Children & teens
Therapy your kid will actually come back to.
Children and teenagers can tell very quickly whether a room belongs to them. When therapy feels like something being done to them, or something that will be reported on afterwards, they tend to go quiet. Our work begins from the understanding that this hour is your child’s own, a space where all of who they are can emerge and be seen.
Children
Children play in much the same way adults talk.
They express ideas and struggle with challenging circumstances through the actions of the characters they invent. With this in mind, your child will lead the therapy alongside a fun-loving, well-trained therapist. We work on concrete skills and have hard discussions when necessary, but by letting children take the lead, they often come up with the solutions to what is distressing in their minds. Your therapist brings what they learn in the playroom back to you, and you decide together what would help sustain your child’s progress.
Pre-teens
The years before the teenage years.
This age group can be so challenging because they express less emotion while starting to show more worrying behaviors. Parents start to feel pressure as the teenage years loom ahead. Using a mix of play and talk therapy, I strive to help pre-teens get back on their best developmental trajectory.
Teens
The teen years are so intense.
Emotions are running high, and open defiance is a daily occurrence. Identity formation has started, but taking care of basic responsibilities is lacking. Many parents find therapy to be a useful support for their teenagers. We will focus on whatever is on your teen’s mind while attending to the expectations placed on teens these days.
Parents
Where you fit.
Parents are essential to this work and we will not treat you as an obstacle to it. At the same time, therapy only functions if your child believes it is theirs.
How we hold both: we meet with you at the start to get the history and understand your concerns. We check in with you regularly on how things are going and what would help at home. And we are clear with your child, out loud, about what stays private and what does not.
What we do not do is give you a session-by-session report of what your child said. What we will always tell you is anything involving their safety. We say all of this to your child directly in the first session so nobody is guessing.
For some families, the most useful work turns out to be parent guidance or family sessions rather than individual therapy for the child. We will say so if we think that.
Questions
What parents usually ask.
My teenager refuses to go. What do I do?
Very common, and not a dead end. Often it helps to lower the stakes: propose one session, framed as them evaluating us rather than us evaluating them, with no commitment beyond that. It also helps if they have some say in who they see. Call us and we will talk through the specific situation. Sometimes the right first step is a session with you alone.
Will you tell me what my child says in session?
Not routinely, because therapy stops working if your child is managing what gets reported home. We will always tell you about anything involving their safety — the limits of confidentiality apply here too, and we will meet with you regularly to talk about themes, progress, and what would help at home. We explain these boundaries to your child in the first session, in front of you where possible.
How long are sessions, and how often?
Typically 55 minutes, weekly. Consistency matters more with children and teens than with adults, because the relationship is doing much of the work, and it needs regular contact to build.
Do you do telehealth with kids?
With adolescents, often yes, and many prefer it. With younger children it is genuinely harder, because so much of the work is physical and play-based. We will give you our honest opinion for your child's age rather than a blanket policy.
Do you coordinate with schools or psychiatrists?
Yes, with your written consent. We can speak with teachers, school counselors, pediatricians, psychiatrists, and testing psychologists, and we think that coordination usually makes the work better.
Take the next step
A first conversation costs nothing but a phone call.
Call us and we will talk through what you are looking for, answer your questions about how we work, and help you find the therapist on our team who fits. If we are not the right place for you, we will tell you that too, and point you somewhere better.
(828) 342-2977