Child, Teen, & Family Therapy
There are avariety of paths therapy can take with children, teens, and families.
What therapy looks like will depend on your child’s age and needs, all of which will be discussed and determined during an initial parent session in which you and I can talk freely about your hopes and concerns for your child and your family and we can talk through which approach may be the best fit for your family.
Families often reach out when children are struggling with anxiety, depression, behavioral outbursts, school stress, divorce, trauma, or other life transitions. Other times parents reach out when they notice their child seems more overwhelmed, withdrawn, reactive, or unhappy than before. Early support can help families understand what is happening and respond before patterns become more entrenched.
As a family therapist, I often function as a kind of one-stop support for families, bringing together the different pieces of the family system in a coordinated way so that real change happens not only in therapy, but also at home and at school. I also collaborate with teachers and school staff through Kinder Therapy, sharing relationship-based approaches that help children regulate emotions, feel understood, and succeed in the classroom.
Paths for Therapy
Play Therapy
For younger children, it is important to note that they are not merely miniature adults. Therefore their therapy cannot be a distilled version of adolescent or adult-oriented talk-therapy. As most parents and educators can attest, children’s innate way of being is through play, which is the natural state in which they learn, master developmental tasks, and express themselves and their emotions. Subsequently, play therapy is deemed the standard of practice when working with young children. Play therapy is a research supported and theoretically grounded play-based approach to empower children to explore and express their feelings, and subsequently to develop more effective ways of coping with and communicating their feelings, wants, and needs.
Adolescent Therapy
For many teenagers, adolescence is a time of sudden and rapid change, physically, academically, socially, and emotionally. While parents and adults often speak of power struggles and tension, there is often an underlay of insecurity, sadness, and overwhelm. Teens often feel caught in a sort of limbo in which they are told to listen as a child, but yet expected to cope and act like an adult. Therapy for preteens and adolescents begins to look more similar to that of adults, however child-therapy interventions can be incorporated, depending on the teen's age, interests, and developmental stage. Therapy for teenagers helps them better understand themselves, navigate emotions and relationships, and develop the independence needed as they move toward adulthood.
Family Therapy with Parent Involvement
As parents, we are the most influential people in their children’s lives — which often can feel quite overwhelming when we see our kids struggling. Many families benefit from therapy that includes the relationships surrounding the child. Therefore parent involvement and support is one of the most important factors of therapy for children and adolescents, both in terms of their motivation for therapy and the efficiency and efficacy of the process. Family sessions may be held in conjunction with or as support of your child or teen's therapy.
Family sessions may include the entire family, parent(s) only, siblings, or individual sessions when helpful.
Depending on the needs of the family therapy may include:
• Family Play Therapy – experiential and play-based interactions that strengthen communication and connection
• Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) – Family therapy that helps parents and children better understand one another, repair patterns of conflict or disconnection, and develop clearer ways of responding to emotions.
• Filial Therapy – a family therapy model that equips parents with the same therapeutic framework therapists use with children and teens so healing interactions continue at home.
These approaches can be adapted for families with children of any age — including adult children and their families!
Support for Families Navigating Divorce
Children’s struggles are often connected to larger family transitions such as separation or divorce.
The Divorced Parenting Series helps parents support their children through these changes while reducing the emotional impact of conflict.
Parents learn ways to:
• reduce children’s exposure to conflict
• understand loyalty binds children experience during divorce
• support children’s resilience through separation
• co-parent in ways that protect children
Getting Started
Most families begin with a Parent Consultation Session, where you can share your hopes and concerns for your child. From there, I can recommend which therapeutic approach will be the most helpful for your kids, teens, and family.
Filial Therapy - Parenting Support & Education
As parents, we may not always be part of a child's pain or struggle, but I do believe we are the most important part of the solution. Click the links below to learn more.
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Parent support and education often takes the form of filial therapy. Filial therapy is a structured and time-limited training model in which parents of young children are trained in play therapy skills, similarly to how therapists are taught in graduate school, with the goal of empowering parents and caregivers to be the change agent for their child instead of having to rely on an “expert” to “fix” whatever their child's struggle or problem. Filial therapy is a play-based approach that builds on the inherent strength of the parent-child relationship. In an average of 10 sessions, parents learn to manage their children’s behavior and anxieties, and discover the keys to enhancing and strengthening the parent-child bond. Filial therapy is often a welcomed gift for parents who yearn to be involved in their children’s therapy and healing.
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Parenting an adolescent can be humbling and overwhelming during the best of times, let alone during times of anxiety, family stress, or conflict. Even more distressing is when our efforts to support, discipline, and guide our children through stressful times feel like not enough, and we and our children are left desperate and overwhelmed by their anxieties, sadness, or misbehavior. Just as teens are often very much in need of therapy, parents are often in need of support.iption text goes here
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Parent consults are held in conjunction with your teen's individual therapy, and are essential not only for my understanding of your hopes for your child, but also for their therapeutic success. It is my strong belief and experience that teens and parents often yearn for closeness and connection, yet misunderstandings, family stress, or fear of judgement often blocks the open and constructive communication that is necessary for a strong relationship. Therefore parent consults are devoted to providing a framework that will allow you to invite open and honest conversations and equip you with the language to talk so your teens will listen, and to listen so your teens will talk.