Child-focused Services
Specialist services, tailored for children
At The Center for Connection, Healing & Change we offer Child and Family Therapy, Attachment-based therapy, Play Therapy, Expressive and Creative Arts Therapy, and Trauma Therapy, all specifically designed to meet the needs of children and their parents or caregivers.
When our children go through tough times, they may not always have the ability to express how they are thinking and feeling.
Pain tends to come out sideways for little people, often seen in their behavior and interactions with others. We create opportunities for children to explore and move through their struggles using their greatest assets, play, and creativity.
We also support parents with new strategies for helping children to regulate their emotions, feel secure in the world, and develop the skills they need to navigate the world.
Relationships
Navigate the world together
Connection is our greatest resource
Relationships can be particularly hard to manage for younger children. During our early years, we need a delicate balance of emotional attunement, validation, challenge, and structure.
Knowing how to provide this for our children, moment to moment, can be tough! We offer child therapy services that focus on these areas, supporting parents to understand the needs that drive child behaviors and emotions and develop strategies that are designed to create security, calm, and connection.
We support children and families experiencing relationship issues such as communication, separation, divorce, military life, conflict, abandonment, trauma, bullying, transitioning through developmental stages, power struggles, discipline, sibling rivalry, struggles with friends at school or in childcare, and social skills.
As families come in many forms, we are skilled at working with the challenges and strengths that different family structures experience; blended or step, co- or parallel parenting, single parents, military, foster or adoptive, same-sex parents, and families with children in different developmental stages.
Behaviors
Tailored solutions for your little people
How can I understand their needs?
As our children grow, we often see changes in behavior and ways of responding to the world. Some behaviors help children to be successful, while some create more problems than they solve.
We work with children and families who are experiencing problematic or confusing behaviors, especially where these feel at odds with who you know your child to be. We know how tough it is to feel stuck or unsure about how best to deal with the struggles of our children.
Our therapists are experienced at working with difficulties with managing emotions, transitions, issues at school or in childcare, ADHD, self-harm, bed-wetting, stealing, lying, sexual behaviors, anger or defiance, sleep concerns, and battles around food.
We know the desire to help your child reach their greatest potential. We meet your child at their level, developing tools that support a reduction of symptoms and facilitate change.
Together, we implement strategies that work best for your child in their home, school, and community. Support them to navigate the challenges of life early on, so they feel successful and secure as they grow.
Transitions & Stress
Bumps in the road
Build their inner resilience and resources
Supporting your child to navigate change or stress in ways that promote self-esteem and resilience can be a challenge, particularly if we are adjusting ourselves.
When stress or transition occurs, you may see changes in your child’s play, sleep, emotional responses, or activity levels as the first clues that they are struggling. You may also see regression to an earlier stage of development that feels safer, or somatic issues such as aches or pains.
Thankfully, children have a natural, innate ability to heal, both emotionally and physically. Our Child and Teen therapists can support your child to connect with this healing potential or resiliency and support you to be a healing resource.
We work with grief, loss, relocation or moving house, school changes, family transitions, military life, trauma, illness, development changes, parental addiction or mental health concerns, schedule changes, and financial issues.
We help children and parents to learn together about how our bodies respond to stress or threat. Our therapists can teach you how to harness the power of these survival responses in ways that promote health, resilience, and connection. Sessions focus on healthy coping skills for your child and the whole family.
Emotions & Identity
Help your child love who they are
Self-esteem and emotional regulation
Experiencing yourself as valuable, competent and worthy is vital for children. It sets the tone for the teens years, their ability to manage their emotions, and the map they have for connecting with others.
We work with children and families to address symptoms of low-self worth, unresolved pain, or disconnection. These symptoms often show up as anxiety, depression, anger or emotional outbursts, withdrawal, separation anxiety, hypersensitivity, unhealthy relationships, self-harm, eating issues, body image distortions, and identity confusion.
Our therapists work with children and parents to nurture their unique personhood, find more effective ways to manage emotions, and ask for what they need.
Where you may have experienced your own issues in childhood, we can also help you change destructive or unhealthy patterns that you don’t want to pass down to your children.
If you would like your family legacy to end with you and create more secure, calm, and connected relationships, we can help you redefine your map for family connection.