What Is SPACE Therapy? A Guide for Parents of Anxious Kids
Courtney Bledsoe, LCSW PLLC
Maybe you've found yourself answering the same worried question over and over.
Maybe bedtime has become a two-hour process or your child refuses to sleep alone.
Maybe mornings are filled with tears and refusals to go to school or camp.
Maybe your family is constantly adjusting plans to help your child avoid something that feels overwhelming.
Maybe you find yourself shocked by your child’s anger, defiance and lashing out
If you're parenting an anxious child, you're probably working incredibly hard. You've reassured, accommodated, encouraged, explained, and comforted. You may have even tried therapy. And yet, the anxiety still seems to be running the show.
If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. Many of the parents I work with feel exhausted, stuck, and unsure what to do next.
SPACE therapy was designed for exactly these situations.
What Is SPACE?
SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. It is an evidence-based treatment developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center.
What makes SPACE different is that the therapy works through parents rather than directly with the child.
That means your child doesn't have to attend sessions for treatment to be effective.
For many families, this comes as a relief. Sometimes children refuse therapy. Sometimes they're too young to meaningfully participate. Sometimes they've been to therapy before and it wasn't enough to create change at home. Often parents are left wondering what they should be doing at home - what should I say when my child is upset? How do I decide if I should hold an expectation?
SPACE gives parents a way to begin helping right away. SPACE gives parents a way to help their child start to face things that feel hard – and the magic that happens is that their child learns that they are capable. And when kids feel capable, confidence grows and anxiety shrinks.
How Does SPACE Work?
Anxiety doesn't just affect the child who experiences it. It affects the entire family.
When children are distressed, parents naturally step in to help. You might stay with your child until they fall asleep, answer repeated reassurance questions, help them avoid situations that trigger anxiety, or change family routines to prevent meltdowns.
These responses come from a place of love. They make sense. In the moment, they often reduce everyone's distress.
The challenge is that anxiety tends to interpret these accommodations as evidence that the feared situation really is dangerous or unmanageable. These accommodations also are evidence to your child that they can’t handle these situations without you. Over time, anxiety grows stronger, and families often find themselves doing more and more to help their child feel okay in the moment, even as the anxiety itself becomes more entrenched.
SPACE focuses on helping parents make two important shifts.
1. Responding with Support and Confidence
Parents learn how to communicate both understanding and confidence at the same time.
Instead of reassuring away the fear or helping the child avoid it, parents learn to send a different message:
"I know this feels hard, and I believe you can handle it."
This approach helps children feel understood while also building confidence in their ability to cope.
2. Reducing Accommodation
Accommodations refer to the things family members do to help reduce a child's anxiety.
Every family does this to some extent. Most accommodations begin in a really understandable place—parents are trying to be responsive, caring, and supportive. For many children, this flexibility doesn’t create any lasting problems and simply becomes part of how a family adapts to everyday life. But when anxiety is part of the picture, something different can start to happen. What begins as helpful support can slowly become more and more necessary, until it starts to shape daily routines in ways parents didn’t intend and don’t really feel good about anymore. This is often the point where parents say, ‘I didn’t even notice how much we were doing until it started to feel like we couldn’t stop
The goal of SPACE is never to blame parents for these patterns. These accommodations almost always begin for very good reasons. Instead, we work together to get curious about what is happening over time—what may be helping in the short term, and what may be unintentionally keeping anxiety going. From there, we develop a gradual, realistic plan for making changes in a way that feels manageable and supported.
This is where SPACE starts to feel very practical. Not in a “do everything differently at once” way, but in small, thoughtful adjustments that are tailored to your child and your family. The focus is always on change that feels manageable, not overwhelming. The process is thoughtful, collaborative, and tailored to your family. Parents are never asked to simply stop helping their child and hope for the best.
SPACE can be used to treat all anxiety disorders as well as OCD and school refusal, and it can be effective for children and teens across a wide age range.
What Sessions Look Like
One of the things parents often tell me is that they feel relieved to finally have something concrete to do.
In SPACE, you are the one who comes to therapy. Sessions are typically weekly, and treatment usually lasts 8–12 sessions. We start by developing a clear understanding of how anxiety is showing up for your child and how it is affecting your family. Together, we'll identify the patterns that may be keeping anxiety stuck and begin building a plan for change.
That plan is never about forcing your child to "just get over it." Instead, we focus on helping you respond in ways that communicate both support and confidence while gradually reducing accommodations that may be unintentionally reinforcing anxiety.
We'll talk through exactly what to say, how to say it, and what to expect when you begin making changes. Because anxiety doesn't usually give up quietly, we also prepare for the reactions that may come up along the way. If your child becomes upset, angry, or more distressed at first, that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. It often means the anxiety is being challenged.
My goal is for you to leave each session with practical tools, clear next steps, and a better understanding of what is happening beneath your child's behavior.
Does SPACE Actually Work?
One of the most common questions parents ask is whether changing their own responses can really make a difference.
The answer is yes.
Research has shown SPACE to be as effective as direct cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for treating childhood anxiety, including in studies that compared the two approaches directly. What many parents find encouraging is that meaningful change can happen even when a child is unwilling or unable to participate in therapy themselves.
Rather than waiting for your child to become motivated for treatment, SPACE allows you to begin helping right away.
You are not out of options if:
you’ve been told your child needs therapy but can’t get them through the door
your child has tried therapy, but it didn’t lead to lasting change
you’re not sure that individual therapy is the right fit right now
you’re feeling exhausted from managing anxiety, answering endless reassurance questions, or watching your family life shrink around your child’s fears
If any of this feels familiar, you don’t have to figure it out alone.mSPACE offers parents a different path forward.
Small changes in how you respond can create meaningful shifts in how anxiety shows up for your child—and for your family as a whole
SPACE Therapy in Illinois
Certified SPACE providers remain relatively rare. Courtney Bledsoe, LCSW is currently the only certified SPACE provider in Illinois and works with families throughout the Chicago area, the western suburbs, and across Illinois through in person and virtual sessions. Read and learn more.
We offer a free 15-minute phone consultation to help you figure out whether SPACE or another approach is the right fit for your family. Contact us here.
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About the Author
Courtney Bledsoe, LCSW, is a therapist specializing in anxiety and OCD in children and adolescents in Oak Park, IL. She is the only certified SPACE provider in Illinois, offering in-person sessions in the Chicago area and western suburbs, and virtual sessions throughout Illinois. Her work focuses on helping families break the anxiety cycle — with or without the child in the therapy room.
