Is your child struggling with anxiety, leaving you feeling concerned and longing for a solution?
Imagine if both you and your child possessed the tools and strategies to conquer their anxiety together, so they could face their fears confidently and experience a brighter future. Welcome to . . .
From Fearful to Fearless:
Empowering Anxious Children and Their Parents
(Enrolment will open again in Autumn 2023)
In my 30+ years working as a child therapist, I've met a lot of parents who feel like you
- You hate to see your child struggling with their anxiety, and the negative impact it's having on their life, and you'd do anything to help them, but you're not sure what the best approach to take is. There's so much conflicting advice out there and the path isn't clear.
- You're at your wits end, feeling like you have already tried everything, and nothing works! You would love to be taken through a proven process that will work, and have lots of support along the way.
- You're wondering if your child needs to see a psychologist or therapist, but you're worried about the cost or how long you might have to wait to be seen.
- You're worried about what the future holds for your child if their anxiety doesn't get any better.
- You and your partner (or other adults in your child's life) don't always agree on the best way to handle your anxious child, leading to inconsistency and possibly conflict.
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Your child's anxiety is not only impacting their life, but it's also disrupting the rest of your family.
- In your darkest times you worry that you might be a bad parent because your child has anxiety or because you can't seem to fix it.
If you find yourself nodding along to any of the statements above, it’s a pleasure to meet you.
Hello! I'm Frances, an award-winning child therapist with more than 30 years' experience under my belt, both in private practice and as a specialist in the NHS.
Anxiety is the #1 reason parents contact me, and I've worked with hundreds of children to overcome and manage their anxiety, with incredible results.
Anxiety is a growing problem for children and young people, affecting many aspects of their lives and stopping them from having a normal, happy childhood.
Research also shows that untreated anxiety can also lead to more serious mental health problems developing later in your child's life. But, there is good news . . . anxiety is very treatable - particularly if you catch it as early as possible.
And that is why I created From Fearful to Fearless-- a comprehensive online course specifically designed to help your child break free from the grips of anxiety, while simultaneously equipping you with the necessary skills to support them every step of the way.
In it I share my proven methods to help anxious children aged 5-13 become confident and carefree, and bring relief and joy to their parents.
If you would like your child to overcome their anxiety, I’d love to invite you both to join me in From Fearful to Fearless.
From Fearful to Fearless isn’t like other approaches to overcoming and managing your child’s anxiety.
Where other approaches just focus on the symptoms of anxiety with simplistic solutions that don't work in isolation, From Fearful to Fearless:
✔ Addresses the root cause of your child’s anxiety, rather than just providing a band-aid for the symptoms.
✔ Provides a collaborative container, with modules for both you and your child so you can work through it together.
✔ Gives you access to the specialist knowledge I’ve accumulated in my 30+ years experience as a child therapist, without forking out thousands of pounds for individual therapy.
Over 8 weeks, you will develop skills to understand and manage your child’s anxiety, with loads of support along the way. At the same time, your child will learn proven strategies to understand, manage and overcome their anxiety, with plenty of support and reassurance for them too.
Working with both you and your child in this way ensures they overcome their anxiety, feel happy and confident, and reach their full potential.
"My husband and I contacted Frances after our young daughter developed PTSD symptoms. Frances is so lovely and kind, caring and compassionate. Our daughter looked forward to the modules with Frances (and Bertha, the dog). We now have a happy child again and we will be forever grateful."
Testimonial
Mother of 9 year old girl
Here's how it all plays out:
- Over the 8 weeks, you and your child will get access to 6 modules. Each module has separate lessons for you and your child, and contains downloadable resources and workbooks to help you both transfer your learnings to real life.
- 2 implementation weeks--giving your child time to practice what they’re learning, and giving you time to catch up if life gets in the way. Lifetime access to all 6 modules and resources
- Optional access to weekly Q&A calls with me to support you through the journey
What Parents Are Saying About From Fearful to Fearless:
(Names have been excluded to preserve client confidentiality)
“I am nearly at week 6 of the videos and have found them so engaging and informative. The information is at such an accessible level and is delivered in a really sensitive and understanding way.”
“I love the colours, the room settings in which you record and even your tone of voice is relaxing”
“I thought doing the timeline was brilliant. It really made you think that it’s sometimes an accumulation of events and not just one that can cause issues”
“I really like how the videos are broken down into sections to separate the content. I found the information so interesting and it has really helped develop my understanding of my child's anxiety as well as my own. The videos provided practical helpful techniques to use going forward, no matter what life experiences we encounter as a family.”
“My son likes the music and cartoon dog intro, he also likes seeing Bertha. He finds the puppets entertaining!”
What you’ll find inside
From Fearful to Fearless
I've designed your child's lessons to help them understand, manage and reduce their anxiety in a fun and engaging way, with the support of our lovely therapy dog, Bertha.
