Children with the most needs often show it in difficult ways.

Non-stop arguing, tantrums, and refusal from your child has invaded your lives. What was once simple is now an uphill battle. Behaviors are terrible no matter where your child is. And it is gut-wrenching to watch them struggle.

Your little one struggles to sit still, doesn’t share his toys, and interrupts conversations. Trying to get him to clean his room or keep his backpack organized is a lost battle. Calls from the school tell you of poor concentration and social awkwardness with peers.

You’re searching for ways to help your child relax and cope. You desperately want to understand what has overruled your child. And you both need better ways to manage the overwhelm and stress.

Therapy for children involves both the parent and child. While the child is learning healthier ways to manage emotions and improve behavior, parents learn to see the child’s behavior as a form of communication. Through positive, attachment-based parenting skills parents are able to encourage the child, manage the child’s needs, and see beyond the behavior that would historically lead to shaming and behavior-focused strategies. Our treatment will help you focus on meeting the unmet need of the child instead of stifling the behavior.

This can be very difficult when the child has extreme behaviors at the drop of a hat.

Anxiety in children can cause stomach aches, excessive worry, and poor sleep. Anxiety causes a child’s behavior and reaction to increase and be expressed outside of what the situation would normally call for. 

Trauma can cause children to develop new and returning fears, return to bed-wetting after successful potty training, have trouble concentrating, turn to aggression, experience uncontrolled emotions, and have symptoms that mirror ADHD. 

There are two types of traumas: big T and little T traumas. Big T traumas include experiencing or witnessing violence, high conflict divorce, and neglect. Little T traumas are smaller insults from daily living, like frequent moving, bullying, and non-life-threatening accidents. 

In therapy, children can relieve difficult emotions and reduce problematic behaviors by learning and experiencing the following:

• Emotion regulation tools
• Self-esteem improvement
• Having a safe and neutral place to process
• Articulation, or ability to communicate their needs and feelings