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When a child receives a food allergy diagnosis, it's common for parents to feel overwhelmed. Worrying thoughts may fill parents' minds with doubt and concern about how (and if) they will be able to prepare their food allergic child well enough to navigate this world on their one day. It's important for parents to remember that time plays a key factor here! It takes 9 months for a baby to develop and be ready for the outside world. A kindergartner has over a decade of schooling to prepare himself/herself for college or work. Similarly, food allergic kids acquire their skills over time, learning and applying them during each phase of development. GALINKSY'S SIX STAGES OF PARENTHOOD The childhood stages of development can provide parents with benchmarks to help assess their own child's growth and progress. While this is useful information, it doesn't necessarily help parents understand their role at each stage of development. Ellen Galinsky, president and cofounder of the Families and Work Institute, conducted research that led to the development of the six stages of parenting. These six distinct stages offers parents a framework to help them understand not only what's happening during that age range, but what their tasks and goals might be. Taking this information one step further, I created the image below as part of a food allergy parenting webinar I presented in 2019, which includes a basic overview of the food allergic parent's tasks for each stage of parenthood. Additionally, I added descriptive titles (in bold) for each stage to help highlight the parenting role for each stage.  how is a parenting framework helpful?While the parental task list in the previous image seems simplistic, and certainly would include more than is listed above, this framework can help parents assess things such as:
A framework such as this is a helpful reminder that as parents, the goal isn't to teach kids every skill they need right away. A child's age, stage of development, and personality helps guide when and how to teach necessary life skills. It's also a reminder that what parents teach their children in one stage sets the foundation for teaching the skills within the next stage of development and parenting. Kindergarteners managing food allergies build upon the basic skills parents have taught them as preschoolers. Food allergic high schoolers are learning additional skills and practicing strategies needed for them to develop into young adults that know how to manage their own healthcare needs. So remember parents.... Rome wasn't built in a day, nor is a fully-prepared young adult managing their food allergies. Use the gift of time and reminders of your parenting role at each stage of your child's development to help guide your skill-building activities.....and hopefully help your worried mind believe that you can do this!
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 Image Credit: Pixabay (Geralt) We're all familiar with the term self-esteem, but it can be hard to describe it in a concrete manner. In the simplest of terms, self-esteem is a positive sense of self. Having self-esteem often fuels confidence, pride, belief in self, a sense of belonging, and a positive self-image. Kids with poor self-esteem tend to be more self-critical, focus on perceived failures, doubt their abilities, and believe they don't measure up to their peers. Per psychologist Dr. Paul Foxman, we develop self-esteem in two ways:
The first point probably seems like common sense. When parents and caregivers acknowledge and celebrate a child's accomplishments, as well as their values and choices, it helps the development of positive self-talk within the child. At first glance, the second point may also seem like common sense, but let's dig a little deeper to explore how parental fear may inadvertently become a factor in the development of a child's self-esteem relating to their ability to self-manage their food allergy. TWO WAYS TO HELP KIDS DEVELOP FOOD ALLERGY-RELATED SELF-ESTEEM:
Remember....kids that develop confidence in managing food allergies become adults who are able to navigate life with food allergies. The opportunities you allow and approach you take to teaching them food allergy management skills directly impacts their self-esteem and internal self-talk about their ability to handle food allergy-related situations.  Those of us who are food allergy-knowledgeable licensed behavioral healthcare providers will inevitably get calls from parents seeking guidance on helping their child with food allergy-related anxiety at some point. Signs of anxiety don't always present in kids the same as they do in adults. So what leads these parents to believe their child has elevated levels of anxiety? Some common reports are: "My child will no longer eat at restaurants when we go out to eat as a family." If you or your child exhibits elevated levels of anxiety that are negatively impacting daily life, I highly recommend seeking guidance from a licensed clinical counseling professional, preferably a food allergy-knowledgeable one. But even if you're not experiencing elevated levels, these five general anxiety reminders for parents may still be useful to incorporate to address and manage developing anxiety. 1. Aim to manage the anxiety, not completely get rid of itWouldn't it be great if we never felt anxious or worried? Sure, but that's not a realistic goal for anyone, so don't try to remove everything that produces anxiety for your child. The best way you can help your child navigate anxiety is to help them learn to accept its presence, understand it, and develop skills to manage it. Part of understanding anxiety is not only learning about the thoughts and feelings, but also the physiological sensations often associated with the emotions. By gaining this understanding, it allows for more personalized skills that will help your child manage their own anxiety. Focusing on managing the anxiety (rather than avoiding it) often demystifies these thoughts and feelings, which can lead to decreased frequency of anxiety over time. It's also important to remember that anxious feelings can also be a positive tool, reminding you to assess risk, and motivating you to cope in order to make it through an uncomfortable situation. 