Counseling can help your child with
ADD/ADHD
Behavior Issues
Anxiety
Depression
Divorce Impact
Grief
Bullying
Are You Worried About Your Child’s Behavior Or Emotional Wellbeing?
- Is your son or daughter having difficulty getting over a divorce, perhaps saying that he or she hates you and wants to live with the other parent?
- Do teachers regularly call to report your child’s poor grades, attention-seeking behavior or inability to get along with peers?
- Have your child’s tantrums become so dramatic that you’ve started to feel helpless and defeated?
- Do you worry that parents, teachers or even strangers on the street are judging you because of your child’s behavior?
- Does your child display a level of aggression that shocks you, perhaps often hitting siblings or classmates?
- Does your child claim to hate him or herself, perhaps even threating to commit acts of self-harm?
- Do you wish you knew how to connect with and help your child, but fear that it may be too late to establish healthy boundaries?
Seeing your child struggle emotionally, socially or academically can be an extremely upsetting and frustrating experience. And, it can sometimes be difficult to determine what your child is experiencing is a phase that he or she will grow out of or if something more serious is occurring.
Perhaps you have been noticing worrisome personality changes in your child. Your child’s behavior might be defiant, obstinate and withdrawn, or he or she might be behaving in ways that are aggressive or shocking. Fighting and yelling might be regular occurrences in your household. When you wake your child in the morning, you may find that your son or daughter refuses to get out of bed, cries incessantly and pleads to not be sent to school. During the day you might receive reports from the school regarding your child’s missing homework or disruptive behavior. When you pick your child up in the afternoon, he or she may be visibly upset, but refuse to speak about what happened that day at school. When evening rolls around, there may be more arguing and fighting with your child. The two of you might regularly have late nights at the kitchen table where you struggle to complete homework. At that point, your child might start to engage in negative self-talk, perhaps expressing self-hatred.
By now you may feel helpless, powerless and defeated as a parent. You may wonder how your child will ever develop into a happy, healthy adult. Perhaps you desperately long to take away your child’s pain but fear you may not have the tools to do so.
Most Moms and Dads Struggle With Parenting
People who struggle with a child’s defiant, angry or obstinate behavior often feel as though they have failed as parents. However, most parents experience difficulties while raising children. Parenting is a struggle, and it may be the most challenging job you have or will ever have in your lifetime.
While you may sometimes feel hopeless, it’s important to remember that your child is still developing. There’s still a lot of room for change. Every day your child is learning new social, academic and emotional skills. You probably don’t do something perfectly the first time you learn it, so why would you expect otherwise from your child?
However, some behavioral problems are more than just growing pains. If your child is struggling to cope with a recent divorce or death in the family, if you are feeling helpless, hopeless and defeated as a parent, or if your son or daughter is lashing out with aggression, it may be time to seek the advice of a professional. Thankfully, Bevill and Associates can provide your family with the support it needs.
Child Counseling Can Teach The Whole Family New Life Skills
Child counseling can be a very effective way to help families who are struggling with a child’s difficult behavior. Almost every family can benefit from counseling, regardless of whether their problems are “large” or “small.” Sometimes simply getting an outside, unbiased perspective can be extremely beneficial. We offer a compassionate, professional, non-judgmental environment where your voice will always be heard and your emotions will be honored and validated. You’ll be free to share your worries, fears, and frustrations and be able to converse with a professional who knows and understands what you’re going through. You can also learn new parenting skills—such as positive reinforcement, age-appropriate communication, and boundary setting—in addition to the tools you already have.
During sessions, your child can express uncomfortable fears, emotions, thoughts, and experiences through play, art and sand-tray therapy. These hands-on, developmentally appropriate therapies can help your son or daughter communicate in ways that feel safe, approachable and easy to understand. In addition, your child can learn to recognize and verbalize emotions, which can help your child slow down troublesome interactions and refrain from lashing out with physical or verbal aggression. With these tools in hand, your child can begin to recognize anger signals, take steps to cool down before things get out of control and use self-calming techniques to better manage negative emotions. By learning these techniques, your child can cultivate better relationships with siblings, teachers, and peers and learn a set of interpersonal skills that can last a lifetime. Finally, if your child is currently dealing with a divorce or family trauma, our therapists provide a safe environment for expressing emotions where he or she can grieve and process the changing environment.
As experienced therapists, we can tell you there’s still time for your child to develop into a happy, healthy adult. Childhood is wrought with challenges, but things really do get better. With the help of an empathic, confidential and nonjudgmental therapist, your child can increase self-esteem and learn important emotional life skills that can help him or her navigate adolescence and the world beyond.
Our approach is based on building a relationship with the child based on teamwork, acceptance, trust, nurturing interactions, and attachment utilizing through child counseling and play therapy. We assess a child’s relationships, personality characteristics, goals of behavior and misbehavior, and perceptions of self, others, and how the world works through the lens of their experiences. This can include things like helping kids work through a divorce.
What is Play Therapy?
Play therapy is a developmentally appropriate way of working with children by using children’s natural form of communication – play – to solve problems. Play is their language and toys are their words. We use play to help children gain insight and then to help them learn and practice new, more effective ways of being, engaging with others, and regulating their emotions.
We Assist Parents
We assess attachment relationships and use Child-Parent Relationship Training to enhance relational patterns and attachment skills between caregivers and children. We very often incorporate (with both kids and adults) psychoeducation about attachment, emotional regulation, and how the brain works and affects emotions and behaviors.
TO BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
Call us 205-610-9319 or use our easy online scheduler here.
If you have any questions or would like to contact us by email, you can complete a brief confidential contact form here. Once you submit the contact form, a Bevill and Associates intake staff member will respond as soon as possible.
Bevill and Associates LLC is located in Birmingham, AL (on Valleydale Rd between I65 and Hwy. 280). Please click here for our full address and a map to our location.