We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dawn Friedman . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dawn below.

Dawn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you get your first job in the field that you practice in today?

I’ve always been interested in child development, even as a teenage babysitter I’d read the parenting books I would find on the job. But my first professional job working with children and families was as a preschool teacher for a local childcare center. I had to take a pay cut because I made more money working at a deli then I did working with kids! But I loved the work and realized I wanted to do more of it but that I wanted to work with families who were struggling. As an undergrad I started out as a volunteer for an inner-city tutoring program and at a domestic violence shelter watching the kids while their moms were at meetings then built on that experience until I qualified for a paid position at the shelter.

Dawn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

During lockdown I created a training for my fellow therapists about managing decision-making around our telehealth practices and seeing clients in person. Playing around with the software made me realize that I could put my parenting trainings online to make them easier for clients to access. This expanded to toying with the idea of putting both the education piece and the support piece in a virtual space. I reached out to my licensing board to see if this would be do-able and they said it was absolutely fine if I didn’t do it under my license (since the software isn’t HIPAA compliant).

Child Anxiety Support, my program for parents of anxious kids, is the result of this idea. I’m really proud of the program because it makes the work more accessible to more people (and it’s also more affordable). It’s incredibly fun for me because I love working with struggling parents — I’ve been there and done that myself! — and I know that education and support around child anxiety is so important. Putting it in this format means I can work with more families since I’m not limited by my schedule and neither are they.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

I remember when I was first considering graduate school for my clinical counseling degree. I’d spent the last decade at home with my kids and building a freelance writing career only to watch it fall apart when the recession hit. I was laid off from my editing job and the market was flooded with corporate communication professionals gunning for the same gigs I was gunning for only they had way more experience. I was getting super discouraged and scared (my husband and I now refer to that time as “the ramen years”) and started thinking about going back to school.

I looked around at my bookshelves and saw all of these books about parenting, about child development, and about child mental health and thought, “Why not pivot entirely?”

Grad school was loads of fun — I loved all of the learning. During my practicum, when I was finally meeting with clients, I realized I’d come back full circle. Now I think of that time I spent writing (about parenting, even then that was my topic!) as time off from my “real” profession and I’m even grateful for that scary lay off time! If I hadn’t had it, I might not have ever figured out that working with families is where I’m meant to be.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Marketing my clinical practice and marketing Child Anxiety Support have been totally different. My clinical practice is local so I did a lot of networking and public speaking. Once I figured out that I needed to reach out to the professionals also serving my ideal clients, my practice grew really quickly. But Child Anxiety Support is virtual and that’s a whole different ballgame.

So far the most effective way of getting my name out there and establishing my expertise has been starting a podcast called The Child Anxiety FAQ. I originally did this as a way to bolster my site’s search engine optimization. My idea was to target keywords in the titles and then write the blogs and read them as podcasts. I like listening to super short but useful shows myself and so I aim for ten or fifteen minutes at the most.

The SEO part has been helpful but I didn’t realize that people would actually become fans of the podcast! Most people who come to the site these days are people who listened to the podcast and like my approach. I have a lot of fun recording them especially now that I get regular submissions from people in the audience who volunteer the questions that I answer.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://ChildAnxietySupport.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/dawnfriedmanmsed
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/childanxietysupport
• Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/dawnfriedman
• Other: http://childanxietypodcast.com

Image Credits
These are all mine