Hi! I'm Dawn
I'm a therapist, parent educator, writer and speaker who specializes in supporting parents of anxious children and teens
#153: Attachment to anxiety ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN One of the greatest barriers to overcoming anxiety is the ingrained belief that being anxious is the thing that's keeping you safe. "If I worry about something," people tell me. "Then I can make sure it doesn't happen." It kind of sort of makes sense. If you're worried about being safe in a car crash you're likely to make sure your seatbelt stays buckled. If you're worried about fire safety you're likely to change the batteries in your smoke detector....
#152: Embracing imperfection is harder than it looks ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN I had to text my husband to come get me out! I completely forgot to write my newsletter this month! Just clean forgot it! I have a very complicated organizational system going on because I wear many professional hats and somehow, someway I just lost track of all of them. Maybe it's because I revamped my office (after my drop ceiling caved in -- no really -- while I was sitting with a client no less!) or maybe it was a family visit we had at the...
#151: Honoring what's unique about ourselves and our children ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN It's back to school time! We homeschooled both of our kids (the oldest all the way through, the youngest up until she "dropped in" to middle school) but fall still feels like new beginnings and fresh hope to me. As a kid, I remember thinking "this is gonna be my year!" at the start of every school year. I'd tell myself that THIS TIME I was finally going to get organized, remember to bring home my math book, stay on top of homework, and improve my bad...
#150: All or Nothing ☀️
Open Book Parenting QUICK SUNDAY CHECK-IN This month in The Practice we're journaling on neutrality in the context of anxiety. This is the idea that instead of countering anxiety's negativity with positivity, we meet it with neutrality. In practice this means when our child says, "But everything is the worst! And I hate everybody! And it will all be terrible!" We don't respond with, "But things might be great! And you love your friends/family! And I bet it will all be fine!" Instead we stay...
#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...
I'm a therapist, parent educator, writer and speaker who specializes in supporting parents of anxious children and teens