Child Counseling and Play Therapy
Does your young one need help?
Many parents feel lost, intimidated, overwhelmed, or fearful about finding a therapist and getting their child help for behavioral issues, struggles with thier emotions, depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, and more. I seek to help parents feel included, involved, and equipped to be part of thier child’s treatment process.
Because you have many play therapy and psychotherapy options out there, I want to tell you how I am different. I focus on building resilience and ‘know-how’. Most play therapists utilize a play room fully-stocked with a variety of toys for the child to guide themselves through playing out their emotions. This is a wonderful resource for processing many things for children. I, however, focus more on active interventions such as directive play therapy and activity therapy which focuses on acheiving goals and building skills, gaining psychoeducation, and utilizing parents in and out of sessions. I pull from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention, Parent Management Training, Behavioral Management, Developmental Psychology, Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Positive Psychology, a variety of home discipline strategies, and more.
How do we get going?
For children, I start by meeting with parents to gain insight into the child’s struggles and family dynamics. Working with parents in therapy is crucial to the intervention and treatment of behavioral and emotional disorder in children. Parents simply have the most access and consistent effect on a child’s daily life. You cam impact them way more than a therapist’s weekly sessions. For this reason, I involve parents in the child’s treatment to help you begin to feel equipped in the home and build skills and boundaries for supporting healthy children. We may bring in the full family, have parent and child activity sessions, and/or individual goal-focused play therapy sessions for the child to learn about their emotions and practice skills.
I commonly work with children struggling with ADHD, anxiety, OCD, depression, ODD, and DMDD. With or without a diagnosis, we can together intervene in the behaviors and emotional difficulties you’re observing in your child or teen.
I do not specialize in Assessment and Diagnosis; I focus on treatment and intervention to address the problematic behaviors and emotional dysregulation your child, family, or self might be experiencing. If you need to obtain a professional evaluation with full write-up and paperwork, please look for Psychologists and Diagnostic Practices who focus specifically on the specialty of Evaluation and Assessment.
Call (972) 379-7807 or email [email protected] to get started!
*A copy of the divorce decree/custody paperwork is required before beginning services for any minors with custody arrangements.