Hi! I'm Dawn
I'm a therapist, parent educator, writer and speaker who specializes in supporting parents of anxious children and teens
#149: Parenting as spiritual practice ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN Parenting problems inspire a lot of quick fixes and promises and I complain about that on the regular. For one thing, they rarely work and for another they miss the point entirely. Because parenting is not about fixing things; parenting is about living through them with intention and attention. In her introduction to the book Music of Silence, essayist Kathleen Norris writes, "We may resent any difficult or demanding task that seems to pull us away...
#148: Diagnosis is rarely the end all, be all ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN I was talking to Scotti Weintraub of Reframe Parenting the other week about the challenges of getting kids appropriately diagnosed, speaking specifically about the whole, mushy, ill-defined neuro-different diagnoses. You know, ADHD, OCD, Autism etc. etc. In her state, the diagnoses don't make much of a difference to what happens next (versus Ohio, where an autism diagnosis can mean access to a game-changing scholarship) and waiting for answers that...
#147: Trying not to contribute to the noise & the confusion
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN One of the things I find really difficult about talking about parenting is that parenting solutions get sold as a one-size-fits-all approach and that is never ever true. I worry sometimes that I foster this idea with my podcast because I’m often answering specific questions with very general advice. But I mean, that’s the nature of the beast, right? There are some general truths, which are easy to put forth on a podcast or in a reel but how we apply...
#146: on irritability (a love affair) ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN The other evening I was with my women's group and they were talking about organizing a screaming event. (This was after we got to talking about Florence and the Machine.) I'm in the Poconos, which means there are lots of places a bunch of women could run around screaming their little hearts out and not disturb a soul so it will probably happen. One of the women said, "Women are taught to repress their anger!" and I agree although I am not one of them....
#145: learning to internalize love ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN There is nothing like watching your child get married to make you all nostalgic! As the mother of the groom I had lots of people coming up and telling me what a fine young man I raised and I inevitably replied that he is indeed a fine young man but I can take very little of the credit. In retrospect the best thing I did was to get out of his way, which you all know is much harder than it sounds. I was a little surprised by how gloomy I felt off and on...
#144: holding onto suffering ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN I've been thinking late about the ways we hold on tight to our suffering. This sounds like victim blaming so let me assure you that it's not. There are a lot of Jedi mind tricks to dealing with anxiety -- a lot of facing paradox and getting all creative and twisty with your thinking -- and this is one of them. I say this a lot so you may have heard it before: Anxiety tries to keep us safe by keeping us small. Depression works much the same way. Stay...
#143: battle testing ideas ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN I've been in talks with an agent about representing a book idea I've been playing with for a long while and his advice was to "battle-test your ideas" because the book I'm writing (working title, Tell Me It Will Be OK: Raising Anxious Children in a Worried World) is a squishy book. By that I mean, it's not a straightforward: HERE IS HOW TO DO ANXIETY book because there are already wonderful books about that. (May I please point your attention to...
#142: kids are crumpled paper bags ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN The subject line today? It's from the podcast episode that just went out. I spoke with Dr. Michael Schwartzman, author of The Anxious Parent: Freeing Yourself from the Stresses and Fears of Parenting, a now out of print book (but one worth finding). Dr. Schwartzman said that children are crumpled paper bags "then you start pouring air into it, which is called life.... [and] the bag starts to expand ... [in] different ways, different directions, and...
#141: Starting with acceptance ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN Lately I've been talking to parents who describe themselves or their kids as "too" something. They are "too sensitive," for example, or "too reactive." I've been inviting them to leave off the "too" and to see how that feels. Your child isn't TOO sensitive; they are sensitive. You are not TOO reactive, you are reactive. The reason I ask them to do this is that it changes the focus. If someone is TOO sensitive then their sensitivity is a problem. But...
#140: Diagnosis is more art than science ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN Recently I've started offering ADHD diagnostic assessments in the two states in which I'm licensed (Ohio and Pennsylvania). This is in response to there being very few options in the rural area in which I live, which I realized when we couldn't get our daughter's diagnosis back. Maddi's doctor in Ohio diagnosed her without a big assessment because, well, because she met her and started her on a med regime, which went well (when Maddi, being very ADHD,...
I'm a therapist, parent educator, writer and speaker who specializes in supporting parents of anxious children and teens