Children’s Therapy – Clear Lake & Greater Houston
Helping Kids Lead Fun, Healthy & Fulfilling Lives
The skilled team of clinicians at Clear Lake Children’s Center offers counseling services one-on-one for children and adolescents ages 5 to 17. While we don’t typically work individually with kids who are younger than school age, we do work with the parents of these infants and toddlers to address concerns. In some cases, we can offer screenings and evaluations for children as young as 12 months. You can learn more on our Screenings & Evaluations page. Below, we’ve outlined some of the important factors to consider about individual child therapy, but if you want to learn more, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. We’re here to help.
Reasons for Child Therapy
The reasons your child may benefit from working with a therapist are similar to the reasons you might give for going to counseling as an adult. Many parents hold the belief that kids will forget negative events or grow out of their behavioral or emotional regulation difficulties. In some cases, this is true, but more often than not, these concerns will continue to manifest throughout your child’s development if they’re not addressed. Some the specific concerns we can work with during therapy sessions for children and teens include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Coping skills
- Social skills
- Impulse control
- Behavior
- Anger management
- Family conflict like divorce
- Grief and loss
Benefits of Children’s Therapy
Many parents are hesitant to take kids to see a counselor or therapist, but your child can experience numerous benefits from working with a professional child therapist, including:
- Improved familial relationships and more respectful behaviors at home
- The opportunity to process feelings that young people would otherwise not recognize or address
- Development of coping skills to safely and appropriately express difficult emotions
- Decrease in problem behaviors and undesirable responses
- Increased creativity, independence, and problem solving skills
- Better social skills and ability to interact with others respectfully
Therapy Methods Used for Kids & Teens
The therapy methods we utilize in our office are evidence-based and geared toward finding solutions. Based on each individual’s needs, we incorporate many different theoretical orientations and social/emotional/behavioral curricula in our work, including:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – these techniques help kids recognize distorted thought patterns that lead to negative or hurtful feelings and behaviors. Then, we help young people change those thought processes and guide them to more appropriate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) – techniques from DBT can benefit teens struggling with emotional and behavioral regulation and interpersonal relationships. DBT is a skills-based approach to understanding and successfully working through difficult emotions and behaviors.
- Social Thinking – children and adolescents with social communication concerns and/or characteristics of autism spectrum disorder can benefit from therapeutic approaches that incorporate social thinking concepts, with an emphasis on building perspective taking and interpersonal relationship skills.
- Principles of Behavior – several of our providers are skilled in analysis of the antecedents, behaviors, consequences, replacement behaviors, reinforcements, and other guiding principles of behavior change.
Other Strategies:
- Sharing Through Play – as adults, it’s difficult to express our thoughts and feelings openly to someone we don’t know very well. This is especially true for young children. In play and activity based therapy, we use toys and games as a conduit to stimulate open conversation about underlying conflicts and concerns. While we do not have any registered play therapists in our office, we do utilize open ended exploration and play in our playroom, and we also play board games and do other activities to complement our therapeutic approaches at all ages
- Social Skills Group – our social skills group sessions are a great option for kids who are having trouble getting along with their peers, family members, or teachers. You can learn more on our Social Skills Group page.