Child Counseling & Play Therapy in Austin, TX

• Emotion Coaching: Learn how to help your child name, validate, and manage big feelings.
• Consistent Routines: Establish predictable structures around bedtime, meals, and transitions to reduce anxiety.
• Positive Reinforcement: Focus attention on what’s going right, rather than only correcting what’s wrong.
• Modeling Self-Regulation: Kids learn emotional control from watching adults manage stress calmly.
• Collaborative Problem-Solving: Create solutions together with your child rather than relying solely on punishment.
  

• Co-Parenting Strategies: For separated or blended families, we can help align parenting styles for consistency and cooperation.

Play therapy is a developmentally appropriate way of working with children by using children’s natural form of communication – play – to solve problems. Play is their language and toys are their words. We use play to help children gain insight and then to help them learn and practice new, more effective ways of being, engaging with others, and regulating their emotions.

A few examples of how counseling can help children include; coping with everyday stress, anxiety, depression, changes at home, sibling and friend issues, behavioral difficulties, learning difficulties, failure to launch, etc. As you can see, kids come in for a variety of reasons and our therapists aim to help those kids make sense of what’s going on, how to better cope, and ways that parents can better understand what’s happening and how to help. Problematic behavior is often a sign of something that needs to be adjusted and it can go a long way towards you and your children growing and prospering.

We assess attachment relationships and use Child Parent Relationship Training to enhance relational patterns and attachment skills between caregivers and children. We incorporate (with both kids and adults) psychoeducation about attachment, emotional regulation, and how the brain works and affects emotions and behaviors.

Child counseling is counseling for kids who are going through challenging times and need extra support. Our therapists do this through different forms of therapy including art therapy, play therapy, and work with parents and family systems.

Many of the issues these children face mimic the issues adults face in their day-to-day lives. Some of these common issues children face include anxiety, depression, and grief. The goal of child counseling, however, is to break down problems into manageable parts, build coping techniques and resources so children can better understand and cope with them.

Sometimes people come in because there are behavioral issues in the classroom, problems with other children, or at home. Honestly, there can be a lot of reasons: sadness, dark thoughts, anger, anxiety, sexually inappropriate behavior, defiant behavior, drop in grades, inability to concentrate, autism, ADHD, or maybe there are other things going on in the family system and parents want to get support for their child and some guidance as to how to support them. There are many reasons, but the goal is to support them and to give you guidance as well.

Play can reveal a child’s feelings about what was experienced, what the child wishes, wants, or needs, and the child’s perception of self. It provides a window into a child’s internal world, as they use play as a way to express emotions and communicate thoughts they may not be able to put into words. Play therapy is most commonly used in kids up to the point of adolescence, or when it no longer seems helpful for kids. Gary Landreth of UNT is a pioneer in the space of play therapy and it gives therapists a well honed tool to work with children. Landreth has said, “Toys are children’s words and play is their language.”

Typically it’s children aged 3–12 or elementary to middle school age children.

This varies by child and need. For instance, a child going through bullying at school might spend a different amount of time in therapy than a child who unexpectedly lost a parent. Generally speaking 8-16 sessions is a decent gauge but it’s something you can also discuss with your child’s therapist.

This is highly variable. Some changes may emerge early, others take longer.

Yes, we see kids in person at both our North (Spicewood Springs) and South (Westlake) Austin offices, and by telehealth anywhere in Texas. Demand for child therapists is high, so wait times vary from days to weeks but we actively monitor our waiting list to try and help parents get in as quickly as possible.

While we don’t have someone doing ABA (applied behavioral analysis), our child therapists work regularly with behavioral concerns (e.g. defiance, meltdowns, focus and attention issues, social conflict, etc) using play therapy and social skills training depending on your child’s age and needs. Reach out and we’ll match you with someone who specializes in what you’re seeing at home.

It starts with a parent consultation so we understand your child’s history and what’s going on, followed by sessions built around play, art, or talk therapy depending on age. You’re kept in the loop with regular check-ins rather than left guessing what’s happening in the room.