The focus of play therapy is not only on reducing behaviors, but on building safety, trust, and connection. Play therapy helps children build emotional and social skills while supporting healthy development, confidence, and creativity. It can also help children process confusing or overwhelming experiences and adjust to life transitions. Play therapy is often effective in addressing concerns such as bullying, biting, tantrums, anxiety, shyness, depression, aggression, sibling conflict, acting out behaviors, ADHD, bed-wetting, nail-biting, thumb-sucking, and sexualized behaviors. Children and their big adults work towards experiencing comfort, reassurance, and connection following times of ruptures and distress to support secure attachments. In our work together, therapy modalities may draw from attachment theory, play therapy, Theraplay, and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). To learn more about the power of play for children and families, visit the American Academy of Pediatrics found here.

Therapy is collaborative and centered around your voice and choice. We will move at a pace that feels comfortable to foster feelings of safety and security. Together, we’ll work on understanding patterns, healing past experiences, and developing tools that support emotional regulation, empowerment, and meaningful change. Above all, therapy is a place where you don’t have to do it alone.

Using a trauma-informed and neurodiversity-affirming approach, we’ll focus on understanding behavior through the nervous system, building connection, and reducing stress at home. In this 8-week group cohort, parents will learn practical tools for co-regulation, navigating upset times, setting boundaries without shame, and strengthening connection at home. This group also offers a supportive space to process tricky moments of overwhelm and build community with other parents who truly understand.

This group may be a good fit if you’re feeling:

• Burned out or overstimulated

• Stuck in constant conflict, power struggles, or fight-flight-freeze

• Unsure how to support your child’s big emotions

You’ll gain support and strategies for:

• Co-regulation and emotional safety

• Meltdowns, shutdowns, and overwhelm

• Boundary setting to increase consistency and predictability

• Reducing shame and strengthening connection

To support meaningful connection and individualized support, cohorts are intentionally kept small with 4–6 parents/caregivers per group. You are welcome to participate as an individual parent or as a co-parenting pair/parenting team. Each weekly session is 90 minutes in duration and includes 20–30 minutes of guided teaching, followed by 45–60 minutes of skill integration, supportive discussion and processing, and ends with a co-regulation activity to help you leave feeling more centered and resourced to implement skills in the week ahead.

Curriculum Topics Address:

Week 1: Co-Regulation: Understanding the nervous system and distress tolerance

Week 2: Secure attachment: Creating a “circle of security” for children

Week 3: Power of play: Using specialized play skills and selective attention to provide age appropriate control and reduce power struggles

Week 4: Moving beyond behavior charts: Setting children up for success to follow through with directions

Week 5: Ruptures, repairs, and recovery: Expanding how we understand functions of behavior and language to reduce feelings of shame for parents and children

Week 6: Community and school advocacy: Building our bench of helpers to support parents’ and children’s well-being

Week 7: Neurodivergence and trauma: Language to talk with kids about their experiences and tools to support children’s resilience and protective factors

Week 8: Balancing boundaries and choices: The importance of consistency, predictability, and containment