What is SPACE (& Why We Love It!)
By Mind Chicago OCD Therapist, Naomi Kaplan, LCSW
At Mind Chicago, we’re always looking for effective, compassionate, and research-backed ways to support families navigating childhood and young adult anxiety. One approach we’ve come to love (and often recommend) is Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE). Developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz and his team at Yale, SPACE is a parent-based treatment program that helps families support their children with anxiety, OCD, and related challenges without requiring the child or young adult to be in the therapy room (yes, parents only!).
What is SPACE Exactly?
SPACE is a structured parent-based therapy that empowers caregivers to make meaningful shifts in how they respond to their child’s anxiety and OCD. Anxiety often pushes parents to accommodate (keep reading to learn what this means!) their child’s worries, obsessions, or compulsions. SPACE helps parents identify and reduce those accommodations, while learning other meaningful ways to support their child.
When we talk about accommodations in SPACE, we are referring to the ways that family members adjust their behavior in response to a child’s anxiety or OCD. Parents often change their behavior in an effort to reduce a child’s anxiety or distress (we call this accommodation). It’s normal, and even expected, that parents will do things differently to try and help their kids feel better. And in the moment, it usually works. The challenge is that when we continue to change our parenting to reduce ongoing anxiety and distress, children may miss opportunities to learn that they can tolerate uncomfortable feelings and face difficult situations. Accommodations often come from a place of love and support, but over time they can send an unintended message: “You need this accommodation in order to be okay.”
Accommodations can show up in many ways across ages and presentations. They can look like reassuring your child dozens of times that they aren’t sick, sleeping in your child’s room every night because they’re afraid, ordering for your child at a restaurant, or RSVPing “no” to your fun night out because your tween doesn't want to be left alone. Every parent does these once in a while, and that’s reasonable. For parents of kids with anxiety or OCD, these changes in our parenting behavior become more frequent, stressful, and misaligned with how we want to be as parents. And ultimately, they don’t seem to help our kids get any better.
Let’s say your child is often afraid of sleeping alone and they frequently ask you to sleep with them. You decide to comply because they’re only going to want you to do that for so long, right? With you there, their anxiety drops for that night and they fall asleep… phew! But what about the next night? Their brain just learned that their bedroom might actually be dangerous and they need you there to keep them safe. This accommodation unintentionally strengthens their anxiety the next time and keeps you sleeping in the twin-size bunk bed with them for much longer than you might like.
Or what about your child who just wants to be reassured that they aren’t sick. They ask you, “Are you sure I’m not going to throw up?” You reassure them that they aren’t, and their anxiety drops. Then, ten minutes later, their stomach makes a funny sound, and they ask again and again and again. Your reassurance might help the anxiety drop for a moment, but they never get the opportunity to learn that uncertainty can be safe and manageable. And the two of you spend all your quality time in an anxiety loop.
SPACE helps parents reduce accommodations while still remaining supportive and helping their child discover that they are more capable than anxiety would have them believe.
SPACE is not about teaching parents to ignore their child, be cold, withhold support, or use punishment. Instead, SPACE teaches parents to communicate to their child that they believe in them and want to support them. Instead of saying “you’re okay” or “nothing bad is going to happen” over and over, SPACE helps parents identify meaningful ways to communicate and instill confidence. In the case of the child who doesn’t want to sleep alone, SPACE might guide a parent to say “I know this is really hard. We believe in you. You can handle this.” or, in the case of the child wanting to hear that they aren’t sick, “I’m right here with you while you sit in this uncertainty.”
what can you expect from space?
You might be wondering now, so what does this look like in practice? How is this going to work without my child being in the session? Well, with SPACE, there are a few steps that you will work through with a clinician in sessions. You will spend time identifying accommodations together and learning supportive statements you can use to empower your child. You will develop a plan for letting your child know which accommodations will change and how you will support them through those changes. You will also troubleshoot potential stress or pushback your child may present with, while celebrating the big and small wins.
While working through each of these steps, you will learn how to communicate confidence, gradually reduce accommodations, and support brave steps. A parent might decide that instead of answering a reassurance-seeking question 20 times a day, they’ll answer it once and then respond with a supportive statement, or a parent might choose to spend 10 minutes of quality time with their child before bed in their room instead of sleeping there through the night.
Each family’s SPACE experience will look different because SPACE is tailored to target your family’s unique needs while ensuring the targets and action steps are realistic, helpful, and age-appropriate for your family.
why we love it
One reason we love SPACE at Mind Chicago is that it opens doors for families who feel stuck. Maybe your child isn’t ready for individual therapy. Maybe therapy hasn’t felt like a good fit so far. Or maybe you, as a parent, just want a more active way to help your child day-to-day.
And it’s not just for parents of kids and teens. SPACE has been thoughtfully adapted for young adults who are struggling with what’s often called “failure to launch”—when anxiety or OCD makes it hard to live independently, take next steps, or feel confident out in the world. This can look like a young adult who won’t apply for jobs, a college student coming home frequently because of anxiety, someone avoiding driving, avoiding appointments and responsibilities, or just relying heavily on parents for reassurance or decision-making.
Parents in these situations often feel torn between wanting to help and wanting to encourage greater independence. There might be guilt showing up as they work towards that independence, exhaustion from carrying their child’s responsibilities, worries about not helping enough, or worries about helping too much. SPACE helps families find that balance, so young adults can move toward independence without feeling pushed off a cliff, and so that parents can feel supported throughout the process.
why this matters
This treatment feels especially important as we recognize OCD Awareness Week (October 11-17, 2026). OCD is more common than people think, and it’s often misunderstood. A few facts stand out:
OCD can show up at nearly any age, but in kids it most often begins between 7 and 12 - and can appear as early as age 6.
Many children and teens live with symptoms for years before seeing a mental health professional.
Kids with OCD are also more likely to have other conditions like tic disorders, ADHD, or other anxiety disorders.
Family accommodation is particularly common in families of children with OCD. OCD often recruits family members into rituals and compulsions, such as answering questions about being sick repeatedly, checking the locked door for the child, or helping them avoid feared situations.
That means many families are managing anxiety and OCD at home long before treatment begins. And it means that families are often engaging in accommodations without even knowing it. Our SPACE-trained clinicians are ready for this and are ready to help parents respond differently without feeling as if they are any less supportive.
Parents can step into a role that truly makes a difference, even before (or alongside) their child receiving direct therapy. Families often tell us they feel more hopeful, less stuck, and more connected after learning and practicing SPACE.
At Mind Chicago, we believe parents are powerful allies in their child’s growth. SPACE isn’t about forcing independence or “fixing” your child. It’s about creating the steady, supportive environment that they need to take brave steps forward. During OCD Awareness Week (and all year long), we celebrate approaches like SPACE that give families practical tools, hope, and a way to walk the journey together.
Whether your child is 4 or 21, parents can play a powerful role in helping anxiety loosen its grip.
