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The 6 Stages of Allergy Parenting

4/28/2022

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Have you ever noticed that so much of the parenting guidance out there is focused on what children are going through at each stage of their development? While that's helpful information for parents to know, it doesn't tell parents what THEIR parenting tasks are for each stage of their child's development.
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That's where Ellen Galinsky's work comes in!  Her research led to the development of the Six Stages of Parenthood, which focuses on how PARENTS develop at the same time their child develops.

This framework helps parents understand if they're focusing on the appropriate tasks associated with their child's stage of development, are falling behind, or pushing too fast too quickly.

As with any guidelines, they're just that - guidelines. They're not hard and fast rules. However, I think we can all agree that parenting is hard, so any helpful guidance is welcome!
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The Six Stages of Allergy Parenting

Adapted from Ellen Galinsky's work, licensed family therapist and founder of this Food Allergy Counselor Directory and website, Tamara Hubbard developed the Six Stages of Allergy Parenting after recognizing that allergy parents could benefit from parenting guidance specific to allergy parenting and the associated emotional aspects.

This purpose of this framework is 
primarily to offer guidance related to the emotional aspects of allergy parenting, which is often overlooked in allergy parenting guidance currently available. It essentially offers parents a framework to help them develop their mindset and parenting choices for each stage of parenting, which directly impacts their child's ability to learn how to live confidently with allergies.  While overall allergy management skills/goals are noted for each phase, the guidance is heavily infused with information related to the allergy emotional tasks helpful for parents to be aware of and/or develop during each stage.
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Six Stage of Allergy Parenting chart, created by Tamara Hubbard, LCPC
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​How to Use this Chart: 

The information below explains each column in more depth: 
  • Stages: The names of each stage are from Ellen Galinsky's work. These titles are used to identify the period of time associated with the child's development, but are instead focused on the parental growth process, which happens in tandem with the child's growth process.  
  • Acts As The.... Tamara created these labels to help further illustrate a parent's role and goals for each stage.
  • Child's Age: Identifies the age and stage of the child's development.
  • Parents' Goals: Summarizes the overall goals for parents for each stage of their child's development, based on Ellen Galinsky's research. 
  • Allergy Tasks: Summarizes the overall allergy parenting task/focus for each stage of a child's development. Each stage builds upon the previous stages. ​

​How This Framework Helps Allergy Parents: 
The Six Stages of Allergy Parenting offers allergy parents a framework to help them better understand how to parent an allergic child throughout the child, teen and young adult years. More specifically, this guidance helps parents with:
  • Identifying When Emotions Are Getting in the Way: Offers the ability to identify if your own parental anxiety, fear, and overwhelm has actually stunted your child's ability to learn how to navigate life with their allergies OR has resulted in trying to teach your child too much, too quickly in order to calm your intense emotions. ​
  • Assessing Their Own Progress: Offers a way to more effectively assess whether you're on or off target with the main parenting focuses for each stage of development, as allergy parenting adds an additional layer to the mix.
  • Teaching Allergy Skills: Offers a look at the overall allergy management and allergy emotional skills you should focus on teaching your child at each stage. This is important because children learn through scaffolding, or building upon previously learned concepts. Therefore, it's helpful if their allergy AND emotional skills build throughout their development. For example, if a child reaches adolescence and is missing basic allergy management skills, it will be hard for them to reach adolescent goals, such as learning to take more responsibility for their safety and being away from home on their own. 
  • Checking For Emotional and Knowledge Gaps: Offers a framework to help see if you and/or your children need to revisit allergy emotional or allergy management skills. This can often be the case if the last allergic reaction happened many years ago, and you've become more comfortable managing allergies. It's helpful to do a quick check at the beginning of each stage of development to see if you need to revisit forgotten or lost skills from previous stages, fill any knowledge gaps, or assess emotional readiness. 

Want More Specific Information on Each Stage? 
Stay tuned for more detailed information for each of the six stages of allergy parenting, including specific parenting tasks and potential roadblocks to watch out for. (FAC on IG: @FoodAllergyCounselor, FAC on FB: /FoodAllergyCounselor, and FAC on Twitter: @FACounselor).

[Edited to add the new post: The 6 Stages of Allergy Parenting Explained]


If you want to make sure you don't miss more of this kind of psychosocial information, be sure to Subscribe to The Food Allergy Counselor emails (at the bottom of the homepage or via the pop-up), as well as the FAC social media accounts. And THE BONUS for subscribing to the FAC emails? You'll get the free, 3-page Allergy Anxiety & Overwhelm Mini -Guide. 