From understanding what has caused their anxiety, to recognising triggers and developing healthy coping mechanisms, your child will gain practical skills to navigate life with confidence, all while being accompanied by Bertha, their faithful therapy dog companion.
Over 8 weeks, YOUR CHILD will work through:
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Module One - Understanding Anxiety
This module is designed to reassure your child and let them know they are not alone with their struggles. In it, they will learn all about anxiety - what it is, what is happening in their body when they are anxious (and why its not their fault!), and the most common fears and worries children can have.
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Module Two - Understanding YOUR Anxiety
Here your child will learn to recognise the signs of anxiety in their own body, and where their anxiety may have come from. This knowledge ensures we’re treating the root cause (not just the symptoms), sets your child up for success and ensures they engage with the rest of the course effectively.
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Module Three - Simple Ways To Start Feeling Better
This module focuses on encouraging your child to adopt healthy self-care habits that will lessen their anxiety. These are presented in an engaging way to ensure your child is more willing to give them a try and reap the anxiety-reducing benefits.
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Module Four - Learning to calm your fight, flight or freeze response
In this module your child will learn my 2-part method for calming their limbic system, so they know how to 'reset' themselves when their fight, flight or freeze response gets accidentally triggered by their anxiety. They will begin to see their reactions as something they can learn to manage so they no longer have to avoid situations that may trigger them, and can find their confidence and start enjoying life again.
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Module Five - Training Your Brain Not to Worry!
This empowering module teaches your child all about how to take control of their thinking patterns, and choose patterns that make them feel more courageous and positive. Once your child has learned how to train their brain not to worry in the first place, they are then ready to learn how to finally face their fears in the last section of the module.
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Module Six - Bringing it all Together
In the final module your child will reflect on everything they have learned and celebrate their progress. They are supported to practice their new skills and believe in themselves, to ensure lasting success.
While your child is progressing through the course, you’ll work through lessons designed to help you understand what your child is going through, along with advice on how to help your child implement the strategies they are learning, and tips on other ways to strengthen their resilience and emotional wellbeing.
You’ll also learn what to say (and what not to say!) to your anxious child, and how to support your child through their journey.
Over 8 weeks, YOU will work through:
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Module One - Understanding Anxiety
We start by taking a deep dive into exploring exactly what anxiety is, how it shows up and what it feels like for your child. Then we look at the different types of anxiety disorders that children can have. Finally, we explore the most common psychological, biological and environmental causes of childhood anxiety.
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Module Two - Understanding YOUR Child's Anxiety
I’ll help you identify the cause by sharing some of the tools I use in my therapy practice. This is important because it’s no good throwing a load of solutions at anxiety, if we don’t understand what caused it in the first place – some of them may work, but that’s more down to luck than design. And often one symptom may settle only to be replaced by something new a few days or weeks later. When we start with looking at the root causes rather than just treating the symptoms, and resolve the causes first, then we achieve lasting success.
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Module Three -Addressing the Causes of Your Child’s Anxiety
Here we explore the different ways to support your anxious child, based on the cause of their anxiety that we identified in Module 2. Depending on the cause, you will learn the appropriate solutions that are right for your child, and grow in confidence knowing you finally have solutions that will work for your child. You'll also learn how to create a 'low-stress' environment to help your child manage their anxiety while they are recovering.
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Module Four -Managing Your Child’s Anxiety Part 1
We start looking at actionable techniques and strategies designed to calm your anxious child. Once you have learned all about calming your anxious child in the right way using these approaches, and have seen how effective they are, you are ready to progress to Part 2.
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Module Five - Managing Your Child's Anxiety - Part 2
This is all about training children's brains to think in a more balanced and realistic way so they feel empowered to overcome any unhelpful thoughts and reframe them. In this module I teach you how to help your child recognise their anxious thought patterns; support them to change these; and help them to start facing and overcoming their fears. You will also learn extra strategies to support your child at home and at school.
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Module Six - Bringing it all Together
In this final module you will learn how to avoid falling in to the 'Cycle of Negative Reinforcement' trap by using everything you have learned in the course going forward. We will also troubleshoot particularly challenging situations, and spend some time looking at how you care for yourself, as parenting an anxious child can be exhausting.
Along with the core content, you will also get these extra bonuses:
EFT Training For Parents
Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT (also known as tapping), is a wonderful tool to help reduce the intensity of difficult feelings.
Your child will learn how to use the technique as part of the course, but this bonus video tutorial teaches you everything you need to help you master the technique, and support your child to practise it too.
My invaluable list of resources to help anxious children
Featuring all the products I use or recommend in my therapy practice, this 'kit' list will save you precious time trying to source these items yourself!
You can click straight through from the list to an online retailer of your choice and order a product instantly.
