Services Offered
Children do not come with a manual.
Let me help you design your family's handbook so that it takes into account each individual member's personality and values. Tailoring the services explained below, I can help support you in accessing your own innate wisdom to support your child and help children discover the best version of themselves.
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I am currently an in-network provider with the following health insurance providers: Aetna, BCBS, Cigna, Meritain, RMHP (including CHP+), & Tricare.
Click on each service to learn more
Holistic Individual & Family Therapy
Research shows that an attuned caregiver's calm, authentic connection is essential to the journey of healing. This is why I believe that both the child and the family are my clients. It is my goal to support you in building the greatest connection with each other, while respecting each individual's needs, personality, and values.
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I am not a therapist where you drop your child off for them “to do their work” while you wait around to see results. I will give you, the parents, homework and tools to practice and I will meet with you frequently to coach you on supporting your child’s progress and goal towards more regulation.
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I may ask you to read books or articles, come into sessions with or without your child, obtain a listening partner to manage the big feelings of parenting a child with challenging behaviors, contract to have 20-30 minutes of Special Time with your child, consider adopting some family lifestyle changes (regarding exercise, outside time, routines, screen time , etc.), support you in coming up with a self care plan of your own, and practice brief mindfulness exercises daily or weekly with your child, etc.
I strive to help you see your child's strengths outweigh their challenges. A parent's journey is to learn to love their whole child. We do this by starting to love those parts of ourselves which we have perceived as unloveable . As we do this, we can start to help our child learn the skills they need, without letting reactivity overcome and sabotage our intentions and interactions.
Play Therapy
In play therapy, toys are like the child's words and play is the child's language. - Landreth, 2002
Initially developed in the turn of the 20th century, today play therapy refers to a large number of treatment methods, all applying the therapeutic benefits of play. Play therapy differs from regular play in that the therapist helps children to address and resolve their own problems. Play therapy builds on the natural way that children learn about themselves and their relationships in the world around them (Axline, 1947; Carmichael, 2006; Landreth, 2002). Through play therapy, children learn to communicate with others, express feelings, modify behavior, develop problem-solving skills, and learn a variety of ways of relating to others. Play provides a safe psychological distance from their problems and allows expression of thoughts and feelings appropriate to their development.
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Research supports the effectiveness of play therapy with children experiencing a wide variety of social, emotional, behavioral, and learning problems, including: children whose problems are related to life stressors, such as divorce, death, relocation, hospitalization, chronic illness, assimilate stressful experiences, physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and natural disasters (Bratton, Ray, Rhine, & Jones, 2005; LeBlanc & Ritchie, 2001; Lin & Bratton, 2015; Ray, Armstrong, Balkin, & Jayne, 2015; Reddy, Files-Hall, & Schaefer, 2005).
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Play therapy helps children:
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Become more responsible for behaviors and develop more successful strategies.
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Develop new and creative solutions to problems.
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Develop respect and acceptance of self and others.
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Learn to experience and express emotion.
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Cultivate empathy and respect for thoughts and feelings of others.
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Learn new social skills and relational skills with family.
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Develop self-efficacy and thus a better assuredness about their abilities.
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- a4pt.org
https://www.a4pt.org/page/PTMakesADifference
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Read more on the specific style of Play Therapy that I use (Synergetic Play Therapy) here!
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Parent Coaching
Parent coaching involves the parents and myself meeting for 60-90 minutes; in person or remotely via Zoom face-to-face video chat on your computer, or by telephone.
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In our initial intake session, I will start with an inventory of family strengths, personality and values. I will learn where you are struggling and challenged, and provide some concrete tools and ideas for your parenting interactions with your child. We will then schedule follow up sessions (30-60 minutes) as needed. Like a personal trainer or dietician, more frequent contact leads to greater support and results.
You will get out what you put into the experience. This is a self-pay service and no diagnosis is needed.
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Parent Coaching is a great alternative for families with no safety concerns, reluctant teenage clients, self pay clients, and people who can not make appointments during typical business hours (due to schedule or location).
"Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist."
- Michael Levine
Wellness Coaching
Wellness Coaching helps people define goals that are important to them and uses science-based strategies to achieve those goals. The purpose of wellness coaching is to help people explore their own desires, ability, reasons, and needs for making changes in their lives, and then take action to make and sustain those changes.
It is well established that sustained change comes from within a person. All change is really self change. Imposing solutions on people may deliver some temporary benefit, but sustained change won’t happen unless the person “owns” the process of change.
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Rather than teaching, advising, directing, or prescribing what another person should do, I will act as your guide to help you forge your own unique path toward greater well-being. This is done through empathic conversation and employing science-based tools and techniques to support the self-change process.
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-instituteforwellness.com