@TeenMinusTests i promised to reply to this morning while i was on the road, and i did when i got home then lost the lot.
I also promised someone that i would read the entire threads from start to finish as i was chastised for not doing this even though i feel able to have an informed opinion as i'm going through the progamme and have seen that you have been asking the same questions since June. I don't know if you are looking for some quick bullet points that will help as a quick fix out of your situation but trust me there is no quick fix, the whole programme isn't just about your child, is about your own parenting techniques and recognising where you own anxiety may been feeding into theirs, discovering that as a parent i have developed my own anxieties over the stress of the next phone call from the school, the ruined days out (if you can even get them out) the conflict in the house and feeling awful for his poor little sister while all this is going on so there is no bullet points for that, it's a journey you have to go through at the beginning of the programme looking at your own parenting techniques based on your own childhood etc, once you regonise there (which is a very emotional journey) and learn how to manage you own you are then in a position to help your child with theirs when they engage with their mentor. My child was heading down the route towards self harm and getting permantely excluded from school, and you could see how miserable he was just by looking at him. My journey looking at my parenting skills has enabled me to handle his anxiety attacks so much better, not get drawn into the drama, let my anticipation of things going tits up affect my mood and letting him pick up on my anxiety too, which i know now for a fact he did as with me changing, he is changing too. His dad is having a tougher time trying to deal with his own anxieties, as he too has had them since being a child, so it's quite a journey for him but the support he is getting to work through this is amazing, and he's finding it much easier to not react negatively to the drama caused by my son's anxiety and as he's starting to cope better with his my son is far more relaxed and behaving a lot better when at his house (we are divorced) and in box houses the outbursts, temper tantrum etc have stopped, and he's been out a couple of times with a friend to play footie, has been a little better at getting into lessons at school and this week has joined the school lunchtime football club... i never saw that happen... he may not make it to every session but it's a start! I can't stress to you enough that what i have learned through this programme is so much more than the 'child's' anxiety, it affects everyone in the household and every story is different and extremely personal so when you keep asking for these kind of points as to what we are asked to do it's just not that easy, what I'M having to do is different to what MY EX is having to do as both our struggles are different as in how it makes us feel and how each of us handle our son's anxiety attacks, and while we work on our shit with our mentors, my son is now engaging beautifully with his mentor (4 weeks now) and the mentor helps him understand all the physical symptoms his anxiety causes (which then leads to all the outward signs of distress) and is helping him to take little steps at a time to work through them until they no longer happen. The basic principles are the same, address your own anxiety so you are better placed to help create a calm environment for the child, don't get drawn into the drama when they do have an anxiety attack, distraction techniques, removing yourself from them so they settle themselves, etc etc. all sounds easy i'm sure, but i've been a mum for 21 years and trust me it's not easy to break these habits, but i'm getting there, and if i have a bad bad, or a big challenge i'm not sure about i can log on to speak to the mentors for advise, or sometimes i just log on to be a part of the group as it's so nice to feel that i'm not the only one with a child like this, and often their advise helps me, if not that day, on a later day when a similar thing occurs. I couldn't be doing any of this without the team and Sam, so perhaps now you will have some idea of why the mums going through this and finding it helpful are so defensive and don't want the views of a few to affect the service that we are all so thankful for.