Child & Family Counseling

Helping kids grow stronger, one laugh at a time!

As parents, it’s natural to want the best for your child. But sometimes, children face challenges that can be hard to navigate, and they may need extra support to cope. Play therapy is an effective, research-backed approach designed to help children express their emotions, work through struggles, and develop healthy coping mechanisms.

Counseling for Kids: More Support and Fewer Meltdowns

Child-centered play therapy gives children a safe, supportive space to express themselves, work through challenges, and build emotional resilience—using the language they know best: play. This approach can help with anxiety, grief, trauma, behavioral concerns, and big life changes like divorce or school transitions.

Issues We Work With:

  • Secure Attachment

    Family conflict or stress can have a significant impact on a child’s emotional well-being. Children are deeply affected by what happens in their home, and when there’s tension, arguments, or difficult changes within the family, they may not know how to cope.

  • Fears & Worries

    Children often experience fear or anxiety. They may worry about school, friends, family issues, or even death or the future. Sometimes, these worries can manifest in physical symptoms (like stomach aches or headaches) or disruptive behaviors (such as avoiding certain places or activities).

  • Social Skills

    Your child might be struggling to make friends, share, or communicate with others. Social difficulties can make kids feel isolated or frustrated, and they may not know how to navigate social interactions.

  • Difficult Behaviors

    If your child is acting out in ways that are difficult to manage—like frequent temper tantrums, aggression, defiance, or withdrawal—they may be struggling with something deeper. Counseling can support safe exploration and change.

Child-centered play therapy helps children express emotions, process difficult experiences, and build healthy coping skills through the natural language of play. It can support kids facing anxiety, trauma, grief, behavior concerns, or big changes at home or school. Parents are an important part of the process, and we work collaboratively to support healing and connection both in the therapy room and at home.

How Counseling Can Help Children and Families

Counseling helps children and families function better by strengthening emotional understanding, improving communication, and supporting healthier ways of responding to stress and conflict.

Play is the Work:

Play therapy helps kids understand their emotions and gain better control over their actions. By engaging in play with a trained therapist, your child learns how to regulate their behavior in healthy ways and communicate their feelings more effectively.

Healthy Families:

Family or parent-child counseling involves working with the system as a whole to address and resolve the issues that are creating stress. This type of therapy fosters communication, identifies unhealthy patterns or behaviors, and provides solutions .

Skill Development:

Through role-playing games and group play scenarios, children learn how to communicate, take turns, share, and solve problems with others. These experiences build self-confidence and help them develop stronger, healthier relationships with peers.

Emotion Processing:

 In counseling, children can work through emotions by creating stories that help them process in a safe, controlled environment. This allows them to move at their own pace while learning coping strategies to manage anxiety in real-life situations.

Healing from Trauma:

Play therapy helps children who have experienced trauma by providing a safe space where they can express their emotions through play. The therapist helps guide the child through the healing process by using play to explore memories, emotions, and thoughts in a way that is less intimidating than verbal conversations.

How We Work with Children and Families: 

  • Child-Centered Play Therapy

    Child-centered play therapy allows children to express thoughts and emotions they may not yet have words for, using play as their natural form of communication. In this supportive and non-directive space, kids can process challenges, build emotional awareness, and develop problem-solving and coping skills. Over time, this approach helps children feel more confident, understood, and better able to manage their emotions and relationships.

  • Attachment-Based Therapy

    Attachment-based therapy helps children feel safe, seen, and supported by strengthening the emotional bond between them and their caregivers. In counseling, kids learn to trust relationships, express their needs more clearly, and develop healthy emotional regulation skills. By working through disruptions in connection—whether from early experiences, stress, or trauma—children gain a stronger foundation for confidence, resilience, and connection in everyday life.

  • Trauma-Informed Therapy

    Trauma-informed therapy helps kids feel safe and supported as they process difficult experiences and learn to manage the emotional impact of trauma. This approach recognizes how past trauma can affect behavior, emotions, and relationships, and works to empower children by validating their experiences without judgment. Over time, trauma-informed therapy helps kids regain a sense of control, build trust, and develop healthy coping mechanisms to move forward with resilience.

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

    Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps kids understand the connection between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a way that makes sense to them. Through age-appropriate activities and guidance, they learn to identify unhelpful thought patterns, manage big emotions, and try out new coping strategies. CBT gives children practical tools to feel more confident, calm, and in control of their actions—both at home and at school.

Our therapists are “Neurodiverse Informed”, which is to say that we all have training and skills to work with a range of folks on the neurodiverse spectrum from ADD/ADHD, gifted, and high functioning autism. We fully celebrate the Neuro-Spicey and the Bright and Quirky!

Meet Your Specialists

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Meet Your Specialists ⚘

  • Ellie Jorgensen, LCPC

    My passion is helping individuals and families navigate life’s twists, turns, and roller coaster moments. I specialize in working with children, perinatal women, and family systems, focusing on challenges like childhood behavioral concerns, attachment, big life transitions, trauma, anxiety, and OCD.

    Learn More About Me

“empathetic, caring, & engaged…”

“Ellie is an empathetic, caring, and engaged counselor who really connected with our children.”

— ILLUMINATE CLIENT

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