Children and Parents

Children and adolescents can be troubled in many different ways; if they are engaging in dangerous or upsetting behaviors, if they feel stressed out or anxious, or if they are not getting along well in school or with friends, then they can benefit from individual psychotherapy. My work with children follows the lead of the child, and is based on using what they bring to develop flexibility of thought, increased self awareness and empathy, and improved emotional regulation.

Parent who wish to refine their parenting to help a child who seems to be in trouble, or parents who are finding themselves overwhelmed, can benefit from parenting consultation. This can entail direct suggestions for ways to support the work I am doing with your child, or it can mean working on areas where you get stuck as a parent without my working with your child.

 

Your Child’s Life Story

Over the past several months I have been working with Stanton Peele and Zach Rhoads on how to support child development away from addictions. I had the delightful experience of co-writing an appendix with them for their book, Outgrowing Addiction: With Common Sense...

read more

Learning Feelings

Sometimes we have experiences that impact us, but we have difficulty putting words on it. In fact, some conceptualizations of trauma essentially speak to the lack of verablization as being a driving component of trauma's tendency to haunt us. In fact, there is a real...

read more

Perfectionism

It's exciting to have a vision of how things should be, or how they should look. It can be very frustrating when they don't work the way we imagine. Especially when it comes to the stuff we make. For kids, the gap between what they are capable of envisioning and what...

read more

Easing School Transitions

Q: Our daughter’s parochial school has closed! necessitating a huge change in school venues for her, something we’d not prepped her for. We are thinking public school, so as to make local friends (next parochial schools to consider 45 minutes away). Any advice you can...

read more

Read more recent posts at my blog.

Resources for Families

Please note that I have included links to Amazon.com for convenience. These are not sponsored links; please feel free to locate these books at your library, local bookseller, or other online bookseller.

Books for Kids:

  • In My Heart: A Book of Feelings, by Jo Witty. A nice entry into developing self-reflection
  • The Body Book for Boys, by Rebecca Paley, Grace Norwich, and Jonathan Mar. A book about bodies and puberty for boys, no discussion of sex and sexuality. Note that the information on nutrition is a little outdated, and the section on bullying is not so helpful.
  • The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Younger Girls, by Valorie Schaefer. As with any book that addresses physical development, it is a good idea to read the book yourself before giving it to your child.

 

Books for parents:

Some useful websites:

For parents of infants:

  • askdrsears.com for a wide array of information;
  • Zero to Three based on the work of Dr. Tronick, information about infant brain development and infant behavior.
  • La Leche League for breastfeeding and beyond

For emotional development:

For physical health:

  • CDC Parent Portal: The Centers for Disease Control has a website for parents that addresses health concerns by age group from pregnancy through adolescence, and has information immunizations, developmental milestones and growth charts, and so forth.
  • kidshealth.org: This website also has a wide array of information with separate sites for parentskids, and teenagers.

For gifted kids:

  • giftedlearningcenter.org: a local resource for kids who don’t thrive in the traditional school environment
  • sengifted.org: Information for parents and families about the social and emotional needs of gifted children.
  • hoagiesgifted.org: more information about and for gifted kids and their families