Word: barretts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...favorable results of numerous trials - and there are children like Maddison, who was eight when her Dad left home to live with one of her Mum's friends. Previously outgoing, she became increasingly withdrawn and diffident as she struggled with feelings of guilt and confusion. Steered toward Barrett by the family's G.P., Maddison thrived in the friends program. One afternoon last week she sat doing her homework at a desk at Pathways, where her mother, Vikki, works at the front desk. Now 11, Maddison explained how she'd just auditioned at a big dance school. It had been nerve...
This is done with a Barrett-designed program called friends, which is used widely in Australian hospitals and clinics to treat anxious children and depressed adolescents. But it's as a course presented in both primary and secondary schools and aimed at preventing anxiety that friends (a mnemonic for Feeling worried? - Relax - Inner thought - Explore plans - Nice work, reward - Don't forget to practice - Stay calm) is taking off. By helping young people to accept their feelings as legitimate and showing them techniques of positive thinking and problem solving, the program "builds their emotional resilience," claims Barrett, who is also...
...Barrett was drawing on work by American psychologist Phillip Kendall to design friends, researchers were fine-tuning their theories on the types of children most prone to anxiety. They now believe that 1 in 5 is born, as Barrett describes it, "physiologically sensitive to stress and certain stimuli." A test for this sees three-month-old babies held by their mothers and exposed to a sudden noise. The heart rate of the sensitive child rises higher and more quickly than the average child's, and remains elevated for longer...
...every five sensitive kids (who tend to be smart and artistic), three won't develop problems with anxiety. Their secret, explains Barrett, is certain "protective factors." Top of these is parenting style: the sensitive child whose parents are encouraging and optimistic generally rises above his predisposition toward anxiety. On the other hand, a child with the double whammy of physiological sensitivity and negative parents whose favored approach to problems is to avoid them "is going to be a bit of a mess," says Barrett. Sensitive kids "desperately need the parent who says, ?Yes, there are some dangerous things...
...Barrett first read psychologist Kendall's work while researching her Master's thesis on childhood fears in 1992. She was fascinated, and later wrote to him seeking permission to develop it. Kendall had challenged the prevailing notion that children weren't capable of thinking about how they think, and that it was therefore pointless to try to treat their anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy; the only solution, it was believed, was to help the parents manage the child's behavior. Barrett agreed CBT directed at the child could work, and thought Kendall's "Coping Cat" program could be built...