This episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast is my fourth interview with anxiety expert Lynn Lyons! We discuss how to handle school avoidance, including: how to figure out the root cause of school avoidance, how anxiety works including physical symptoms, and how to teach parents and children how to handle anxiety when it inevitably shows up.

We talk about:

4:31 Finding the root cause to school avoidance

7:00 Using “home days” when kids need a break

9:00 Normalizing needing breaks, rather than pathologizing 

11:40 Emotionally based school avoidance- includes anxiety and depression

16:00 How anxiety can cause physical symptoms like stomach aches and headaches

23:03 Teaching kids and parents to tolerate uncertainty

30:00 Why techniques to “get rid” of worry don’t work

32:00 How to talk back to worry

48:13 How to handle “The Moment of Goodbye” when dropping kids off

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Three Skills to Protect Our Kids’ Mental Health with Lynn Lyons https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/episode35/ 

Membership Q&A – How to Help Anxious Kids in Real Life Scenarios with Lynn Lyons https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/episode45/ 

How Anxiety Shows Up in Our Parenting and What to Do About It with Lynn Lyons https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/episode-99-how-anxiety-shows-up-in-our-parenting-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-lynn-lyons/ 

Lynn Lyon’s podcast Flusterclux https://www.flusterclux.com/episodes/ 

Lynn’s website https://www.lynnlyons.com/ 

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