Children’s Therapy
As a parent, it is painful to watch your kid struggle! Is your child:
- Constantly screaming and crying
- Fully potty-trained but recently began having issues with wetting or soiling themselves
- Behaving aggressively out of nowhere and sometimes, can't remember it
- Seemingly a completely different child and you feel helpless in how to help
- Being defiant and uncooperative
- Unable to concentrate in the classroom but you know their performance is not an accurate depiction of their abilities
- Having a hard time making friends and seems closed off to most people
- Having trouble sleeping or having nightmares
These things can overwhelm and frustrate you as a parent. You know that you are doing all you can but it seems to be getting worse. Anxiety and emotional injuries can cause our children to behave in scary ways. Some common things that can cause changes in children include separation/divorce, being bullied/ostracized, witnessing violence, emotional abuse (even if it is subtle), physical injuries and long hospital stays, as well as preverbal and in-utero trauma. These things can cause a lot anxiety and trauma responses, resulting in some of the behaviors described above.
Play Therapy + EMDR for children is a perfect way to help your child heal and integrate the different parts of themselves so they can live with joy and get back to their happy, go lucky selves. Counseling with children is done in person at our Atlanta (Buckhead), GA offices. Your monthly parent check-ins can be done virtually from Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Roswell, or anywhere in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, or Vermont.
Let Us Help Your Child Realize Their Potential!
My Approach to Children’s Therapy
EMDR + Play Therapy
My therapy approach for children combines include Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) and Play Therapy.
My Five Phases of Therapy:
- Getting to know the child and Assessment. I gather information from parents/caregivers first such as the school they attend, any sports/extracurricular activities they are involved in, and their physical history. Then, I spend time learning about the child from his/her perspective via Child Centered Play Therapy, which helps build rapport and helps your child become comfortable with me.
- Resource building. In this phase, I focus on teaching children how to identify their emotions and recognizing how those emotions feel in their body. Then, I teach them ways to help regulate the big emotions so they help themselves feel better and then respond appropriately. They get to practice the right and wrong ways of emotional expression using toys, puppets, art, etc.
- Reprocessing. Since emotional injuries leave children feeling bad and thinking negatively about themselves, we reprocess those injuries so that their brains will discard the unhelpful information and only keep useful information related to the injury. This is when kids get rid of negative beliefs about themselves such as I am not safe, I am not worthy, I am bad, I am not wanted, etc. that lead to those unwanted behaviors. Then, they begin to associate the positive beliefs about themselves with those injuries such as I am safe now, I am worthy, I am a good person, I am loved, etc. In this phase, children play in the sand, use music and movement, and a number of other fun tools to really get in touch with the experiences and reprocess them.
- Plan for the future. The children role play using puppets, dolls, figurines and other toys in the playroom to practice showing up positively in different domains of their lives while pairing it with their positive beliefs about themselves.
- Graduation. Once children have healed as evidenced by improved functioning (decreased unwanted behaviors and emotions/increased desired behaviors/emotional expression that's age appropriate), they are done! We throw a party to celebrate all that the children have learned and all of their awesomeness.
Ready to get started? Click HERE and select Request Appointment and then select Psychiatric Diagnostic Evaluation.