Child and Adolescent Services at the Center for Self Development
The Center for Self Development provides psychotherapy, parent consultations, family therapy, and psychological assessment to children, adolescents, and their families.
The nature of child psychotherapy is determined, in part, by the child's age.
Young children tend to express their feelings and conflicts through behavior. For this reason, we utilize play therapy with most young children. Play therapy is a widely accepted and successful form of psychotherapy.
Older children and adolescents are better able to capture their experience in words. When this is the case, we engage them in talk therapy.
In some cases, issues that parents have about their children (or with their children) are best addressed through either parent consultations and/or through family therapy.
Whichever approach is used, the goal of treatment is to relieve the child, adolescent, and/or family as a whole of suffering. Some forms of childhood difficulties are: depression; low self-esteem; anxiety; problems with peers; academic problems; identity problems; results of sexual and other physical or emotional abuse or other trauma.
Many aspects of how we operate in the world are determined by feeling, thought, and behavioral patterns repeated over and over again. These patterns are often engrained in us early in life. Therapy provides a space for the child, adolescent, or family to safely explore their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Often, once patterns of the mind and behavior are brought to light and understood more fully and openly (and when appropriate, challenged), they cease to be repeated and alternate, healthier ways of being emerge. The result is often one of positive change.
On privacy: We realize that while a child's or adolescent's privacy in individual therapy is very important, it is also important for parents to be aware, in general terms, of the therapist's preliminary and on-going assessment of the child.