Intro to therapy for your child

Written By Tessa Shull

Starting therapy for your child can feel overwhelming—but you’re not alone. Many adolescent therapy practices, including mine, specialize in creating a safe, supportive space where children and teens can express themselves and develop the skills they need to thrive.

With years of experience as a school counselor and a passion for trauma-informed, play-based therapy, I understand the unique challenges kids face today—from anxiety and anger to peer pressure at school or life transitions at home. No matter what path or therapist you choose, there are reasons across the board that therapy can be helpful for your child.

Why children and teens might benefit from therapy

  • A trusting, safe space for kids to process emotional and personal situations outside of normal social circles and environments

  • Increased confidence and motivation

  • Empowerment for kids to find solutions and act on them

  • An understanding of emotional patterns that help create coping skills to deal with overwhelming emotions

Whether your child is going through a difficult season or just needs extra support navigating everyday challenges, therapy can offer them tools they’ll use for a lifetime. It’s not about fixing something that’s broken—it’s about giving your child the space and support to grow, heal and thrive.

As a counselor, I can share there are several ways to do this. One of the questions I get most often from parents surrounds what types of therapy are available and what the differences are between them. So let me break down a few of the most common therapy practices…

A few common types of therapy

  1. Play (or play-based) therapy - uses the child’s natural language of play to express themselves and in turn, communicate and work through emotions and situations that may be difficult to share verbally

  2. Solution-focused therapy- focuses on client strengths and empowers them to talk through and find solutions to a specific problem

  3. Sandtray therapy - uses a sandtray and various figures represent a mindset, concept or situation. This allows kids, teens and even adults to process (sometimes even subconsciously) with their counselor

  4. Cognitive-behavioral therapy - highlights the relationship between the clients thoughts, feelings and actions by identifying and reducing unhelpful thoughts that results in changing and controlling emotions and behaviors

  5. Trauma-informed therapy - acknowledges the widespread impact of trauma on adolescents, their families and/or other systems and promotes healing through awareness, safety, support and preventing re-traumatization

Looking at the handful of therapy options above, the one I usually get the most questions about (or even skepticism surrounding) is play therapy. How exactly does it work, and why is it helpful? Let me share one of my favorite videos that gives a concise 60-second overview of research on this form of therapy from Dalena Dillman Taylor, Associate Professor in Counselor Education at UCF.

Now that you have some foundational information about why therapy can be beneficial for your child and different types of therapy available, I hope that helps you move forward with a decision and makes taking the first step a little bit easier.


AS ALWAYS, YOU CAN REACH OUT TO ME FOR HELP, QUESTIONS OR TO SET UP A TIME TO TALK.

Tessa Shull