Child Psychologists and Child Therapists in Greenburgh, NY.

I do not treat young children because for many problems it is best to teach parents skills for effectively responding to their children's emotional and behavioral needs. I teach what is called Parent Effectiveness Training Skills. This involves helping parents reinforce behaviors in children they wish would occur with greater consistency. Train the parent!

When children have problems, those problems are directly related to their relationship with their parents. Hence, my approach to working with children is to work with the whole family. If a child is acting up at school, he generally has parents who are, often unintentionally, not giving him what he needs at home. All parents want to believe that they are good parents, and it is hard for them to accept that they may be doing things that are causing their children to have problems. My job is to gently and patiently create a constructive atmosphere and honest communication between parents and children, which help the children resolve their problems and learn to thrive.

Small children aged 3 to 8 typically do not participate in family therapy because the vast majority of therapists consider such children too young to articulate their feelings or understand complex patterns of behavior. Butler thinks otherwise, as she perfects her skills using an approach called narrative therapy. Often described as “post-modern,” narrative therapy allows clients to put away old, tired versions of the stories they tell themselves [and everybody else] about their lives. Playing more to the clients’ strengths than their weaknesses, the approach urges clients to see themselves as much more than the presenting problem and to identify ways in which they are already taking steps

We all have one common goal for our children, we want them to be happy. My work with parents and children include: provide emotion coaching for the parent and child strengthen the marital relationship in order to provide a model for healthy communication and stress management explore the impact of the parents' own childhood struggles on their capacity to parent effectively create an atmosphere where the parent and child feel respected, understood and validated improve parental understanding of their child's development designing effective behavior plans for increasing a child's positive emotions experiences and behavior

I offer counseling typically to children 12+ If the child is younger than 12, and needs support for entering middle school, or peer/ social skills with my experience K-12, and graduate school age, please inquire re: need! As a family or with a sibling I would treat younger as well. As always just inquire with more information on how I can assist !