Child & Adolescent Counseling

Building safety and trust for your child

The struggle

We’ve heard the expression “a heart like a child” — we begin life open to love and loving, carefree, with what is meant to be a beautiful interdependence with our caregivers. These are the most formative times, when our hearts are most open to discovering our worth, our place, and who is there to provide us the safety we need to be able to explore our world.

It is also the time that we are most susceptible to being wounded by the missteps of others, and to developing defenses to protect ourselves that lead to maladaptive ways of relating and being.

The strategy

Within the safety of the therapeutic relationship, your child can begin to tell their story and express their needs for acceptance and value. We create an environment where their true self can show — the image of God they are created to bear — where they can be seen and heard, and where they can sort through their struggles, their fears, their hopes and desires.

We help foster a secure attachment with your child through the relationship between them and the therapist where they can discover or recover their sense of worth and trust.

The solution

We all need a safe space to process and make sense of the struggles and issues we face, including children and adolescents. We want to provide that, and collaborate with the parents or caregivers to provide the healing the child deserves.

We also look at the system the child lives within. The relationships within the family in particular may impact the child’s functioning. When possible, we work with parents to help them understand how their child’s functioning affects others within the family, and how the marriage and family’s functioning affects the child. Like all of us, children are able to deal with and overcome suffering to the extent that they have a trusted caregiver to reach out to. Let’s help make that happen.

Live deep, keep heart

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