Child Counseling
Guiding Your Child Through Life’s Challenges: Expert Child Counseling Tailored to Their Needs
You love your child more than anything and you’d do anything to help them. Lately you are noticing an increase in concerning behaviors. Maybe you’ve noticed that they seem to worry about things that were previously not a problem. Perhaps they have gone through some recent life transitions and they are having difficulty regulating their emotions. Or maybe you’ve started getting phone calls and emails from school. You aren’t sure where to turn but you know that something is “off” with your child. It may be affecting their behavior, their emotions, and even their eating and sleeping habits. You know you need some help getting things back on track and a better understanding of what your child is going through.
Children are unable to communicate in the same way as adults. Therefore you need a therapist who is specifically trained in child therapy. As child therapists, we are trained to help children process their emotions in a way that makes sense to them and leads to lasting change.
Specialized Child Counseling for children ages 3-14 Call (832) 521-8809 today!
Why Play Therapy?
Play therapy is specialized counseling uniquely and specifically suited for children between the ages of 3-14. We start with the understanding that children have not yet developed the cognitive skills for abstract reasoning. This means they don’t yet understand concepts like cause and effect, the consequences of their behavior, and they exclusively operate out of their emotions, not the reasoning part of their brain. That part of their brain hasn’t developed yet. Since children do not have abstract reasoning and they operate out of their emotions, traditional talk therapy doesn’t work. Most adults’ concept of therapy is sitting on a couch and talking through issues but this does not work with children. Children work through issues by playing issues out, not talking them out.
Play therapy involves the use of play to communicate with children and to help children learn to solve problems and change their problematic behaviors. Children naturally engage in play to create meaning and organize their experiences. This allows children to distance themselves from difficult feelings and experiences through symbolic expression, using the toys as the medium to disclose these feelings. The therapeutic playroom becomes a sacred place to process and explore painful fears, anxieties and inadequacies. In play therapy I will support your child while they work through their emotions, equipping them with improved self-esteem, a greater sense of self, self-regulation and a decrease in problematic behaviors.
Relevant Blog Posts
Why Play Therapy?
Children are naturally going to play. It is how they are wired. It’s how they make sense of their world. It’s how they experiment, problem solve, interact, socialize, and express their needs. So let’s look at how we take the natural language of children and view it...
How Do I Know If My Child Needs Counseling?
One of the most common questions I am asked as a child counselor is, how do I know if my child needs therapy? As a parent, you have your child’s best interests at heart. You want them to grow up to be happy and healthy. Sometimes our children struggle in ways that we...
Why Is My Child So Angry?
I get this question frequently from parents. It’s described in a variety of ways and may look like meltdowns, tantrums, and just overall disobedience. As a parent it feels overwhelming and in response you may find yourself responding with threats, time outs, and...
What is Play Therapy?
When we think of counseling, we often think of talk therapy. But kids are different. They need to process their emotions in a way that makes sense. If you’ve ever tried talking with your child and asking them why they did something, you may have received answers like...
Helping Your Child Manage Anxiety
Anxiety. It’s now the number one reason that parents seek therapy for their children and teens. Families are often surprised to find out that the “what” of anxious children doesn’t matter as much as the “how”. So what is anxiety? It’s a process in which our body...
Keeping Calm: Parenting Tips for Challenging Behavior
You know you’re about to lose your top. You can feel the familiar sensations: tightness in your chest, muscles tensing up, and voices start to get louder and louder. You know how this turns out. You start yelling, your child shuts down. Nothing gets resolved. Words...