Psychotherapists - For Children

For Children

Psychotherapy can be adapted in ways that are accessible and developmentally appropriate for children. It is generally held to be one part of an effective strategy for some purposes and not for others. These are four purposes that are generally considered inappropriate or pointless reasons for placing a child in psychotherapy:

• to determine why a child originally began misbehaving,
• to improve the child's self-esteem,
• to make up for inconsistent parenting, and
• to make the child capable of coping with a parent's drug addiction, interpersonal relationships, or other serious dysfunction.

In addition to therapy for the child, or even instead of it, children may benefit if their parents speak to a therapist, take parenting classes, attend grief counseling, or take other actions to resolve stressful situations that affect the child.