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Services include:
Counseling and coaching for families
with adopted children who
are seeking help with current parent/child issues.
Counseling and psychotherapy for
adults who were adopted
and are seeking to work through related issues.
Counseling and psychotherapy for
birth mothers who are seeking
to work through issues related to placing or having
placed a child for adoption.
Counseling for prospective adoptive
parents: Services may include
a brief number of sessions to gather information, consider
and process various aspects of decision to adopt before
proceeding.
First Year Home groups: These
are groups are small education and support groups for
parents and their recently adopted infants and young
children. Groups run for 8 weeks for approximately 90
minutes. Come and learn about child development and
issues unique to new adoptive families. The format will
include age appropriate songs, games and activities.
Issues such as sleeping, eating, toileting, limit-setting,
sharing, etc. will be addressed. Call for more information
and schedule - groups are scheduled on an ongoing basis
as requests come in.
Adopted children may benefit
from counseling in order to develop closer connections
with their families, and to develop functional "family
skills" and behaviors versus the kinds of survival
skills they may have depended on in prior settings (orphanage,
foster care, birth family). These children may need
to process grief and loss related to the many changes
in their short lives. They may need help forming a healthy
sense of identity. They may need help making sense of
their own complex backgrounds and putting their life
stories in a comprehensible order. Families as a whole
may need help to come together. Parents may benefit
from coaching and collaboration on how to parent kids
with unique needs and challenges.
Parents can expect to be heavily
involved in the child's therapy process. In working
with families with very young and elementary school-aged
children I will generally meet with parents alone first.
We will discuss issues of concern, family history, and
the child's unique history. From there we will decide
in what configuration the family will be seen for further
sessions. Generally I work with adopted children this
age with their parents present in the room, but this
will depend on the particulars of the situation. In
some cases I will request to come to your home for a
session and/or to your child's school to help develop
an understanding of the whole environment. I will likely
also request to talk with your child's other providers,
i.e. doctors, occupational therapists, teachers, social
workers, etc.
With adolescents and young
adult clients, the level of parental involvement will
depend on the situation and the presenting issues, and
on the client's "family age," i.e. how long
the child has been a member of the current family.
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