Please Note: Due to the current situation with COVID-19, I am offering Telehealth video therapy sessions via a HIPAA-compliant videoconferencing service. If interested, please let me know.
I have extensive experience working with children 0-6 and their caregivers. Little children express themselves with their behavior. Therefore parents seek my support when their children are having a hard time listening, expressing their emotions, showing difficult behaviors that interfere with their development, or having a hard time at preschool or school.
I support families when:
- There is challenging or concerning behaviors in your child, such as anxious or depressive symptoms, anger, isolation, difficulty listening and following directions, nightmares, separation anxiety, eating or sleeping difficulties.
- Traumatic, stressful or unfortunate events that affect babies and children have happened, such as: separation or loss of someone important to him/her, or a frightening event, including car accidents, intense medical procedures, violence, and parental conflict and separation.
My Approach:
Play is the way children communicate and work through their struggles or try to make sense of their environment and external world. Their caregivers are the people that can help them work through their struggles through play with the assistance of the psychotherapist.
When families experience stressful or traumatic events, I use Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) that is an evidence treatment model that was designed to treat children 0-5 that have experienced trauma. I also use this model when families experience traumatic situations that affect the way the parent feels and responds to their children. Children are very attuned to the “most important people in their lives: who take care of them.” Therefore their relationship can get impacted and psychotherapy can help restore a sense of safety and trust.
Traumatic experiences may impact the parents and child at different levels. Many times children try to make sense of those events with their little minds and it is not always the same way that adults make sense of these events. The loss of an important person, going through a medical procedure, or a car accident can leave the child thinking that it is their fault or that the experience will happen again. Many times the child’s development and behavior gets affected and it is difficult for school teachers or parents to make the connection between what has happened to the child and its possible connection to the child’s current behavior and how things around him/her can trigger a difficult behavior or impact their way of learning.
I also use individual psychotherapy for children 6-11. I use an attachment, developmental, psychodynamic, strength-based approach. I ask the parents to be involved in their child’s treatment. Depending on the situation and the age of the child, I ask parents to have dyadic sessions or conduct three sessions with the child and then one session with the parent(s). I try to keep working with the family while giving the child some freedom and independence to have their own therapeutic process and space.
Please feel free to call me at 925-446-1967 for a free 20-minute phone consultation or email me to ask any questions you have. I look forward to speaking with you.
