Week 1
Monday, January 11
When Anxiety Takes Up More Space
Understand childhood anxiety, avoidance, and the family patterns that can develop around distress.
Explore why even loving, thoughtful responses can sometimes maintain anxiety.
A Four-Week Sparkly Brain × SPACE Workshop
I Know You Can
Helping Kids Through Anxiety Without Losing Connection
I know this is hard for you. And I know you can handle it.
When our kids struggle with anxiety, avoidance, or overwhelming emotions, our instinct is to protect them. We reassure. We step in. We try to make things easier.
And of course we do. Watching someone we love struggle is hard.
- 4 Live Sessions
- Mondays, 9:30–10:45 AM ET
- Begins January 11
- $200
But what if helping our kids feel more capable sometimes means responding differently to their distress?
In this four-week workshop, we’ll explore how to support children through anxiety without withdrawing compassion, sacrificing connection, or expecting them to face difficult things alone.
When your child is struggling, every instinct tells you to help.
- You see their anxiety.
- You know how hard they’re trying.
- You understand that what looks simple to someone else can feel enormous to them.
So you step in.
You offer reassurance. You adjust expectations. You make accommodations. You try to prevent the next meltdown, panic, or painful experience.
Sometimes those responses are exactly what your child needs.
But sometimes, despite everyone’s best intentions, the world starts getting smaller. More things feel impossible. More situations get avoided. And you find yourself working harder and harder to keep everything okay.
What if there were another way to support your child?
One that makes room for their feelings while helping them discover their own capacity. One that doesn’t ask you to choose between being compassionate and helping your child grow.
That’s what I Know You Can is about.
The foundation
Grounded in Evidence. Rooted in Compassion.
This workshop draws on SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), an evidence-based, parent-based treatment approach for childhood anxiety developed at the Yale Child Study Center.
SPACE is built around a powerful shift in how adults respond to childhood anxiety. Rather than focusing exclusively on changing the child’s behavior, we explore how changes in adult responses can support growing confidence and reduce patterns of avoidance.
At the heart of the approach are two messages:
Acceptance
I understand that this is difficult for you.
Confidence
I believe you can handle it.
Both matter.
Dr. Val Camarano brings these principles together with her work in ADHD, neurodivergence, and parts-informed psychotherapy.
We’ll explore not only what supportive responses look like, but why changing our own responses can bring up so much fear, guilt, uncertainty, and discomfort.
A note on the evidence. The research behind SPACE comes from studies of the full treatment program delivered by trained clinicians. This four-session workshop is an educational introduction to its principles. It is not the complete SPACE treatment protocol, and it has not been studied on its own.
This workshop is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Yale University or the Yale Child Study Center. It is not SPACE certification, clinical supervision, or a continuing education program.
What we’ll explore
Four weeks.
Week 2
Monday, January 25
What Support Really Looks Like
Learn the difference between accommodation and supportive responses.
Explore how to communicate acceptance and confidence simultaneously.
Week 3
Monday, February 1
Finding the Courage to Respond Differently
Understand the protective instincts, fears, and emotional reactions that can make changing our own behavior difficult.
Explore how to make small, thoughtful shifts.
Week 4
Monday, February 8
Growing Confidence, Staying Connected
Learn ways to navigate resistance, respond to distress, repair ruptures, and help children discover what they’re capable of.
What makes this workshop different
You don’t have to choose between compassion and confidence.
Supporting an anxious child can be emotionally complicated.
We can understand the research and still struggle to put it into practice.
We can know that our child is capable and still feel terrified of watching them struggle.
We can want to encourage independence while worrying that we’re asking too much.
This workshop makes room for all of that.
Through an evidence-informed, neurodivergent-affirming, parts-informed approach, we’ll explore practical strategies alongside the emotional experiences that make them challenging to implement.
- No shame.
- No rigid parenting formulas.
- No expectation that anyone gets it right every time.
Just a different way to understand anxiety, support growing confidence, and stay connected through the process.
Workshop details
I Know You Can
Helping Kids Through Anxiety Without Losing Connection
Four-Week Sparkly Brain × SPACE Workshop
- Dates
- Monday, January 11, 2027
- Monday, January 25, 2027
- Monday, February 1, 2027
- Monday, February 8, 2027
- Time
- 9:30–10:45 AM Eastern
- Format
- Live virtual educational workshop
- Tuition
- $200 for all four sessions
- Facilitator
- Dr. Val Camarano, PsyD
No session January 18. All sessions take place live online.
About the facilitator
Meet Dr. Val Camarano
Dr. Val Camarano, PsyD, is a New York- and Connecticut-licensed psychologist and the founder of Sparkly Brain.
Her work integrates:
- ADHD and neurodivergent-affirming perspectives
- SPACE-informed parent training
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) Level 1 training
- Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) training
- Compassionate, experiential approaches to psychological change
She brings these together in an approach that values both practical change and the emotional complexity of being human.
Her philosophy is simple:
We can change the patterns that aren’t working without losing compassion for the people caught in them.
Questions
Frequently asked
I Know You Can
Because believing in our kids means learning how to support them through the hard things, not always making the hard things disappear.
4 Live Sessions · Mondays, 9:30–10:45 AM ET · Begins January 11 · $200