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Lynn Lyons, returns to McLean on March 15th!

The Safe Community Coalition, in partnership with the McLean Community Center, is pleased to share details of an upcoming event.

Helping Your Family’s Emotional Health: Practical, Strategic Skills and Solutions for Managing Anxiety, Enhancing Flexibility, and Creating Wellbeing.

Wednesday, March 15th, 2023

7:00 to 9:00 pm

McLean Community Center • Alden Theatre

1234 Ingleside Drive

McLean, VA 22101

Anxiety and worry are normal and expected parts of learning and growing, but when teens and children face challenges cognitively, socially or emotionally, anxiety can step in and take over. Anxiety can be overwhelming and rigid, but it’s also based on predictable patterns that can be shifted once we learn how it operates.

Lynn Lyons, licensed independent clinical social worker and best-selling author of Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents and the newly-released The Anxiety Audit, presents Helping Your Family’s Emotional Health: Practical, Strategic Skills and Solutions for Managing Anxiety, Enhancing Flexibility, and Creating Wellbeing.

Based on current research and over 30 years of clinical experience, Lynn Lyons presents a strategic approach based on skill-building, with prevention the preferred route. Using creativity, connection and awareness of their own patterns, parents will learn how to increase their child’s flexibility, support the tolerance of uncertainty, and emotionally and preventatively equip themselves and those they love as we all move forward.

This program takes place March 15th from 7 to 9 pm at the Alden Theatre and includes a Q&A session with Lynn afterwards. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased here.

In Case You Missed Last Year’s Spring Speaker – Julie Lythcott-Haims

On April 26 the Safe Community Coalition and The Potomac School co-hosted a presentation by Julie Lythcott-Haims entitled “Throw Out the Checklisted Childhood: Tips and Strategies for Raising Successful Kids.” Former Stanford dean and New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims explained why our culture of over-parenting is hurting our children and making them ill-equipped for adulthood.

In her presentation to parents, Julie illustrated the myriad ways that overparenting is damaging our kids, our relationships and our communities. She pointed out that our kids are anxious, depressed, self-harming, starving themselves and attempting (sometimes completing) at killing themselves. Julie discussed the research on overparenting and how it contributes to an increase in depression and anxiety with a decrease in executive functioning skills. Julie noted that overparenting takes on three forms: overprotection, fierce direction, and excessive hand holding. According to a study by Terri Lemoyne and Tom Buchanan, Julie shared in her How to Raise an Adult book, students with parents who “hover” or “helicopter” are more likely to be medicated for anxiety and/or depression. Julie pointed out that our children need to go through trial and error–and yes, fail–in order to develop agency (“I can”) and resilience (“I can cope”).

During her two visits Julie has gained a strong understanding of the challenges and concerns of the McLean community, and she was inspired to create for McLean a list of recommendations for parents to follow to prevent the harms of overparenting. She termed this list a 12 Step Parent Pledge which she urged the parents in attendance to adopt and to encourage their peers to heed as well. (Julie has since refined the Parent Pledge and sent out her newsletter explaining how she came to it.)

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