Therapy for Adolescents and Parents
Helping Adolescents Navigate the Years of Becoming
Adolescence is a period of enormous change.
Young people are developing their identities, becoming increasingly independent, navigating friendships and relationships, managing academic and social pressures, and beginning to imagine their futures. At the same time, parents are learning how to support a child who is becoming a young adult.
It can be exciting. It can also be confusing, frustrating, and emotionally difficult for everyone involved.
I work with adolescents and their parents to help them navigate these years with greater understanding, communication, and connection.
A Space Where Adolescents Can Be Heard
Teenagers often experience emotions and pressures that they don't know how—or don't feel comfortable—sharing with their parents.
Therapy can provide a space where an adolescent can talk openly with a trusted adult outside the family. My goal is to create an environment where young people feel respected and understood rather than judged or lectured.
Depending on the individual needs of the adolescent, therapy may address:
The objective isn't simply to make difficult feelings disappear. It is to help adolescents understand what they are experiencing and develop healthier ways of navigating the challenges they face.
Supporting Parents Along the Way
Working with an adolescent often means working with the family as well.
Parenting a teenager can be one of the more challenging transitions in family life. The child who once relied heavily on you may now want independence while still needing considerable support. Parents can find themselves unsure when to step in, when to step back, and how to respond when communication breaks down.
I help parents understand what may be happening beneath their adolescent's behavior and consider ways to remain connected while respecting their growing independence.
At times, that may mean individual work with the adolescent. At other times, it may involve conversations with caregivers or joint sessions. The approach is tailored to the circumstances and needs of the family.
Experience and Perspective
There are some things that are difficult to understand fully until we have lived through them.
With many years of professional and life experience, I bring perspective to the challenges facing both adolescents and the adults who care for them. I understand that families don't always need another person telling them what they are doing wrong. Often, they need a place to slow down, listen to one another, and gain a different perspective.
My approach is warm, conversational, and collaborative. I work to create a relationship in which adolescents feel comfortable being themselves and parents feel supported in the difficult work of raising them.
Parent Support Group
Parenting an adolescent can sometimes feel surprisingly isolating. Even when parents have loving relationships with their children, they may struggle with questions about boundaries, independence, communication, technology, school pressures, friendships, emotional health, and how much—or how little—to intervene.
A parent group provides a supportive setting to talk about these challenges with other parents who are going through many of the same experiences. Rather than focusing on a formula for parenting, the group offers an opportunity to step back, share experiences, listen to different perspectives, and think more intentionally about how we respond to our children.
Participants can gain reassurance from knowing they are not alone, practical perspective from other parents, and greater awareness of how their own experiences and emotions can influence their parenting. The group is a place to ask difficult questions without judgment and to explore how we can remain connected to our adolescents while helping them develop the independence they need.
“You're not the only one going through this.”
Sometimes the most helpful thing a parent can hear.
You don't have to navigate it alone.
Let's take the first step together.