Parents spend a great deal of time and money making elaborate plans for their children's summer vacations. Day camps, sleep away camps, enrichment classes, social skills groups... you name it. For many kids, every single day of summer is planned down to the last minute. For working parents, summers may present child care challenges and perhaps this is the driving force behind this growing trend of summer programming.

When a child is anxious, most adults instinctively move into problem-solving mode. The urge is to fix it, reduce it, or protect the child from the discomfort. That instinct makes sense, and it comes from care! At the same time, anxiety rarely responds well to being rushed or pushed away. In many cases, the more pressure there is to make it stop, the more it tends to hold on.

Modern life is often defined by an abundance of screen time, packed schedules, and long hours spent indoors.