Monitoring Progress
As your child works on their plan of action, it will be important to monitor them to make sure they are actually completing activities, especially when they are first starting out. It’s hard to face your fears, so your child or teen might continue to avoid them instead. They might also try distracting themselves during exposure activities. For instance, they might look at their phone instead of focusing on the thing that makes them anxious.
Before your child practices an activity from their plan of action, you may want to remind them of what they must do to successfully complete the activity, and why it is important (like how their life will improve after beating a fear). Also, for your child’s first few activities, make sure you can see them while they are completing the activity. This will allow you to make sure they are focused so that they get the most out of their practices.
Depending on your child’s level of engagement and how much they tend to avoid their fears, it might make sense to give them more independence as they complete more activities. Your child may also need to practice activities that take place in a setting where you are not present (such as school). In those cases, we encourage a more thorough debrief with your child. We will talk more about debriefing after exposure activities later in this module.
Anxiety Intensity Levels
As your child begins practicing their exposure activities, keep track of your child’s anxiety intensity scale ratings. Make sure your child is logging their activities in their Plan of Action Activity Log and writing down their anxiety intensity levels before, during, and after completing an activity. It might be helpful to print out the anxiety intensity scale or have your child download the scale onto their device so that they can rate their anxiety levels using the scale in real time.
You can also try using other indicators to gauge your child’s anxiety levels, such as physical signs of anxiety (sweating, fidgeting, etc.) or their tendency to engage in avoidance behaviors or use quick fixes. This can be particularly helpful if your child still struggles to rate their anxiety levels using the scale.
Determine Completion Points
Exposure activities should not end too quickly because we do not want to encourage kids to escape feared situations. But some activities have a clear end point. For these activities, you know exactly when the task has been completed. For example, when Sophia talks to the waiter to order food, she knows exactly when the conversation is over since it has a clear beginning and end point.
For other activities, it can be harder to know how long the activity should last. For example, one of Sophia’s exposure activities is to attend her friend Anna’s birthday party. Since the party could last for a few hours, Sophia may not know how long she needs to stay there. For these activities, it’s best for your child to keep practicing the activity until they no longer expect a feared outcome to happen. For example, if Sophia is afraid of something bad happening at the party, such as embarrassing herself or saying something awkward, she should try to stay at the party until she is no longer thinking about these feared outcomes.
Another good way to determine how long an activity should last is by paying attention to the anxiety intensity scale rating. Your child should try to complete a task until their anxiety intensity level drops by at least half of what it was at the beginning of the task.
As we mentioned earlier, it is normal for your child to practice an activity multiple times before they are ready to move on to a harder activity. You will know your child is ready to move on to harder activities when …
- They can successfully complete the specified activity,
- The activity starts to feel easier,
- And their anxiety intensity level has significantly decreased