How Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) Helps Families to Break the Cycle of Anxiety

Aug 22, 2025 Written By Kelly Dunn, LCPC

As providers specializing in the treatment of anxiety and related concerns, we often meet families who feel caught in a cycle of anxiety, reassurance, and avoidance. Parents of anxious children and teens are doing their best to help, but the very strategies that bring short-term relief – like constant reassurance or helping a child avoid scary situations – can unintentionally fuel anxiety in the long run. This is where the Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) program comes in.

What Is SPACE?

SPACE is a parent-based treatment developed at the Yale Child Study Center by Dr. Eli Lebowitz. Instead of working directly with the child, SPACE empowers parents to be the primary agents of change. Backed by strong research, it shows that parents can effectively reduce their child’s anxiety symptoms and help them function better, even if the child isn’t ready or willing to participate in their own therapy (Lebowitz et al., 2014; Lebowitz, 2021).

From 2011-2013, our practice’s founder, Dr. Caroline Adelman, worked closely with Dr. Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center, where she served as a clinical fellow in the TS/Anxiety/OCD program. While co-facilitating parent groups with Dr. Lebowitz – rooted in what would later be known as the SPACE program – Dr. Adelman was struck by how much progress families reported at home in their child’s anxiety symptoms, even when those children were still waitlisted for therapy. In addition, parents often described feeling calmer and more confident in their parenting after completing this brief program. In the years since those early parenting groups, the SPACE program has been formalized and extensively studied by Dr. Lebowitz and his team. It has garnered significant and well-deserved attention in both the clinical community and the popular press, as others have experienced first-hand the effectiveness of this approach to managing child and teen anxiety. When formal SPACE training became available in 2019, our practice jumped at the opportunity to host Dr. Lebowitz in Chicago for a multi-day SPACE training. Since that time, we have continued to witness the power of this program to transform the lives of families and reshape the ways parents and children interact.

Why Does SPACE Focus on Parents?

Anxiety doesn’t just affect the anxious child or teen; it impacts the whole family. Humans are born highly dependent upon parents for safety and emotional security – in turn, it’s completely natural for parents and other caregivers to have a strong desire to comfort or protect their children. If your child struggles with anxiety, this process of trying to provide comfort might mean offering repeated reassurance, letting them sleep in your bed, or stepping in to help them avoid tough situations. In the short term, these behaviors – called “parental accommodations” – often reduce the child’s distress. But over time, they can inadvertently signal to your child that anxiety itself is unmanageable and should be avoided (Lebowitz & Omer, 2013; Lebowitz et al., 2014). SPACE combines decades of research-backed best practices for responding to anxiety with an understanding of both the developmental and evolutionary psychology underlying caregiver responses to child anxiety. This program gives parents a structured, supportive way to reduce these unhelpful accommodations, without criticism or punishment, so children can build greater confidence and independence.

Why Is SPACE Effective?

What makes SPACE unique is that its success doesn’t depend on the child’s buy-in or participation. This is especially valuable for families in which the child:

• Refuses therapy
• Isn’t developmentally ready for CBT
• Tried traditional therapy but remains stuck
• Experiences high distress or strong dependency on parents

In fact, clinical trials show that SPACE is as effective as individual CBT for treatment of childhood anxiety disorders and OCD (Lebowitz et al., 2020). That makes it a powerful option when traditional approaches aren’t a fit, or when parents want to strengthen their role in supporting a child’s treatment progress.

The Core Components of SPACE

SPACE teaches parents to shift their responses in three key ways:

1. Increasing Support: Parents learn to replace accommodations with supportive messages that acknowledge their child’s distress while expressing confidence in their ability to cope. This subtle but powerful shift in tone is at the heart of SPACE (Lebowitz, 2021).
2. Reducing Accommodations: Parents choose one specific accommodation – such as bedtime routines, school avoidance, or social challenges – to gradually reduce. The focus is on parent behavior, not on requiring the child to change directly.
3. Responding to Escalations: As accommodations fade, kids may push back with more anxiety or oppositional behavior. SPACE equips parents with strategies to stay calm, hold boundaries, and continue offering steady support, without slipping back into accommodations or resorting to punishment.

Who Can Benefit from SPACE?

The honest answer to this question is probably “most families with an anxious child or teen can benefit from SPACE.” That said, SPACE may be especially helpful when:

• A child or teen struggles with clinically significant anxiety or OCD
• Parents feel drained or stuck in cycles of accommodation
• Traditional therapy has plateaued or been resisted

Parents often feel isolated when supporting an anxious child. SPACE offers a clear, compassionate roadmap. It works not by forcing the child to change, but by changing the environment in which anxiety takes hold and rewarding growth over avoidance. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your child’s anxiety, please know that you are not alone and that real change is possible, even if your child isn’t in the therapy room.

Want to learn more about SPACE or explore whether it’s right for your family? Contact us to schedule a free consultation or learn about our parent coaching services. We also offer an upcoming SPACE skills workshop for parents, where you’ll gain the core tools and strategies needed to start applying the SPACE approach at home.

References

Lebowitz, E. R. (2021). Breaking free of child anxiety and OCD: A scientifically proven program for parents. Oxford University Press.

Lebowitz, E. R., Marin, C. E., Martino, A., Shimshoni, Y., & Silverman, W. K. (2020). Parent-based treatment as efficacious as cognitive-behavioral therapy for childhood anxiety: A randomized noninferiority study of Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(7), 861–872.e1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2019.09.532

Lebowitz, E. R., & Omer, H. (2013). Treating childhood and adolescent anxiety: A guide for caregivers. Wiley-Blackwell.

Lebowitz, E. R., Woolston, J., Bar-Haim Y., Calvocoressi, L., Dauser, C., Warnick, E., Scahill, L., & Leckman, J. F. (2014). Family accommodation in pediatric anxiety disorders. Depression and Anxiety, 31(10), 896–904. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22271