’s emotional development. Our approach is built on a framework that emphasizes the dynamic, reciprocal interactions between parents and children. It’s a two-way street—children influence parents just as parents influence children. This dance, full of give-and-take, shapes a child’s emotional health and resilience.

When a child or teen experiences anxiety, it’s natural for parents to adapt their routines or behaviours to ease their child’s distress. They may avoid certain activities, rearrange schedules, or shield their child from triggers. While these accommodations can bring short-term relief, the side effects are that they lead to a cycle of avoidance, unintentionally increasing anxiety in the long run.

Reassurance or deep breaths?
Both have a good place in helping your young child manage anxiety. Because of the interpersonal nature of childhood anxiety, parents are in a unique position of being able to communicate sentiments of acceptance and confidence that indirectly shape how children approach their worries and fears.

In other words, parents can shape the environment in which children process and navigate their anxiety. This is why we are intentional about supporting and educating parents on how to best support your children.

Reassurance or deep breaths?
We empower parents by equipping them with up-to-date knowledge and research-based strategies. We help you feel more confident and effective in handling the anxious behaviours your child exhibits. Parents who work with a skilled member of our team or participate in a group have reported improved relationships and stronger connections with their children. They’ve shared stories of feeling more equipped to handle their own and their children’s anxiety challenges, leading to increased harmony at home and improved functioning for their children.

About Dr. Zia Lakdawalla &
the FFEW Team

Dr. Zia, Ph.D, C.Psych, is a Child & Adolescent Psychologist and the Founder of Foundations for Emotional Wellness (FFEW). Having worked in a variety of mental health care settings, from community care to hospitals, Dr. Zia learned firsthand how important therapy for children can be. She founded FFEW to offer therapy to kids of all ages and teens in Toronto.

A core aspect of FFEW’s work is also parent therapy and coaching – our philosophy is that healthy change starts at home. We specialize in parenting, anxiety, behavioural change, and emotional regulation.

Given the needs of the community the team at FFEW is growing to offer a range of service and support for families in the Greater Toronto Area. Today, FFEW includes a team of clinical therapists, social workers, and psychotherapists. Each licensed professional specializes in something unique, so whatever the challenge you and your child are facing, we can help.

Our approach is evidence-based and focused on the emotional well-being of all family members involved.

DIRECTOR, CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST

Therapy services we offer in Ontario
At FFEW we recommend that both parents and children are actively involved in treatment as this generally leads to quick and long-lasting change for children and adolescents. Here’s a detailed description of the options for working with your family:
Therapy for children with anxiety

OPTION 1

One-on-One Parent
Coaching Sessions
Evidence-based approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Mindfulness-based approaches can help children and teens understand and manage the thought patterns that contribute to anxious distress, challenge their thinking, and face their fears.

OPTION 2

Parenting Your Anxious
Child Group Therapy: CBT + SPACE
This group is designed to help younger children learn how to cope with childhood anxiety. In this group, we use key components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to teach children how to understand the unhelpful thinking patterns they engage in, and how they can build confidence by facing fears.

Research suggests that a practical and hands-on approach (exposure and response prevention with small steps) to targeting anxiety results in the most meaningful changes. So, in this group, we practice, practice, practice! We use real-life situations to coach children to use skills in the here and now. Not only do we talk about what to do—we go out and DO it!

Parent Coaching

We use SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) when working with parents. SPACE is an evidence-based, treatment approach designed for parents of children and adolescents who struggle with anxiety or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at Yale University.

This approach begins by acknowledging the interpersonal nature of a child or adolescent’s anxious feelings and how they can impact parenting styles. It then focuses on small but meaningful adjustments that parents can make in HOW they respond to their children’s anxious distress. We also coach parents to employ CBT strategies by creating and finding ways to help children face their fears.

OPTION 1

One-on-One Parent
Coaching Sessions
The focus of parent coaching is to lay the foundation for understanding how parental responses can influence a child’s anxiety. We teach parents to adapt their behaviours toward their children so they can engage in a manner that ultimately enhances the child’s ability to cope with anxious thoughts and feelings.

Individual parent coaching involves working one-on-one with a skilled therapist to develop strategies and skills to support the child. This approach helps parents to:

  • Gain confidence in parenting their anxious child
  • Develop the tools to effectively address their child’s anxiety
  • Enhance your child’s ability to cope with anxious thoughts and feelings

OPTION 2

Parenting Your Anxious
Child Group Therapy: CBT + SPACE
Our Parenting Anxious Children group intervention has been running for several years and is highly sought after. This program offers a supportive environment where caregivers can learn valuable skills to optimize healthy outcomes in anxious kids.

Through didactic teaching, skill-building exercises, and peer support, parents of anxious children will understand anxious feelings in their little ones. This group:

  • Offers a SPACE and CBT approach to support parenting with evidence-based strategies to support their child.
  • Provides a framework for understanding the interpersonal nature of anxiety and a roadmap for what parents can do to support their.
  • Provides a supportive group environment where parents can share experiences, receive feedback, and learn from each other.

Anxiety in Children: Benefits of Early Intervention

With proper support and guidance, many adolescents can learn to manage their symptoms effectively, participate in activities that interest them, form friendships, finish school, and enjoy life.
Mental health conditions we treat
  • Generalized Anxiety
  • Social Anxiety Disorder
  • Specific Phobias (including needle phobias)
  • Separation Anxiety
  • Panic Disorder
  • Trauma and Stress
  • School Refusal
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) (link to OCD page)