Families
Clinicians at The Shepherds Center are pleased to offer counseling for families as well as individuals. Making changes to your family life (your communication styles, overcoming difficult life events, handling unexpected challenges) can be extremely difficult, but can also be a way to powerful and profound healing and wellness. In family therapy, the family works together to find the strength and resourcefulness to overcome challenges together. A family therapist will have special training in how to help your family work together to meet your goals. Please feel free to ask whether the therapist you have selected has training in this area.
Teens
The teen years can be a minefield for today’s youth. Parents often feel ill-equipped to help their children navigate new and bigger stressors than they themselves may have faced. When you consider the average age mental health conditions begin is 13 and 24, it is no surprise that more teens than ever are seeking out mental health care.
At the Shepherd’s Center, teenagers will experience the same privacy and level of care that an adult would receive in counseling, but with a person who is experienced in caring for people in this stage of life, and who can work with the teen and family together to meet their goals.
Children 9-12
At the Shepherd’s Center, there are clinicians who treat all stages of life. With the rapid rise of pediatric anxiety and the stressors than younger and younger children feel, many of our clinicians have added specialties in serving youth ages 9-12. Children in this age group may also have behavioral concerns that hamper daily family living, such as tantrums, defiance and opposition, or sneaking and stealing.
Between the ages of 9 and 12, you and your child may choose to meet together as parent and child, or your child individually. You will individually craft the type of sessions that will be right for your child, and may include a variety of activities such as talking, playing, and drawing. This will help your child build the skills to express their internal world and to try out different ways of coping.
Children 5-8
Just as older children will receive an individualized plan for treatment including a wide range of activities, children ages 5 to 8 will receive support based on their interests, abilities, and supports. As a younger child, their will be more emphasis on parent involvement, building the parent-child relationship, and activities to be done at home that you will choose with your therapist.
Younger Children
Some clinicians at the Shepherds Center have special certification reaching throughout the lifespan. Certain special situations may arise that a mental health or parental consultation for a younger child may arise, such as adoption and foster care situations, trauma, abuse, postpartum depression, or other mental health condition of a parent or caregiver. Often in these situations, a therapist will provide the parent information about creating an environment and parent-child relationship the will help their child to develop health emotional and psychological skills for resilience and healing.
Talk to your clinician about whether parent consultation, child therapy, or parent child relational therapy might be a good fit for you.