Throughout your child’s therapy, I pay close attention to your child’s unique developmental stages and potential challenges, sensitivities to culture, and histories of the family. These factors make up the methodical treatment they will receive in therapy. The following section describes how I think about your child’s story and need for therapy services.

Early Childhood

Children between the ages of 4 - 6 are faced several developmental tasks that shift their cognitive functioning to allow them to begin to increase their independence emotionally and socially. Play for children in this stage typically has become a useful tool to help them understand their lives more clearly. Therefore, play therapy will serve as a catalyst to exploring your child’s mental health and inner world as a method to uncover how they have been making sense of their reality and how play therapy can be an intervention that promotes long lasting positive change.

Middle Childhood and Pre-Adolescence

Children between the ages of 6 - 12 are faced with various developmental tasks that include learning how to control their emotions with a better sense of calm and ease, and how to explore their individuality amongst their peers. Play in therapy will be a useful tool to help children in this age group foster opportunities to bolster several aspects of their functioning such as increasing their verbal and social skills, exploring new coping skills, and enhancing intellectual competence and emotional intelligence. Based on an increase of such positive cognitive and emotional changes promoted in play therapy, we can begin to see how your child can have an increase in problem solving skills because play therapy will help your child playing out and practice their logical thinking skills.

Adolescence

Adolescence between the ages of 13 - 17 are faced with a plethora of developmental tasks that involve adaptation to their changing bodies from puberty and exploration of their uniqueness and identity. Further exploration for this age group includes identifying their sense of self, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Anxieties and challenges with peers can be a common issue adolescence face. This developmental stage can provide opportunities to strengthen of relationships with peers, prepare for adulthood, and become more solidly affiliated with college and career development. Based on a variety of developmental tasks and cognitive shifts that allow adolescents to think more abstractly, talk therapy can often times be a successful intervention to help adolescence accomplish such tasks with more confidence and a stronger sense of self.

Lastly, here are some topics that I can help you and your child explore and work on:

anxiety/worry

self-esteem

social encounters

low mood/energy

academic performance

gender identity

sexual identity

cultural identity