How I Work
I have expertise in a variety of therapeutic approaches, including Behavior Therapy, CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), Family Systems, Play Therapy, and Parenting Skills Training. Complementing these approaches is my experience delivering social skills training and teacher (including preschool) teacher consultation. I tailor treatment to meet each client’s needs. I am LGBTQ-friendly.
Child and Adolescent Therapy
Children learn best when they feel understood, secure, and connected; when they have things introduced at their developmental level; and when they have fun as part of the package. As an experienced psychologist, figure out who each child is and then engage with them in empirically-tested ways that are also specific to that child. I’m highly flexible in how I work and am attuned to what each person needs and responds to best. I’m often playful and active. The youngest children benefit most from play therapy, although some elementary-school aged kids also are well suited to more of a play-based than talk-based approach.
For older children, I get their buy-in early on by validating who they are and by helping everyone understand that we set goals in the service of making everyone’s lives feel better—we avoid blaming or shaming the child. I bring structure to the session that allows time for everyone to get their needs met during the session. We explore feelings and thoughts in new ways, and kids and parents increase their ability to problem-solve and learn new skills. I also do a lot of work directly with parents and provide guidance in how to parent more effectively. Finally, I do classroom observations to get a sense of your child in the school setting if that’s where the challenges are taking place and we agree that this would be helpful, and I provide you with a brief report with my findings.
In working with teens, after getting initial information from parents about the areas of concern, I meet with teens to understand their own goals for therapy, to build a supportive and collaborative relationship with them, and to give them a confidential space to work out whatever is going on for them. The focus can run the gamut, from peer relationships to family tensions to issues at school, and typically involves processing thoughts and feelings, understanding root causes of the problems, growing one’s identity, and learning skills to assist in coping and to improve resilience.
Play Therapy
I am a seasoned play therapist and use a “prescriptive approach,” meaning I draw from my therapeutic toolbox to determine the most effective type of play therapy (there are many!) to use with your young child. When I do play therapy with your child, I will keep you in the loop. In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to have parents stay in the room while I’m working directly with the child. (Not all therapists do this.) I hear from clients who have tried other therapists, and then found me, that they appreciate my level of openness, straight-forwardness, and my de-mystification of the therapeutic process.
Parent Skill Building
Who needs it?
Parents build their skills from the moment their first child is born. They get information from friends, relatives, books, podcasts, and the internet, and they learn by trial and error. Often these sources or experiences are enough, but when they’re not, or when you feel like you’d like to fine-tune what you are doing, it’s time for a bit of extra help.
And when kids are having challenges that go beyond garden-variety struggles or when they face life events that are particularly stressful, parents often can use additional help. Some parents don’t like the way they themselves were parented and they are seeking information about how they can raise their children in a different and better way.
What does it include?
Parent skill-building involves us together identifying clear needs and goals. We will drill down together into what goes on among members of the family that has led to patterns of interacting that aren’t working, Skill-building typically takes a behavioral approach. I provide you with clear language and strategies that you can use with your child and model it for you if needed. You try using them at home and bring in the results of how it’s going. We’ll have follow-up sessions to see how our plan is working and how to fine tune it.
Sometimes all that is needed is parent skill-building and your child never needs to come to meet with me. Sometimes we need to do a combination of parent skill-building and child or family therapy.
If I do work directly with your child, I may enlist you as the “at home coach” to reinforce the skills and strategies that I have taught your child. I typically have a brief check-in time with parents at the start of the session.
If your child is a teenager, the parent skill building may involve periodic parent meetings, recommended resources, and, as appropriate, parent-teen joint session time.
What can it help with?
Parent skill building can help you deal with your own frustration, annoyance, and worries. It can help with limit-setting, with getting kids’ attention, and with managing a variety of your child’s behaviors. Fundamentally, it helps you feel you have a more secure road map that you can use in your day to day life with your child or teen. In two-parent households, it can help parents more effectively act as a team and decrease parental disagreements and stress.
Family Therapy
Family therapy considers how interactions among family members are responsible for the challenges that are showing up. Rather than have the focus be on one child in the family, the therapy focuses on relationship patterns and communication styles among family members. The family system is the focus of the work, so I’d be likely to have different configurations of family members in my office at any one time.
Telehealth/Teletherapy
Telehealth is useful as a means of doing therapy in many different situations. For example, it works well for parent training for busy parents who may be in separate locations during the day; for teens whose tight schedule interferes with making the drive to the office; for maintaining a regular schedule if the parent who would normally drive the child is not able to drive on a given day; or when the weather isn’t cooperating.
I am licensed to practice via telehealth across state lines with individuals that live in states that participate in PSYPACT. To see if your state participates, click here.
School Consultation
School consultation takes several forms. If I work with your child, and any of the concerns have to do with your child’s behaviors or emotions at school, we may decide that it makes sense for me to coordinate with the relevant school personnel to improve your child’s behavioral, social, and emotional experiences in the classroom, the lunchroom, and the playground (with your consent and collaboration, of course!) In the course of these contacts, I provide guidance as to how to manage the environment in a way that would be more successful for the individual child—but of course, such modifications typically benefit the classroom system as a whole.
Sometimes, schools contact me to work directly with teachers, counselors, or administrators who are struggling with individual students or with clusters of kids. I help them assess where the behavior management techniques they are using, or the classroom set-up that they are using, can use some improvement, and I provide specific, written feedback from my analysis.
Private schools have been the primary users of this second type of consultation. I have particular expertise in early childhood environments, although I have consulted to a variety of settings, including Montessori programs and various preschools, ranging from quite structured to less structured approaches. I also enjoy working with religious school programs to assist educators and directors in dealing with challenging behaviors in those settings.