Customized Program
Techniques are individualized to your child, you as a parent, and the needs of your family. This is based largely on the assessment that you complete.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) involves educating people on the influences that thoughts have on feelings and behavior. The therapist might help you and your child understand how negative thinking creates problematic behavior. For example, a child that is not performing well in school may be experiencing low self-esteem when completing work. Through the therapy process, it’s discovered that the child is often thinking, “I’m not smart,” when given a task. The therapist helps the child understand the problem in thinking negatively and helps them change it. They may also include parents in this process to encourage them to point out these thoughts at home when they occur.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is helping the person focus their awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. When working with kids, this may look like playing a game where you try to blow up a balloon as fast as you can so that they can become more aware of how their heart beats quickly when they’re out of breath. The counselor may also help them connect this awareness to understanding how this happens when the child feels sad or angry.
Parent Management Training
Parent Management Training (PMT) is geared toward helping parents understand how they can improve behavior challenges with their children. In short, the therapist will help the parents understand how their parenting strategies can be strengthened to increase more wanted behavior. Some of these strategies may include logical consequences, placing boundaries, and removing the problem. For example, the child that throws tantrums at dinnertime because they don’t like what the family is eating. The parent may be rewarding this behavior by giving a strong reaction that the child is interested in getting, or by giving in and letting the child have their favorite snack for dinner. The therapist will help the parent understand more helpful strategies, such as implementing consequences that are logical and time-bound to decrease the behavior.
Play Therapy
Play therapy differs from regular play in that the therapist helps children to address and resolve their own problems. Play therapy builds on the natural way that children learn about themselves and their relationships in the world around them (Axline, 1947; Carmichael, 2006; Landreth, 2002). Through play therapy, children learn to communicate with others, express feelings, modify behavior, develop problem-solving skills, and learn a variety of ways of relating to others. Play provides a safe psychological distance from their problems and allows expression of thoughts and feelings appropriate to their development.. Play is the child’s language and toys are the child’s words!