Behavioral Therapy For Children
in Houston, TX and Online
Are You Worried About Your Child's Behaviors at Home or School?
If your child is displaying problematic behaviors and struggling in school, you’re likely concerned about their future. Maybe they have always been strong-willed or independently minded, but their sense of defiance has grown out of control. There is hope!
Are You Feeling Powerless as a Parent?
Perhaps you never know what to expect from your child’s unpredictable swings in behavior. In the mornings, you may be fighting to get them out of the door for school. By the time everyone is seated around the table for dinner, you may encounter even more angry outbursts. If this is the case, you probably miss the sense of connection and peace you felt before these behaviors appeared. You may feel powerless in maintaining harmony within your family. Powerless about what to do or how to help your child. Parenting books don’t seem to address the issues you are dealing with. Or their advice simply doesn’t work.
Children Often Have Trouble Managing Their Big Feelings
There are a number of behaviors that may require the intervention of a child specialist.
Perhaps you have endured countless meltdowns, angry outbursts, hitting, and name-calling. Or maybe your child has issues with impulse control. It’s likely your child does not have effective skills for emotion regulation. Maybe your child can’t seem to get along with others or respect the adults around them. They may often talk back to teachers or refuse to follow the rules. And you may be constantly refereeing conflict between your child and their siblings, peers, or friends. All you want is to help your child learn how to manage their big feelings. Life would feel more manageable if your child had the tools to cope with their emotions. Tools to communicate instead of act out. And tools to connect instead of attack or meltdown. With behavioral therapy for children at Eddins Counseling, you and your child can learn those tools.
Behavioral Issues Can Point To Psychological And Developmental Concerns – Or Issues Of Neurodivergence
Children can struggle so much with aggressive, impulsive, or dysregulated behaviors because they lack the developmental awareness to understand big feelings and how to cope with them. Moreover, parents often don’t know how to help. And there are many reasons why “traditional” parenting advice doesn’t work. After all, your child may not be a “traditional” child and perhaps they require the evaluation of a child behavioral therapist who can assess what is really going on and address specific symptoms. Children are subject to many of the same mental health struggles that affect adults. They may experience depression, anxiety, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). But there are also neurodivergent conditions—including Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), sensory processing disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), among other cognitive challenges—that present behavioral setbacks. Our clinicians are qualified to paint a clear picture of your child’s condition. And in behavioral therapy for children, you can have a better idea of what issues are affecting your child so that they can acquire the tools needed to manage and regulate their emotions.
Behavioral Therapy Teaches Children New Behaviors and Skills
Living with a child who struggles with behavioral setbacks, you likely feel overwhelmed and under-resourced in providing them with the support and guidance they need. But therapy can give both you and your child an opportunity to reinforce personal strengths, and re-establish a healthy, connected relationship with one another. A therapist can help your child address specific challenges and behaviors so that they can be more successful. Children can learn new skills and ways of responding. The process begins with an intake with the parents to learn more about what is happening with your child’s behavioral issues. Next, your therapist will meet independently with your child. This will provide an idea of presenting problems, symptoms, and goals for treatment.
You Can Better Understand Your Child’s Behavioral Issues With The Guidance Of A Therapist
At Eddins Counseling, we believe that all child behaviors are a form of communication. Deep down, your child is trying to convey a part of themselves. They may experience the world and others differently. They may experience sounds or sensations more or less intensely. And they may experience emotions more or less strongly. With behavioral therapy, we can help you decipher what your child is trying to communicate while also allowing you to establish meaningful boundaries. Though it may feel like a sense of peace and harmony within your family is out of reach, behaviors can be changed and emotions can be managed. With behavioral therapy for children at Eddins Counseling, you can foster a whole new dynamic with your child that centers around cooperation rather than conflict.
Behavioral Therapy FAQ's
While the intake session will center around your perspective as the parent, we will spend ongoing therapy sessions working directly with your child to help them develop necessary skills and coping techniques.
Our therapists may use elements of play therapy and child therapy that work in accordance with your child’s unique brain development so that they can better understand their emotions and how their emotions affect them.
We may also involve you directly in therapy sessions with your child. This can help you learn how to respond directly to your child shaping positive behaviors and increasing your bond.
