Children & Adolescent Therapy

Developmental Needs

• Limited abstract thinking (especially under age 10, work on making things concrete)
• Emotions felt intensely but hard to name (work on feeling identification)
• Heavy reliance on caregivers for regulation (start to employ self-regulation skills)
• Behavior often communicates unmet needs (work to identify feelings and extinguish unhelpful or inappropriate behaviors)

Therapy Approaches That Work

• Play therapy
  When a therapist is playing cards or games with a child, it is not just a game being played. The game itself often allows the child to relax and let down their walls a bit to feel comfortable enough talking about what is going on in their lives. Sometimes they will not have the words for the actions or behaviors but will act out feelings or situations they experienced. For example, preoccupation with the police car coming into the neighborhood might be because of frequent interactions with law enforcement.


• Art and creative expression
  Again, not every child is going to be able to verbalize everything that they are thinking or feeling but sometimes through visual art, they are able to get out or convey what is coming up for them. For example, a number of monsters on paper might mean they are afraid or scared about something–and is a tool for the therapist to use to go deeper about some feelings in session and begin to help children make sense of feeling words.


• Movement-based interventions
  Kinetic energy tends to reduce stress and allow children to share more information and be less guarded. Plus, it can be helpful to expend some energy so that when they are asked to focus or concentrate, it becomes a bit easier. So children may move around the room or even come out into the common area for a bit during the session but it is all therapeutic in nature and by design.


• Storytelling and metaphor
  Storytelling and the use of metaphors allows the therapist to depersonalize a situation from a child and allow them to talk to children about things that they do not always recognize is connected to their own personal journey. Rather than ask them what they would do themselves, we might ask what a child in a story would do if they were to demonstrate kindness or compassion for another child.


• Parent-child sessions
  Parents can be a great resource to add context to situations or for the therapist to observe the interaction and attachment styles that occur when children and their parents are together.

Common Reasons Children Attend Therapy

• Anxiety (separation, school refusal, social fears)
• Behavioral challenges
• Emotional dysregulation
• Trauma exposure
• Family transitions (divorce, relocation, loss, adoption)
• Neurodevelopmental differences like Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder or Autism spectrum disorder

Parent Involvement Is Essential

For children, therapy is most effective when caregivers:

• Learn regulation tools
• Adjust home structure
• Understand behavior as communication
• Practice co-regulation skills

Parents are often the primary change agents.