Therapy for Children and Teens

Does your child have trouble dealing with their emotions? Is their behavior sometimes disruptive to your home life? Have they experienced sudden loss or trauma?

As they grow, children and adolescents develop social skills and emotional intelligence. This awareness helps them to develop into healthy, happy, and successful individuals. But some children have trouble processing their emotions and this often leads to behavior that negatively impacts their school life, home life, and overall well-being.

Effective Forms of Therapy for Children and Adolescents

Therapy offers children and adolescents a safe space to work through their thoughts and emotions. With the help of a specialized therapist, children can resolve problems, modify behaviors, and make positive and lasting changes.

The following are a few different types of psychotherapy available to children and families. Each offers unique approaches and techniques to bring about positive outcomes. Sometimes a therapist may choose to use just one specific treatment, and other times he or she may find a combination of various treatments is the best approach.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)

CBT helps children to identify harmful thought patterns. Once a child recognizes that their thoughts create their feelings and moods, they can learn to control themselves and their behavior. Research has shown that CBT is highly effective at treating depression and anxiety as well as helping individuals, including children, deal with traumatic experiences.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT helps children and adolescents process their inner emotions. ACT provides context and understanding to emotions that can seem overwhelming. This allows kids to work through emotions and move forward.

Play Therapy

Play therapy allows children to express thoughts and feelings through play, which is a child’s natural language. Through activities such as drawing, games, storytelling, and imaginative play, children can communicate experiences that may be difficult to put into words. Play therapy helps children process emotions, develop problem-solving skills, and build healthier ways of coping with challenges.

Sand Tray Therapy

Sand tray therapy gives children a creative and hands-on way to explore their inner world. Using miniature figures and objects placed in a tray of sand, children can create scenes that represent their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This process helps children express emotions, process difficult experiences, and gain a greater sense of understanding and control over their feelings.

Art Therapy

Art therapy allows children to express thoughts and feelings through creative activities such as drawing, painting, and other forms of artistic expression. For many children, creating art can feel easier than talking about difficult emotions directly. Art therapy helps children explore their experiences, process feelings, and develop healthy ways of expressing themselves while building confidence and emotional awareness.

EMDR Therapy for Children

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) helps children process difficult or overwhelming experiences that may be affecting their emotions or behavior. Using child-friendly techniques such as storytelling, drawing, or gentle bilateral stimulation (such as tapping or eye movements), EMDR helps the brain reprocess distressing memories so they become less upsetting. Research shows EMDR can be highly effective in helping children recover from trauma, anxiety, and other stressful experiences.

Family Therapy

Family therapy is great for helping families improve communication so they can resolve issues. Sessions can include the entire family, including children, siblings, parents, and grandparents, or just one or two individuals.

Parent Sessions

At Inner Expansions we value the parents’ role in their child’s progress. We ask all parents to participate in “parent sessions” with their child’s therapist, to not only help the therapist gain insight into the child’s experiences outside the therapy office, but to also provide parenting skill building and education. Parent session don’t replace individual therapy and we often encourage parents to seek their own therapist to help them navigate their experiences. Parenting is not easy and a little support, education and encouragement goes a long way towards helping the whole family enjoy the experience of being a family.

Who is Therapy Right for?

At every age, children can be faced with life’s challenges. The following are some of the events and scenarios that can impact a child’s mental health and well-being:

• The death of a loved one
• Bullying
• Physical or sexual abuse
• Domestic violence
• Moving or attending a new school
• Divorce
• Social anxiety
• Depression
• ADHD

Therapy is not a quick fix to a child’s behavioral or emotional issues. It is instead a thoughtful and comprehensive process that provides children with insights and skills so that they may become masters of their thoughts and feelings. This, in essence, is how children develop into happy, healthy, and successful adults.

If you would like to explore treatment options for your child, please reach out using the contact button below.