Are Your Child’s Emotions and Behaviors Difficult to Handle?
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Is your child going through major life transitions?
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Do you wish things were easier for them?
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Would you like to know how therapy can help you to support your child better?
These days being a kid is hard. In this post-COVID world, a lot of children are struggling with anxiety, uncertainty, and feeling safe. Many parents are also challenged trying to figure out how to best support their child.
Perhaps you’re one of them. You want to help your child while, at the same time, also encourage them to build resilience and feel confident in themselves.
Child Therapy
Children Often Have a Hard Time Communicating How They Feel and What They Need
A lot of time, this is because kids don’t know how they feel and what they need!
When emotional regulation and communication skills are lacking, that is when your child likely shows you that something is wrong through their behavior. Dealing with big emotions and problematic behavior can be exhausting. It can cause problems for your child socially and academically at school.
The biggest impact is usually on the family. When a child is struggling, it can cause turmoil in your family members’ relationships with each other and tension in the home. And chronic dysregulation can lead to bigger problems later in life.
It can feel like you’re stuck in a cycle that will never end.
This Is NOT the New Normal – Things Can Get Better
Some of the challenges mentioned above are developmentally appropriate as children grow up. And by reacting to different stressors in life, your child can learn how to better manage their feelings and behavior.
Just like many other parents, you likely want your child to thrive and feel like you’re on the same team, and that you can communicate effectively.
Children (and parents) need structure and predictability. But parenting is not meant to be done without help, support, and guidance. Thankfully, therapy can teach both you and your child-specific skills and strategies that can help.
Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health Issues Affect Even Young Children
Over 21% of children ages 3 to 17 have one or more of the common mental, emotional, and behavioral health conditions (John Hopkins, 2022)*. However, children who have a strong parent-child connection have much higher resiliency and better outcomes in life.
Getting support for your family is key.
Lack of Social Interaction Can Have a Big Impact on Kids
It is important to realize the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our youth. No matter their age, if a child was alive during the pandemic, their life was impacted in ways we might not even know about yet.
The isolation and lack of social interaction, the gaps in social skills and the emotional learning that takes place when children interact with their peers and other people—everything that’s important for a child’s development was halted. And there was no wide-scale plan to remediate the impact of that. Young children missed out on playing at playgrounds, mommy-and-me groups, and preschool experiences which are imperative in gaining these social-emotional skills.
This has resulted in children with a lack of understanding of their own emotions and how they impact others.
The good news, however, is that it is not too late. With the help of an experienced and accepting therapist, your child can get the support they need.
Therapy Can Help Your Child Learn to Manage Their Emotions and Behaviors
At Psychological Services for Success, our aim is to motivate children to want to come to their therapy sessions because it makes them feel better. Building a trusting therapist-child relationship is key.
But being creative and thinking out of the box to individualize each session is also important to keep kids engaged in the process. That is why we use talk, play, crafts, and activities to connect with children at their level.
What to Expect in Child Counseling Sessions
In therapy sessions, your child will experience a non-judgmental, safe, open, and honest environment. Feeling accepted and understood is imperative. We always separate the child from the behavior so that they know that we are not judging them based on some not-so-great moments in their lives.
Our therapists use strategies that are effective in teaching your child about their emotions and how to manage them through coping strategies. For example, your child will learn about the complexity of emotions and how they impact their behavior in order to understand their feelings and how to manage them. They will learn strategies to express their emotions and communicate appropriately with those in their life. And they will learn coping skills and daily routines to apply in their everyday life to manage their feelings and behavior.
These coping strategies will provide a “toolbox” of skills that your child can continue to use throughout their life. The goal is always to improve their life in ways that are effective and meaningful to them.
Effective Child-Centered Treatment Approaches for Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most common therapeutic treatments that can help children understand the connection between their thoughts, behavior, and emotions.
Also, a problem-solving approach that includes effective therapeutic strategies like skills training and skill practice can help your child learn to address and manage a wide range of issues, such as:
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anxiety
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depression
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anger/rage
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problems with peers and friendships
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low self-esteem
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self-harm (e.g., picking, hair pulling, cutting)
We collaborate with both you and your child to identify the challenges and possible solutions. Our therapists use child-choice in selecting activities during counseling sessions to increase your child’s engagement, and then connect the activity to a skill to learn or practice. These skills and strategies learned are individualized because not everything works for everyone.
While your child may be lacking the skills necessary to manage their emotions and behavior right now, we will support them (and you) in learning the skills they need to navigate what they’re going through.
But You May Still Have Questions About Therapy for Your Child…
Does my child really need to work with a counselor?
It depends. Often, parents wait out problem behavior much longer than they should because they get the advice, “This is just a phase.” However, therapy is so much more effective when it is started early and problems can be addressed easily and quickly. Our goal is for your child to be “graduated” from therapy as quickly as possible with the skills they need to be successful.
I want my child to participate in therapy, but I’m worried about the cost.
Therapy is an investment, and if there are problems, waiting may make them worse. We do not want finances to stop you from getting the help that your child needs. That is why we offer sliding scale pricing to families who qualify. Please reach out and talk to us about your situation. We want our services to be accessible to those who need them.
Therapy for my child is important to me, but our schedule is so packed. I don’t know how we’ll squeeze it in.
Sometimes it can be hard to prioritize therapy, but it is just as important as those other activities! We know that scheduling can be a barrier for families, so all of our therapists have availability on weekday afternoons/evenings, as well as weekend appointments.
Let Us Help You to Help Your Child
If you’re ready to learn to support your child in the best way possible, we offer a free, 20-minute consultation call with one of our experienced therapists so you can get more details about therapy, receive professional guidance on your specific situation, and have your questions answered. You can book your free consultation call here or call or email us at 805-723-0637; info@psych4success.com.