Therapy Services for School-Aged Children with Behavioral and Emotional Challenges

What Types of Challenges Do We Address?

Common reasons for referral include concerns about a child's:

• Level of anxiety, sadness, anger, or irritability
• Sleep difficulties
• Inattention and impulsivity
• Learning disabilities and/or underachievement in school
• Developmental challenges such as Asperger's syndrome and non-verbal learning disability, autism, and/or sensory integration disorders
• Medical conditions
• Trauma
• Loss and grief
• Self-esteem
• Peer and sibling relationships, including bullying or being bullied
• Adjustment to prepubescent and pubescent physical and emotional changes

Parents also come for support with:

• Family/life stress associated with:
• Single parenthood
• Divorce
• Loss and grief
• Meeting and balancing the demands of daily life
• Developing unified parenting strategies
• Building secure parent-child relationships and strong families
• Finding an effective balance of nurturing and limit-setting
• Fostering children's strengths, independence, and success

Comprehensive Evaluation

A comprehensive evaluation includes some or all of the following:

• Meeting with parents to learn about their current concerns within the context of their child’s developmental and family history
• Meeting with the child
• Meeting with the whole family
• Phone consultations with other care-giving professionals who are working with or who have worked with the child
• Use of questionnaires to collect data about how specific symptom severity compares to a child's same-aged peers
• Classroom observations
• Parent feedback session and collaborative treatment planning

Intervention

• Parental guidance sessions to teach parents skills they can use to support their child in overcoming difficulties and achieving success at home and school
• Individual child psychotherapy
• Family therapy
• Parent training in the "floor-time" (DIR) approach for children with developmental challenges
• Meetings with teachers or other professionals to advocate for the child's needs, as appropriate

How We Work: Guide to New Families