Children & Adolescents
We provide professional child and adolescent counseling to help your son or daughter navigate through these rough times. During the child and adolescent years, young people may experience anxiety and apprehension, among other things. Mental development, emotional changes and physical growth can be challenging for the entire family.
Children, just like adults, experience stress during their life journey. Stressors for children may include school and family issues. A school related stress experience may include excessive or difficult homework, test anxiety, peer pressure, bullying and learning difficulties. A family related stress experience may include parental arguing, divorce, relocating, a new sibling or a major illness.
Children can participate in and benefit from counseling. One youth specific service offered is play therapy, which allows a child to express themselves in different ways. Counseling can help children and adolescents learn how to identify causes of their distress, develop their skills in asking for help and expressing emotions, and improve their problem-solving abilities.
Our approach to child and adolescent counseling considers the physical, social, economic and mental environment. We strive to identify and develop strengths and growth area, while reducing anxiety and increasing coping skills. We may incorporate others in the child and adolescent counseling process depending on the nature of the problem and the child’s environmental resources. Support may come from family members, parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers and caregivers.
Adolescents enter counseling for a variety of reasons. While it is true that adolescents seldom enter counseling on their own, they are not really any more reluctant to seek help than their parents. Adolescents sometimes cannot see what they are doing to make their life more difficult because they have not had sufficient life experience. Life experience, in sufficient quantities, helps us see what is not working, even if we do not always know how to fix it. Most adolescents do not have these experiences, so they assume the problem must be outside of themselves and they expect everyone else to adjust.
Our adolescent counselors here at Creative Solutions Counseling Group have many years of experience working specifically with the psychological, mental and emotional changes of adolescence and related adolescent issues. Consider getting your pre-teen or teenager the help they deserve so they can learn new problem solving skills that can serve them for the rest of their lives.