Using these evidence-based behavioral approaches, we will develop a customized treatment that will ultimately reduce problematic behaviors by:
- Learning how to label big feelings versus acting on them
- Increasing effective communication
- Developing skills for emotion regulation and impulse control
- Building a toolkit for coping with overwhelming situations and distress
Both you and your child will learn strategies that can help to strengthen your bond and mitigate instances of emotional outburst and conflict.
- Raising children is hard work—especially if you don’t have the knowledge or resources to fully understand what’s going on in your child’s brain.
- Our role as clinicians is not to judge or make assumptions but rather to help you and your child develop effective coping and emotion regulation skills.
- There are so many reasons why children struggle, and behavioral therapy can help you locate the source of your child’s distress.
- Our clinicians have advanced child psychology and development training and use evidence-based assessments to make informed diagnoses and treatment plans.
- We can also make referrals to other providers (including occupational therapists and curriculum specialists) to help your child receive the accommodations they need.
You are not alone in this struggle! We will help you get to the root of your child’s behavior, so you can see that the challenges they’re experiencing are not your fault.
- You’ve probably tried everything you can—including being patient and not intervening—to reduce your child’s disruptive or combative behaviors.
- And perhaps you can see that waiting for the problem to fix itself has not worked.
- Though your child is likely to grow in their development and gain some skills on their own, behavioral issues often evolve into patterns over time.
- Without therapeutic intervention, certain reactions are likely to become automatic when your child feels triggered, indicating that their behaviors have become deeply entrenched and thus nearly impossible to manage on their own.
- A typical course of behavioral treatment for children lasts about six to twelve months.
- Children learn how to develop new skills in behavioral therapy, and are given an opportunity to practice them until new patterns can be established.
- This kind of work takes time, but it will benefit you and your child for life!
Behavioral therapy teaches children essential skills that they can take with them for life, ultimately breaking those behavioral patterns that have caused problems at home or school.
Therapy with Parents May be the Most Effective Treatment
Depending on your child’s presenting concerns, the best outcomes may be achieved with parent coaching and not child therapy. In parent sessions, we teach you different ways of responding to behaviors such as name calling or tantrums, that lead to different outcomes. We can provide you with the skills you’ve been looking for. How to respond in a way that your child will listen vs react. When to reinforce boundaries and consequences and when to connect and help your child regulate. Often the skills your child needs are the ones only you can provide. They may not be equipped developmentally with the ability to regulate big feelings, but you can show them how. And we can show you! Children are sponges. They learn what you respond to and what you don’t. By working directly with parents, we can actually change your child’s behaviors.
A Renewed Sense Of Peace And Togetherness With Your Child Is Possible
If you’re a parent who struggles to mitigate conflict, defiance, and aggression in your child/children, behavioral therapy and parent coaching can give you and your family the skills you need to cope and create harmony. Contact us below to learn more about how we can help or to schedule an appointment with one of our child behavioral therapists.
Get Help From a Specialist in Behavioral Therapy For Children
Brittnie Grono
Brittnie works with children, teens, and adults to overcome anxiety, depression, ADHD and behavioral challenges.
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Jessie Blakely
Jessie has over 10 years of experience working with children, adolescents, young adults, parents, and families. She specializes in a range of ne…
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Joey Harmon
Joey offers therapeutic services for everyone aged 3 and up and strives to provide a judgment-free environment for you or your child to learn an…
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Lizz Calderon-Mullens
I work with children, adolescents, families, and young adults to help with anxiety, depression, spiritual, and relational concerns.
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Maggie Burkett
Maggie enjoys working with children, teens, and adults experiencing trauma, anxiety, depression, abuse, PTSD, self-harm, etc. Maggie is also a c…
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Tiara Runyon
Tiara offers a collaborative approach, fit to suit your individual needs. Her experience includes working with those facing life transitions and…
BOOK AN APPOINTMENTWhat Clients Are Saying
Phenomenal
My therapist is truly a phenomenal therapist and a huge asset to the Eddins team! She is an excellent listener, asks thoughtful questions to help me dismantle my thoughts to a greater degree, and was constantly looking for the best tools and resources to provide me with. She was always patient, understanding, and at times appropriately asked difficult questions that enabled me to reach a depth of processing that helped in me healing and growth. Her genuine interest in me and my life was apparent (always professional) and I always felt valued as a patient. I have recommended her to everyone that has mentioned to me they’re looking for a therapist. I know therapy is about “the work I put into it” but she truly has helped me become my best self and I’m eternally grateful for her and would not be in this great of a place mentally and emotionally without her.
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