Think This Chart Will Help Others?
Think this chart will help others you know, or your patients? Please feel free to share it as long as the copyright information is visible. ​​
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And if you're needing more allergy-related psychosocial support, don't forget to check out the Food Allergy Counselor Directory, the Exploring Food Allergy Families podcast, the Food Allergy Behavioral Health Resource section, and the allergy-specific therapeutic worksheets. 
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Do you value the Food Allergy Counselor Directory and the support it provides to the allergy community? Want to see it expand with additional providers? Contact founder Tamara Hubbard, LCPC for sponsorship opportunities! 
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New Tool To Better Understand How Allergies Impact Our Patients' Lives

3/6/2022

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When an allergic patient or parent of a child managing an allergy reaches out for therapy, it's important for me to learn how the allergy impacts their lives. Sure, they are reaching out because they feel overwhelmed or anxious about their allergy, but that's just the overall picture. And in order to truly help my patients, I need to get a more detailed picture. 
I do this by asking patients to complete the appropriate Food Allergy Psychosocial Information Form as part of their intake paperwork. The responses on this form gives me a solid glimpse into their quality of life, which domains are most impacted, and psychosocial themes that may need adjusting. It's a tool that has helped me more effectively meet my patients' needs and ensure they're feeling understood for years now. 

After sharing these forms during consultation sessions with allergy practices and fellow therapists, it became clear that these tools may be beneficial to others. Therefore, I've decided to offer them to allergy and therapy practitioners, too.

Read on to learn more about how they're beneficial to both patients and providers!
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The Food Allergy Psychosocial Information Forms are premade AND customizable! That means that you don't have to spend time creating them, and can personalize them with your practice's logo and information.

​Versions available:
  • Therapy Practice Version - child, adolescent, adult, parent/caregiver
  • Allergy Practice Version - child, adolescent, adult, parent/caregiver
  • Currently available in paper format; fillable format coming soon
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What are the differences between the therapy and allergy practice versions? 
All four forms are available for both, but questions vary slightly between both versions so that they are more tailored to the scope of the practices.  
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What Information Does These Forms Gather:
These patient narrative forms allow for detailed responses on themes such as: 
  • Allergy mindset and outlook
  • Anxiety levels and quality of life (QoL) impacts
  • Behavioral changes (i.e. restricted eating patterns, limiting experiences)
  • Impactful memories from previous reactions
  • Epinephrine knowledge and/or fear of use
  • Allergy care guidelines being implemented
  • Sources used to learn allergy information
  • Allergy impacts in various domains
  • How patients manage their allergy well
  • What information will help patients decrease anxiety/increase QoL
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Benefits of Using These Forms in Therapy Practices: 
  • Premade and customizable for your practice​
  • ​​One form gathers anxiety-related QoL, anxiety and functioning information
  • Patient narrative format helps with treatment goal planning
  • Patient may feel more comfortable sharing this information initially in writing
  • Potential networking tool with allergy practices - helps allergists identify patients who may benefit from therapeutic support to positively impact QoL
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Benefits of Using These Forms in Allergy Practices: 
  • ​Premade and customizable for your practice
  • One form gathers anxiety-related QoL, anxiety and functioning information
  • Opportunity for patients to feel heard/more easily express allergy struggles
  • Helps identify patients' allergy knowledge gaps or inaccurate information
  • Helps assess potential need for allied health services (i.e. therapist, dietitian)
  • Identifies themes to reassess/revisit with patients in future appointments
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Suggestions/Tips For Use:
  • For All - Give to patients as part of intake paperwork process
  • For Allergy Practices - If allergist is unable to review due to time constraints, consider having another team member review and share main points​


Narrative Versus Validated Patient Forms?
It's like comparing apples and oranges - both are fruit, but different kinds. Both narrative and validated forms gather valuable patient information, but in different manners. 

Validated assessments, such as the Survey of Food Allergy Anxiety (SOFAA), typically assess functioning and impacts that helps drive diagnosis and treatment decisions.

Patient narrative forms, such as these Food Allergy Psychosocial Information Forms, primarily gather information to aid in understanding the whole patient. While they may also be used to help determine treatment decisions, their primary purpose is gathering information that helps to facilitate conversations and problem-solve with patients. 
[The images above show the Parent/Caregiver - Therapy Practice version]
Visit the "Worksheets" page to check out and learn more about these Food Allergy Psychosocial Information Forms​, and don't hesitate to reach out with questions!

Special introductory pricing is available through March 31, 2022, and there will always be a discount for purchasing the package, which includes all 4 forms. 

Direct URL to the Worksheets page: www.FoodAllergyAnxiety.com​
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  • Home
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