About
We have a heart for children and families. It can be difficult to find someone you can trust to work with your child. Because parents are the primary disciplers of their children, we invite them to be a part of the counseling process. Some older children and teens prefer to have time alone with their counselor, and others prefer parents to be present for sessions. We want to work with you to tailor the experience to what is most helpful for your child's personaility, maturity level, and counseling needs. We also like to be sensitve to each child's faith journey, just as we would with adults. We want to ultimately point children and teens to Christ, but with sensitivity, recognizing that sometimes they have precious, childlike faith, and other times they wrestle with spiritual questions.
We regularly follow up with parents on the progress of counseling, and often incorporate family sessions or sessions alone with just parents, as best serves the needs of the family. While we utilize counseling games, stories, worksheets, and object lessons, and these can help children make connections to difficult concepts, we know parents are concerned that children make progress in their area of struggle, so we try to be as directive as a child's temperament seems to allow.
Family counseling often focuses on conflict resolution, peacemaking, and enhancing relationships. However, there are times family counseling focuses on shared grief or trauma experiences, blended family struggles, reunification dynamics, or other situations in which it feels helpful to have a neutral third party. We also conduct lengthier sessions on a case-by-case basis to accomodate situations when a family needs more time for everyone to feel heard and for a sense of peace and resolve to be reached. If you desire family counseling, please reach out to krista@sothatwe.com so that you can be matched with the counselor with the most appropriate experience for working with your specific issue.