Child Psychologists and Child Therapists in St Johns, NL.

Working with young children requires an approach that differs from that used with adults. My approach with children is to provide a warm and safe environment and build a sense of trust. I adapt play therapy strategies in order to enable a child to communicate in a comfortable and non-threatening way. I use sand tray play, various art media, puppets and storytelling to engage, assess and work with children.

Parenting children in St. John's can be a very rewarding yet challenging privilege. There are times when children exhibit behaviors that parents may not not know how to control. Through counselling, Lesley can help to provide parents with the opportunity to identify negative behaviors and learn ways to implement positive changes that will decrease problematic behavior.

Parenting children can be an arduous task when things seem out of control. Each child’s personality and needs are unique. There are times when a parent may feel anxious, which actually adds to the child’s distress, making the situation more difficult to cope with. An attachment bond is the unique emotional relationship between your child and you as his or her parent. This interactive emotional exchange ensures that your child will feel safe and secure enough to experience a healthy and secure emotional and physical development. Counseling can be a valuable resource for parents and their children to guide and support healthy development and foster secure parent-child attachments.

I value to role of family in young children’s lives. I can provide structured family sessions with you and your children to help you work through problems together. Creativity and flexibility are essential the work we do with young children. I use a variety of interactive approaches to counselling young children including: therapeutic play, art and music therapy, sand tray and more. I can help you improve your parent-child relationship, create a new parenting strategy, deal with challenging behaviours using a positive parenting approach and find support through difficult transitions such as separation and divorce.