You're listening to the Family Discipleship podcast, a podcast of Training the Church.

This is Adam Griffin, and I'm here with my co-host, Mrs. Cassie Bryant.

Chelsea could not be with us this morning, but Cassie's here, and we're going to have some guests with us here in a second. Cassie, for our topic today. I'm wondering, what scared you when you were a kid? What made you anxious? What was young Cassie kind of afraid of? Okay. So one was, I think it was a valid fear. It was storms, like really, really loud storms. Okay. And then the other one was not

valid because I was never forgotten at school, but I was often maybe the last one picked up.

And I would be afraid that I was forgotten. That I got left at school. By the bus driver or by your

parents? No, by a parent. Okay. Yeah, that never happened, right? I also had irrational fears

as a kid. I kind of grew up in Nebraska, but I had an irrational fear of sharks and swimming pools. Oh my goodness. Which are not their natural habitat anyway, but definitely not in Nebraska. Was that jaws induced? You know what? I don't know. I honestly think I watched 20,000 leagues under the sea way too young. And I think I just thought, you know, giant squid. I've never watched it.

I'm still too young to watch that movie. Maybe in my retirement home. Well, I'm so glad, guys,

today that we are welcoming back to the podcast again, two of our favorite people, the people that we

learn from so much. So Cassie, guess who's with us today? We've got David Thomas and Sissy Gough with us today.

We're just missing the dogs. That's true. Neither are very far, I don't think. Never are,

are they? No. Hey, Sissy, we're going to talk about these books here in a second. When you were a kid,

anything that you were scared of? Anything that when you think about fear and anxiety and you're dealing so much in ministering to families, and ministering to kids and counseling people, what were the fears and anxieties you had when you were a child? Well, you know, it's funny. David and I were talking about one recently. He reminded me of this. I think mine was kind of a rational fear, but I, my house and chain link fence and

where I had a beautiful playhouse that I got to play in, and it backed up to a neighbor

named Sid who wore a brown jumpsuit every day that I remember, and he had two brown

Doberman pinchers. And every time I was in my yard, those dogs were like, at the chain link fence. It was like straight out of Toy Story. I was going to say, since the bad guy in Toy Story. Yeah, what's a dog? I think a scary dog. Oh, my goodness. There you go. Yeah, this might be made up. It was so valid they made a movie. I know it. My fear was, you know, being left alone in a ravine with a wildebeest stampede when my uncle was against my father. Oh, wait. That's like, let's keep this going. How many movies can we get? Hey, David, one of the things that we're so grateful for, you've written books for parents,

you've done counseling for kids, we've got these new resources for younger kids, four to seven-year-olds.

But one of the reasons these are so important is because things like fear and anxiety seem

maybe increasingly prevalent, but definitely prevalent in this generation.

Before we jump into some of these resources and why you made them, can you maybe just help us

understand? Is there a reason why anxiety is so prevalent in children, either in this generation

or just in general? Why is anxiety something that we're seeing in kids? Yeah, I would absolutely

...