INFANTS, CHILDREN, & TEENS
Infant Mental Health emphasizes the importance of healthy social-emotional development in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. At Small Steps, clinicians work within the child’s natural environment (home, school, community) to observe, interact with and train caregivers on how to meet their baby’s mental health needs, understand their baby’s cues, and support their child’s optimal development and future healthiness. Infant Mental Health holds the infant-caregiver relationship as central to each child’s development and overall well-being. Since anything that impacts this primary relationship can affect a child’s social and emotional health, Infant Mental Health clinicians support the child’s entire caregiving environment during these critical early years.
Offered in English, and Spanish
Ages 0-3
Because children’s language development lags behind their cognitive and physical development, they communicate their experience of what is happening in their world through play. The use of toys and activities in play therapy enables children to transfer anxieties, fears, fantasies, frustrations, distress, confusion, and guilt to objects rather than people. In order to understand a child’s perspective of the circumstances that brought them into therapy, the therapist observes and interacts with the child through play as the child leads. Each time the child engages with a play scenario in therapy, slight changes signal important shifts in the child’s inner world. An experiential play therapist helps the child move into a healthier perspective of the stressor(s) and therefore to more adaptive coping.
Ages 3-12
Theraplay is a modality of child therapy that promotes healthy, reciprocal parent-child interactions. The therapist facilitates a caregiver and their young child in active, playful experiences of relating to one another in the present moment and in fresh ways that promote relaxation, trust, and mutuality. The therapist guides the caregiver-child dyad in fostering secure attachment and creating joyful interchanges in meaningful, lasting ways.
Ages 0-14
Art therapy utilizes creative arts in clinically-relevant ways based on the expressive therapies continuum. A treatment modality facilitated by a rigorously-trained and nationally- certified art psychotherapy clinician, art therapy can incorporate drawing, painting, sculpture, textiles, photography, digital art, collage, creative writing, somatic self-expression, and movement arts. Art therapists receive specialized, master’s-level training in using art media, the creative process and the resulting artwork as integral components of clinical mental health therapy. Art therapists support client engagement in therapeutic art making through individual, dyadic and family sessions that foster collaboration, facilitate communication, explore boundaries and identity, heal from trauma and loss, reduce interpersonal conflict, increase self-esteem, regulate emotions and moods, and cultivate adaptive coping skills.
Ages 3+
Child Parent Psychotherapy is an intervention model for children ages 0-5 who have experienced at least one traumatic event and/or are experiencing mental health, attachment, and/or behavioral problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This treatment is based on attachment theory, but also integrates psychodynamic, developmental, trauma, social learning, and cognitive-behavioral approaches. Therapeutic sessions include the child and parent or primary caregiver(s). The primary goal of CPP treatment is to support and strengthen the relationship between a child and his/her/their caregiver as a vehicle for restoring the child’s cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and social functioning. Treatment also focuses on environmental factors that may affect the caregiver-child relationship. Offered in
English, Spanish
Ages 0-6
Dialectical Behavior Therapy is an evidence-based treatment based on a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy, humanistic psychology, and mindfulness approaches. DBT focuses on stabilizing reactivity, replacing ineffective behaviors with new coping tools, and repairing interpersonal connections. DBT provides clients with specific skills to increase emotional, cognitive, and behavioral regulation, decrease interpersonal conflict and improve relationships.
Ages 11+