3 Months Free Membership of Our Online Community
This will be a wonderful resource for any parents interested in nurturing their child’s emotional wellbeing and mental health.
When your free 3 months comes to an end you'll be offered the chance to remain a member with reduced monthly fees locked in for life!
More comments from parents:
He is now in school full time
"Prior to the course my son had long term struggles with emotional regulation and understanding which displayed as physical outbursts and extreme anxiety, including school refusal on and off for many years. He is now in school full time and we have seen a real change in his understanding of feelings and his emotional regulation, as well as a much happier and settled home environment. We have not had physical outbursts for months now . . . the skills and knowledge we have gained has been life-changing and is something we can continue using to help us navigate our way positively through any future obstacles"
She enjoyed the videos and looked forward to them
“ She said writing her worries down and then us talking about them helped her. One day she came home from school very quiet, but said she was ok, whilst doing a bit of the course it encouraged her worry to come out and we could deal with it, so that really helped. She loves the relaxation techniques”
We have definitely seen positive changes and a reduction in his anxiety
"It is an incredibly helpful tool to be able to help both my children - and us as a whole family - and we are all using the techniques together to help embed them and help them become instinctive behaviours. We have definitely seen positive changes and a reduction in his anxiety, so it's been a very positive experience. A very big thank you from us!"
It also made him see he could try to think about things differently.
"My son was very attached to me, he cried when he had to leave me for school or contact with his father, would wake often in the night and would return from contact with his father quite angry, with mood swings. The course gave him the encouragement to talk about his feelings and understand them a little. It also made him see he could try to think about things differently."
I would definitely recommend this course, its fantastic!
"My daughter had suffered from general anxiety for a while; she wouldn't sleep alone, had dark thoughts and meltdowns. The course has helped her to understand why she has emotional and angry outbursts and resolve these outbursts. She now also recognises when it's happening and will talk about it, so that we can go through it together. I would definitely recommend this course, it's fantastic!"
Maybe you have doubts this will work for you? Don't worry, I offer a money back guarantee
I'm so confident that From Fearful to Fearless will work for your child, I'm offering you a money-back guarantee.
If both you and your child complete From Fearful to Fearless, including watching all the videos and completing all the activities and the workbook, and your child's anxiety has not improved at all by the end of the course, just email me and I’ll refund you in full. No catch.
Picture this:
How would you feel…
✔ Knowing your child feels safer and happier and more confident?
✔ Seeing your child calm and peaceful, rather than in a state of high alert?
✔ Watching your child taking part in activities with their friends, laughing and playing instead of worrying and tying themselves up in knots?
✔ Having your child fall asleep easily every night?
✔ Knowing that your child isn’t worrying about what others think of them, or concerned about being ‘perfect’?
✔Being able to go out as a family, or go on holiday, without worrying about your child?
✔ Not having to walk on eggshells around your child, and instead having a peaceful home enviroment without conflict?
✔ Knowing you've done everything you can as a parent to support them?
"The techniques provided by Frances had a positive effect on Jessica (not child's real name) resulting in less outbursts, and Jessica beginning to self-regulate more effectively and seeking alternative methods (as provided by Frances) to display her emotions. The vast experience and therapeutic interventions that can be offered by Frances ensures that appropriate support can always be delivered to support children to achieve positive outcomes. We would highly recommend Frances Weston to provide therapeutic support for any young person who may be in need of this"
Wayne Barker
Manager of Children's Residential Home
Still not sure if From Fearful to Fearless is for you?
From Fearful to Fearless isn’t the right fit if:
✘ You'd rather have a band-aid for the symptoms rather than tools and techniques to help overcome the root cause of your child’s anxiety. Without understanding the root cause of your child’s anxiety, you can throw all the solutions at it, but they’re unlikely to stick. In From Fearful to Fearless, you will identify whether the cause is psychological, biological or environmental, so that you/your child can apply the appropriate tools and techniques and achieve lasting success.
✘ You’d rather wait and see if your child grows out of their anxiety. In my experience this usually doesn’t happen, but what does happen is that a child's anxiety gets worse and not only makes life miserable for them and their family in the short term, but it also makes it more likely that the child will grow up to have more complex mental health problems
However, From Fearful to Fearless is the right fit if:
✔ Your child’s anxiety is disrupting their life or causing them to miss out on important experiences. Perhaps they are unable to go to school and are missing out on their education, or they could be unable to settle to sleep at night without a trusted adult, or maybe they are struggling to socialise with friends away from you, or join in extra-curricular activities. These are just a few examples of the ways anxiety can impact on a child's life and cause stress and misery.
✔ You would do anything to see your child live a happy, normal childhood, but you’re not sure where to start. You hate to see your anxious child struggling with their anxiety, and the negative impact its having on their life, but there's so much conflicting advice out there and the path can feel murky.