2. Avoidance can increase anxietyYour natural instinct when you see that something makes your child anxious may be to remove them from the situation, and maybe even avoid similar situations in the future. While it's important to avoid unsafe situations when managing food allergies, if you find that you and your child are shying away from most activities, you may need to explore if all of them truly have high enough risk levels that they need to be avoided completely, or if you can reassess the risk levels for some. Why is it important not to simply avoid all situations that evoke anxiety? Because it can send a message to your child that the solution to anxious feelings is to avoid, leave, or simply ignore the feelings. Approaching anxiety this way robs them of the opportunity to learn to navigate these feelings, build tools to become more resilient, and gain confidence. 3. Be realistic, but positiveYou can't promise your kids that they will never be faced with anxiety-provoking situations where they may come face-to-face with their allergen, or even experience a reaction. But you can promise them that you are prepared with your emergency action plans, epinepherine, have educated those around you, and that you won't put them in situations they feel unprepared to handle without their permission first. When they express fears or worries, promise them that you are there to approach these feelings together as a team. Remind your child that they will learn how to navigate their worry, and will likely become braver than it over time. 4. Don't reinforce fears; reinforce skillsWhen your child (or you, for that matter), feel a lack of control, it can fuel anxious thoughts and feelings. Therefore, it's crucial to emphasize the skills they have in their tool kit to navigate and cope with situations, rather than focusing on the fear. Practicing food allergy safety skills often with your child will increase their confidence that they can handle anxiety-provoking situations. If your child presents with the "what ifs" often, use this as opportunities to talk through the scenarios with them. By exploring situations ahead of time, it reminds them which tools they can use to navigate worrying situations, and which skills they have to manage their emotions. Parents also need to learn how to reinforce skills and not fears in those crucial real-time moments. Rather than responding to your child's anxiety with phrases like "Don't worry" or "Everything will be fine", use messages that reinforce your child's ability to manage the uneasy feelings. When you're faced with that upset tummy, rather than trying to reassure with "I'm sure it's nothing" or even joining right in with their worry, use a skills-focused approach: "Upset tummies are no fun! Let's use our private investigator skills to figure out why it might be bothering you?" (And then follow up with a team investigation together). When your child won't eat at the restaurant, instead of focusing on, and inadvertently fueling the emotion by saying "Are you worried? Is your tummy upset?", focus on the skills by saying something like "I wonder if we should review our safe restaurant eating tools again to make sure we've used them all? Remember when we ate at [insert restaurant] - we used all of these tools and we ate safely." (Maybe even have a checklist handy for your child to actually use at restaurants). 5. Model healthy anxiety managementThere's no way around this one - your child watches how you manage (or don't manage) your own fears, worries, and anxiety. They key into your words, your tone and body language, and your actions. Most kids are typically skilled enough to pick up on the discrepancies, too. If you say you aren't worried, yet your child always overhears you talking to a friend about how anxious you are that a reaction will happen, it sends mixed messages. Does that mean parents aren't allowed to have anxiety or fears? Absolutely not (refer back to #1, which applies to kids and adults alike!). Parents, especially those managing food allergies, often have elevated levels of anxiety, especially in certain situations. It's okay to be honest about being anxious or worried as a parent, but learning how to cope with these emotions and practicing what you are preaching is absolutely crucial. Showing your child that you're tolerating/accepting your own stress, and using healthy skills to manage your own anxiety will help them learn and adopt these skills, too. -(If you feel you're not managing your own anxiety and fear well, please consider reaching out to a counseling professional for support, as it's important to practice good self-care as parents. You can locate a food allergy-knowledgeable one via the Food Allergy Counselor Directory)- ***[This article was published in the Fall/Winter edition of Coping with Allergies & Asthma Magazine, both online and in print]*** RECOMMENDED ANXIETY/WORRY TOOL FOR KIDS: I like to recommend the follow workbook for kids, as they can work on it with their parent at home, or with a counselor. It's an interactive workbook geared towards kids ages 6-12, which guides parents and kids through common Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques that help with worry. It's part of a series of workbooks, which cover a variety of topics. What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid's Guide To Overcoming Anxiety by Dawn Huebner, PhD *(You can also find this book via other sources, such as Amazon, but the APA site offers additional related resources, such as puzzles and word searches)* RECOMMENDED ANXIETY/WORRY TOOL FOR PRETEENS/TEENS: The following two books are great for those in the preteen or teen age range:
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