ChilD Therapy
holistic therapy for children and their families
Evenings and Weekend Appointments Available Online and In-Person
Is Your Child Struggling?
Does your child seem overwhelmed, anxious, or dysregulated?
Have you noticed changes in their mood or behaviors?
Are they “melting down” or making choices that have compromised their performance at school, ability to maintain relationships, or quality of life at home?
As a parent, it’s painful to watch your child struggle. While some setbacks are developmentally normal, certain challenges—like tantrums, bedwetting, conflict, and academic struggles—can often indicate a deeper issue. And while you may be doing everything you can to try and help them, it’s possible that every morning before school feels like a battle while the rest of the day has you walking on eggshells.
If your child’s mental health and behaviors seem to be getting worse, it makes sense that your connection with them feels strained or difficult to manage. When children are overwhelmed, they sometimes need support beyond what’s possible at home.
The right therapist can help your child understand their emotions, regain confidence, and build their sense of safety. Through counseling, your child can learn what it takes to nurture healthy relationships and a strong quality of life.
Take the next step. Reach out today!
Your Child’s Setbacks May Be In Response To Unique Challenges And Traumas
Raising a child is hard—especially when it feels like every intervention we use falls short. But such challenges are common among growing kids, and you are not alone in your distress, frustration, or isolation as a parent.
Trauma-Informed Care Gets To The Root Of Your Child’s Struggles
Trauma—which can be defined as a big, life-changing event or smaller stressors that build up over time—impacts how a child’s brain develops. This can affect their nervous system, sense of safety, and coping and regulation skills.
Children develop their own mechanisms for healing and survival that may have served a purpose in the past but are no longer working as intended. Behaviors like aggression, withdrawal, and “acting out” often signal the nervous system doing its best to protect them, and a trauma-informed therapist is able to recognize these responses, working with your child’s unique brain to rewire it.
At Flourish Mindset Marriage and Family Therapy, we are trauma-informed clinicians who seek to make counseling for children as gentle and effective as possible. Individualizing therapy to your child’s experiences and needs, our goal is to help them flourish at home, at school, and in life.
Child Counseling Through Flourish Mindset Marriage And Family Therapy
Every child clinician on our team is trained in trauma-informed therapy, attachment-based work, and parent coaching. We work with children of all ages and stages of development.
While most of our counselors work with children and adolescents ages 5 to 13, we also have a therapist on-staff who specializes in working with toddlers ages 2 to 4. We have experience counseling children with learning disabilities and/or an official or suspected ADHD diagnosis. And we offer parent coaching depending on what’s needed. A consultation call will help us determine the best path forward for you and your child.
What To Expect
The main objective of therapy sessions with your child will be to identify their unique challenges, collaborate with you on goals for treatment, and develop a realistic, attainable action plan. Depending on the age of your child, we will determine how much to involve you, the parent(s), in sessions. That way, the focus is on your child throughout counseling, while still including you in treatment goals, updates as needed, and coaching to help reinforce progress at home.
Your child’s therapist will incorporate age-appropriate approaches—including Play Therapy—to help them explore and express their feelings. Non-directive play is how children communicate, and through this approach, your child’s therapist can model skills for nurturing trust, avoiding outbursts, and increasing healthy attachments. We also use the highly effective, safe, and gentle method of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for children struggling with unresolved core wounds or traumas.
Your child is incredibly resilient, even if they don’t know it quite yet. Therapy is the gateway to lifelong skills for healing as they learn what it takes to thrive, as our approach centers around smart, actionable goals that can make a world of difference in your child’s life both now and in the future.
You are doing the right thing considering counseling for your child, as what they gain through this process can lay the foundation for a happy, fulfilled, and connected life.
Common Concerns About Therapy For Children…
If my child needs therapy, it means that I’ve failed as a parent.
We understand why you feel this way, but it’s important to remember that none of us are given an instruction manual for raising our kids. So many families today are under immense pressure and living in survival mode, and we know you are doing the best you can.
The fact that you are seeking therapy for your child in and of itself indicates what a caring parent you are. Your child is resilient, and the earlier you intervene with counseling, the more likely they’ll be able to work towards solutions both now and in the future. Furthermore, our coaching services can help you feel more confident about the interventions you take at home.
My child won’t agree to counseling.
It’s understandable that your child would be skeptical about talking to a stranger; therapy can often feel intimidating and overly formal for kids. But our highly experienced therapists aim to make this process as gentle and age-appropriate as possible, creating a comfortable environment where your child can feel safe to open up.
Depending on your child’s age, we may have you join them for the first few counseling sessions so they can feel more at ease before attending sessions by themselves.
Therapy is too expensive and time-consuming.
We understand that scheduling and the cost of therapy can feel daunting at times, but investing in your child now can be priceless in the long run. Not only can working with a child development expert help them regulate and express emotions, but you are also likely to witness them become happier, more confident, and more well-adjusted to the world around them.
Counseling Can Help Your Child—And You—Thrive
If your child is demonstrating concerning symptoms or behaviors, counseling through Flourish Mindset Marriage and Family Therapy can get them back on track.
Child Therapists
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Michelle Shegda
Michelle is an Associate Professional Clinical Counselor & Associate Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in helping teens and young adults navigating identity, stress, depression, anxiety, trauma or family conflict. She draws upon her nearly two decades of experience leading youth development and comprehensive sex education programs, empowering young people to build healthy relationships, navigate identity formation, and develop life skills grounded in self-efficacy and resilience. her background working with athletes gives her a unique perspective and action oriented approach that often invcprotate movement in her sessions.
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Emily Chou
ASSOCIATE THERAPIST
Emily is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist supervised by Hanna Stensby. She specializes in the assessment and treatment of children ages 0-5 who have experienced trauma and/or developmental delays. She has experience working with a variety of traumatic experiences with older children and teens including grief, anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation, PTSD, traumatic loss and separation, attachment disruptions and difficulties, and child abuse and neglect.
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Savannah Jaouhari
LICENSED THERAPIST
Savannah is an Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor. She uses a combination of therapeutic approaches, including Person-centered, Somatic experiencing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Gestalt, and The Gottman Method, and works with children (ages 5+), adolescents, and families facing eating disorders, trauma, and racial bullying.
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Freyja Lentz
ASSOCIATE THERAPIST
Freyja is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist supervised by Hanna Stensby. She specializes in helping her clients heal from trauma using Attachment-focused therapy, Somatic experiencing, DBT EMDR therapy, narrative therapy, and Parts work (IFS informed). Freyja supports teens and children who are struggling to navigate the transition into adolescence, have undergone traumatic experiences, ADHD and neurodivergence.
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