Child therapy happens in a family context

If you’re reaching out for therapy for your child, something about your child's life may not be going as you had expected or hoped. Particularly if trauma is part of the story, your child might melt down, act out, suddenly act younger, or space out. Your teen might be cutting, skipping meals or binging, having panic attacks, isolating, or failing classes. We’ll start by collaborating to develop a picture of what you know about your child and what help you need to support your child’s growth and strengthen your bond. This means we’ll meet several times initially to talk about your child and your parenting needs before I meet with your child, and that we’ll meet regularly to check in about how your child is doing and what you need. For very young children (ages about 1-3), you may be present and an active participant in all or most of your child’s sessions.

Child therapy (1-10)

When your child and I meet, because they’re still developing their prefrontal cortexes and thus, their ability to communicate things verbally, our work will primarily take the form of play therapy, which helps children work through emotions through play. Like adults, kids often benefit when helped to understand their feelings and experiences, and we’ll use the language of their developmental stage: play, art, and other creative modes of expression. You might think of them as talking (like an adult does in talk therapy) through their play! Play, art, and the ways that children approach them can express what kids are feeling, and how they see and make sense of the important people and events in their lives. And when trauma or other challenges have made their relationships, experience, or identity hard to make sense of, play and art help children put the pieces together in creative ways.

Teens and tweens

Adolescents are grappling with a lot of big changes, from a changing body, to new schools, an emerging sense of independence, a desire to find ways to define themselves, and the questions and worries that arise around the transition into adulthood. These changes can be particularly difficult to manage if your teen/tween is already wrestling with major obstacles like trauma, neurodivergence, or experiences of marginalization, and sometimes teens turn to risky coping mechanisms to hold all of these pieces together. Therapy for teens is in some ways similar to therapy for adults, as they have a lot more verbal skills than younger kids, but with a focus on mastering these important developmental tasks. Older kids and teens might use a combination of play, talking, and art in our sessions, as they move through their development and search for the most comfortable ways of expressing themselves.

Parents may be a bit less involved with therapy for teens, as your teen works on developing healthy independence, explores the desire for privacy, and forms new senses of self, but you’re still an important part of the team. The process of working towards independence can make it hard to communicate with parents, especially if your teen is hitting challenges in their exploration. This can be hard for parents - you may wonder what’s going on with this new version of your child, or worry that something is wrong. It can also mean your teen or tween finds themselves unsure how to effectively share important struggles or needs while preserving their emerging independent sense of self. Therefore the family/parent element of therapy with teens and tweens often involves focusing on your and your adolescent’s communication goals.