✔ You’re worried you might be a bad parent and you’re questioning where you went wrong. Let me reassure you . . . you are not a bad parent because your child has anxiety! It's a huge problem for thousands of children at the moment, and this is due to a whole range of factors which we explore in From Fearful to Fearless. Even if you suffer with anxiety yourself, this is not your fault and it's not necessarily the case that you have passed your anxiety on to your child. And if you are anxious yourself, taking the course will not only help your child but it will also give you all the strategies and support you need to overcome your own anxiety too!
✔ Your child’s anxiety is disrupting the rest of the family. Having an anxious child can put an enormous strain on everyone around them, which often makes the child feel even worse. Not being able to have relaxed meals and bedtimes, and happy times together as a family - whether it's a spontaneous day out or a holiday in a new place, causes such a lot of disappointment and stress. Enrolling in From Fearful to Fearless will not only benefit your child, but it will also be a massive gift to the whole family.
✔You've already tried every solution under the sun and nothing has worked. As previously explained, From Fearful to Fearless does not just offer a band-aid approach that provides a temporary solution to your anxious child's symptoms, but it gets right to the root causes of their anxiety and deals with them first. I promise that if you and your child apply what you learn in the program consistently, and stick with it, you will see lasting results.
✔You don’t have the budget for one-on-one therapy for your child. I understand that private therapy is simply not an option for many caring parents, especially with the cost of living crisis we are all facing at the moment. With newly-introduced tiered pricing options, and payment plans, From Fearful to Fearless offers you an affordable opportunity to help your anxious child now.
If you found yourself nodding your head to any of the points in the list above, then From Fearful to Fearless would be perfect for you and your child . . . simply click the button below to join us
Frequently Asked Questions
What people asked before signing up for 'From Fearful To Fearless'
The course contains 6 modules spread over 8 weeks. In each module there are videos for you, and for your child.
It should take no more than an hour and a half per week max for you to work through the videos in both the modules (assuming you watch the children's ones with your child). You and your child don’t have to watch all of the videos in one sitting – but can dip in and out for a few minutes at a time throughout the week if time is at a premium.
There’s no need to worry or feel that you have to complete it in that time, as you have lifetime access to the course content.
Here’s some feedback we’ve had from parents about this issue:
“It's such a useful tool for parents and children to be able to engage with in their own time and when they are ready. I think it's a fantastic resource which will enable families to progress at their own pace . . .”
“I love the fact that you can move through the course alongside your child, and at a pace that suits the busy household timetable!”
“Really helpful, friendly and informative videos. I like the length of each video as I find it easy to fit into the day and helps me to remember the information in each video.”
The idea is for you to work through it at your own speed – one that suits you and your child. So even though the course is spread over 8 weeks, we’re going to have 2 implementation weeks which will give you time to put some of what you have learned into practice or do some of the homework (there isn’t much, I promise!) before moving on to the next part.
Even if you have tried teaching your child techniques and they have been reluctant to engage, or refused to do them, my experience with the parents who have taken the course is that their children have been very willing to engage and practice all or most of the things I teach them.
I don’t claim any superpower here (well, apart from Bertha, my therapy dog, of course!) but I think it's just that sometimes children are more responsive to a new person teaching them. That being said, I do offer you advice on how to help your child engage and get the best from their videos in the parents' introduction section, so you can ensure they are set up for success.
Finally, the feedback I've received from parents who have already taken the course is that their children have loved working with them collaboratively on the course (despite their occasional grumbling!) and they have both found it to be a really bonding experience.
The next round of the course will start in Autumn 2023 (exact date to be confirmed) and will run for 8 weeks. After it officially ends, you will still have lifetime access to the course.
I set the maximum age at 13 because I use hand puppets in the childrens' videos and felt teenagers might see them as childish and not want to engage with them. Having said that, some teenagers are happy with suspending disbelief!
It really depends on what you think you child would find acceptable. If you think they will still enjoy the videos then do join us!
If your child’s anxiety is causing any disruption to their life or yours, or causing them to miss out on important experiences then you and your child will get huge benefits from the course.
Early intervention is key when helping anxious children, so even if things don't feel too bad now - don't wait until things get worse before you take action.
Don't be shy . . . just email me and I'll be very happy to answer any questions you may have!
Or if you would prefer to chat to me in person you can book a free 15 minute call with me when enrolment opens again.
Should you decide to accept my invitation to join FROM FEARFUL TO FEARLESS with your child, I personally guarantee that it will be completely and utterly life-changing for you both, and your family.
I really hope you will give your child the opportunity to learn the skills and techniques I'll be sharing in the course because they will not only help them now, but for the rest of their lives.
I look forward to meeting you personally inside the course, and can't wait to work with you and your child!
Warmest wishes
Frances x
