In Module 3, you identified coping skills that could help your child feel better when they are feeling anxious. So how do we know if something is a helpful coping skill or a harmful fix-it if they both help children feel less anxious? The best way to figure out if something is a coping skill or a fix-it is to figure out if it is helping a child accomplish their goals and approach their fears. If it helps them face their fears and they are flexible in how much they can use it, it is likely a coping skill. If it is not, or if they have to do it, it may be a fix-it. Here is a helpful chart for understanding the differences between fix-its and coping behaviors. Or, view the chart in text below:
Fix-Its
- Help your child feel less anxious in the short-term
- Get in the way of building confidence
- Do not help a child accomplish their goals
- Do not let your child learn about their fears
- Child feels like they need to do them
- Used too much
- Used rigidly or in a very certain way
- Often causes stress in a family
Coping Skills
- Help your child feel less anxious in the short-term
- Help your child face their fears
- Help your child accomplish their goals
- Used flexibly
- Do not cause stress in a family
The most important thing to remember is that if the behavior is helping your child accomplish their goals or your family’s goals, like going to school, meeting friends, or participating in other important activities, the behavior is probably a helpful coping skill. If the behavior is restricting your child’s life or causing more stress in your family, it is likely a fix-it.
Certain behaviors that start as coping skills may be eventual targets for mission plans, too. Here are a couple examples:
Neil and his mom have been working on a mission plan of Neil staying home while she goes shopping at the store for an hour. When she first leaves, she leaves a phone so he can text her while she is away to check in. If this helped Neil accomplish his first goal of staying home, and he only used it once to check on her, it sounds like a coping skill, because it helped him face his fear that something bad may happen to his mom when they are apart and he did not use it too much. If he refuses to leave his mom’s side without a phone and messages her repeatedly when she is gone, it may be a fix-it, because it might send the message that his mom would only be safe if he checks on her over and over. In either case, it could be helpful to develop a mission plan with an eventual goal of staying home without messaging his mom the whole time. If it is a fix-it, it would be even more important to identify steps along the way that gradually reduce the number of messages Neil sends.
Sally carries a special bottle of hand-sanitizer everywhere she goes and uses it after she touches anything. If Sally uses a standard amount after using a public restroom, this could be a coping behavior, because it helped her face her fear of using a public restroom. If she refuses to use the bathroom and still feels the need to use lots of hand-sanitizer after her mom uses the bathroom, this could be a fix-it, because it is excessive, and she is still avoiding her fears of using public bathrooms.
