Breaking Free of Child Anxiety & OCD: A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents

Eli Lebowitz’s Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD is an outstanding, accessible guide for parents and caregivers. The book explains the SPACE approach in a clear, practical way, helping readers understand how family accommodation maintains anxiety and how small, supportive changes can promote resilience and independence. I appreciated how readable and compassionate the tone is while still being grounded in evidence-based principles. The step-by-step guidance, scripts, and real-life examples make the concepts feel immediately usable. This is a valuable resource for families navigating child anxiety or OCD and a helpful companion to treatment.

I listened to the Audiobook and then bought the Kindle version. I may also purchase the hard copy to take notes and use the guides. This book was easy to get into and not overly repetitive. Also, the voiceover for the audible version was a great reader! ---> I decided to try this book because it centers around the influence parents can have, with or without therapy. I was drawn to the premise of this book, especially since my anxious child (commonly) is too anxious to go to a therapist and unwilling to "work" through problems. As for the meat of the book, I found it to be a great blend of supportive, compassionate parenting, with applicable techniques that are firm, consistent and progress oriented. I love parenting books that give you almost a "play-book" for what to do and say, and this book does that. I am just beginning to use the principles, but I sense that the technique is helping me form consistent "sound-bites" which are already causing my kids to take notice and think a little more before launching into full blown panic mode. Reading this book in full was very eye-opening as I didn't realize how much my accommodating could be hurting, rather than helping, my child. There are many different methods out there for working with anxious, challenging children and sometimes you have to find the one that clicks with your ideals and capabilities. I suggest everyone give this book a try as it could be a great fit, and it's definitely more simple and less expensive than other techniques. ----> To note, we are coupling this book with a complete halt in all screen time for our kids and have witnessed amazing turn arounds in just the support phase with these two changes. Thank you Dr. Lebowitz for teaching and writing about an accessible, proven plan.

Absolutely excellent book and resource if you have an anxious child or teenager! I wish I had these tools when my children were younger however as a mom of 5 young adult children (college students) these tools have increased my children’s self confidence and independence! I no longer enable their anxiety responses by changing my responses. Must read and implement the tools!

This book is AMAZING! If you have or know someone who has a nervous/anxiety child, buy this book! It has you focus on your behavior that contributes to your child's actions. So be ready to look in the mirror and see that a caring/loving parent who is not meaning to contribute to anxiety, actually is (unknowingly). It walks you through a plan and explains everything you need to know to cope with a child being no longer accommodated. Thank you God and Dr. Eli Lebowitz

Informative quick read!

I just attended the SPACE training and am really impressed with the innovative approach designed by Dr. Lebowitz. The book is a great snapshot of his treatment method and super easy to read. One of the AMFT at my practice read the entire book in one night! Highly recommend! Can't wait to start using this with clients!

This is a well-written, accessible guide which focuses on the changes we as parents can make to support our children. It has clear advice that is illustrated through anecdotes. Reading it gave me perspective where my son was and where he could be in terms of processing anxiety, and gave our family several useful tools for supporting him. Both my husband and I saw his coping improve drastically in a matter of weeks (and seems to be continuing as it has now been a few months) just by changing the language we use at home when he's struggling with anxiety and by removing accommodations for it. Highly recommended for any parent who worries about their child's anxiety - and the earlier you read it, the better!

Highly recommend (as a parent and a therapist)!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was well-written, informative and provided helpful guidance. The concise learning summaries at the end of each chapter were particularly appreciated.

I really enjoyed reading this book - an excellent primer on anxiety and how to approach struggles with anxiety in the family, with kids who are experiencing a lot of it (to the point it's heavily impacting other family members, who are trying to manage it). The initial chapter offers some great education on what anxiety is, in a clear and compassionate manner. It also offers a lot of compassion to parents/caregivers, who likely want to help their anxious children to meet and master their fears, but may struggle with understanding how to do so effectively when those fears seem to be very big and persistent. Honestly, while this book is geared towards parents with young kids/adolescents, I think anyone could learn a lot from it about how to be supportive with someone who is highly anxious, while also self-respecting and maintaining appropriate boundaries. I would love to see the author's write a similar book that is more geared towards parents with teens/young adults who struggled with anxiety/OCD and difficulty launching into their adult lives.

This is a great resource to support children with anxiety and OCD. I am a child and family therapist and recommend this book to both parents and clinicians. For clinicians, I highly recommend getting trained in the SPACE model.

I cannot express how grateful I am for having this book recommend to me. It has significantly helped my son and I with his anxiety. Without giving details of his particular problem, it was a daily problem and I was close to breaking point in trying to help him. We were turned away from CAMHS a couple of times over the last couple of years and I had tried so many things to help. This book saved us. It's so easy to relate to and involves me as a parent making changes rather than telling my child to change. But by following the steps in the book, me changing has lead to him changing. I didn't take any short cuts and used a note book rather than the back of the actual book to write things down. As I was reading, I started explaining to my son (age 12) so he was prepared and starting to think things over in his head and understand. The main thing is about accommodations we make as parents thinking we are helping and actually we are not. Children need to learn that they will be OK. I honestly can't recommend this enough. I have also used the same thing with his ocd that he has a bedtime in what he has to say to me and how he expects me to respond (which now takes much less time). When nothing else helped, this book did!

Having a child who struggles with anxiety can be tricky to navigate. This book gives some useful tips on how to connect and speak with kids who are struggling.