Child Play Therapist
Sadness, anger, isolation, excitement, happiness, and empowerment all show up in their play. As a play therapist I enter their world through the play and experience what they are experiencing.
The transition to more independence and increased responsibility can be daunting. Therapy helps the adolescent gain insight into their motivations, increases their self-esteem, and gives them someone safe to bounce ideas off of.
Parenting can be daunting, even in the best of times. Coaching helps parents understand their child better, helps them understand why they are behaving the way they are, and how to interact with them more effectively.
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Sadness, anger, isolation, excitement, happiness, and empowerment all show up in their play. As a play therapist I enter their world through the play and experience what they are experiencing.
The transition to more independence and increased responsibility can be daunting. Therapy helps the adolescent gain insight into their motivations, increases their self-esteem, and gives them someone safe to bounce ideas off of.
Parenting can be daunting, even in the best of times. Coaching helps parents understand their child better, helps them understand why they are behaving the way they are, and how to interact with them more effectively.
Parenting is already hard enough. It’s even harder when you are working with someone you do not live with, most likely do not share the same values with, have different parenting styles, and have poor or little communication and trust with.
Even when a child is adopted at birth there can be immense trauma and attachment issues. If your child is standoffish, doesn’t make friends, pushes people away, or easily starts fights they can be suffering from major attachment issues.
Whether you’re struggling with anxiety, depression, trauma, or any other mental health concern, I’m here to help. I’ll work with you to identify your goals and develop a treatment plan that is tailored to your unique needs.
I am a licensed
Professional Counselor
Struggling with your child's behavior and not sure where to turn? I can help!
My passion is empowering kids and teens and helping parents emotionally connect to their children in more meaningful ways which can lead to a stronger bond between them. I am ready to help you.
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Latest Articles
Many times, parents complain of their children being absentminded and worry they may have ADHD or another disorder. After listening to the story and what is going on several things become clear. The child is being dictated to and given no choice in what they are to do. It’s no wonder the child then resists what they are being “told”…
The vast majority of families come to play therapy because their child is acting out in one way or another and they do not know 1) what is causing it and 2) what to do about it. Whether it is aggressive behaviors, developmentally regressive behaviors, withdrawal behaviors or something else, they all have the same stimulus, stress. Your child is…
One of the major issues parents seem to deal with is defiant behavior. I get parents complaining their child never does what they are told, always talks back, argues about everything and anything and never follows through on what they are supposed to do. There’s a simple reason for this behavior. There’s zero buy-in from the child on what they…
The main cause of almost all psychological disorders (depression, anxiety, ptsd, etc.) is an inability to relate to people, to be in relationship, when we are stressed. A 5 year old hitting a classmate, 12 year old screaming at mom, 16 year old with no friends and only wanting to sit in their room in the dark all the time. …
One of the biggest struggles parents deal with is their child lying to them, teachers, or other authority figures. They are completely flustered and have no idea why the child lies or how to stop it. Lying is simply not telling the truth. So, the question is, why is the child not telling the truth? It’s actually a pretty simply…
Parents are always worried about emotionally hurting their child, or “screwing up” or doing something “wrong”. Well guess what, it’s going to happen. You’re going to say something dumb or hurtful or make a mistake or embarrass them, maybe even on a daily basis, maybe even in the next hour or minute. But that’s ok. Because we all do it. …
Our natural instinct is to want to connect and engage with others. We want to feel close to our loved ones, especially our parents. When we feel good, we are able to freely engage with others. However, as stress builds up and our ability to cope with it diminishes, we begin to struggle to engage with others. Our first instinct…
Stress Is A Good Thing In another blog post I discuss how being overwhelmed by stress causes all of our behavioral issues. You may be thinking stress is a bad thing. But it’s not, it’s actually a good thing. Stress is how we learn and grow. Only being overwhelmed by stress is a bad thing. Taking our bodies beyond their…
Many times, when talking with parents this is the response they will give when talking about their child’s response to a difficult situation. It is well intentioned but not very helpful to the situation. If you have read my other blogs, you will now understand the behaviors we want to go away are simply the child’s ineffective responses to stress. …
I know it seems like a crazy idea, but if we want to understand someone better, we kind of need to ask them if they can explain their beliefs, thoughts, and points of view with a genuine desire to understand them and what they have to say. I have parents all the time say things like, “I don’t understand why…
Most parents understand they want to help their kids deal with difficult experiences better, but they don’t know how to do it. It’s actually pretty simple. Parenting is a relationship between you and your child, that’s really all it is. And it’s like any other relationship you have, the same rules apply. How you want people to support you is…
One of the biggest struggles parents have, is seeing events through their children’s eyes or experiences. Parents will expect their child to respond to something as they would. Then they, the parent, become stressed, angry, upset, etc. when the child does not respond how they expected. STOP DOING THIS!! Here’s an example. A big struggle is when the parent, or…
Most of the times our kids struggle to obey us it’s because they are scared. They don’t wan to misbehave but it’s the only way they can get out the stress that’s inside. What we want is to increase their ability to deal with stress and no how to verbalize and talk about. The easiest and best way to help…
When our children act out, they hurt us. They have disobeyed us, let us down, defied us, etc. We hurt and our natural inclination is to lash out and hurt them back. Human behavior teaches us we want others to feel our hurt and pain. That’s why we ground our kids for a month, make them put their noses on…
What’s cool today wasn’t cool last year and most likely won’t be cool next year. “Cool” is transitory, it comes and it goes, it’s superficial, it doesn’t’ have much depth, and it’s constantly changing.
