The Truth About Child Therapy: The Missing Piece Most Families Overlook

Dr. Vived
Oct 1
4 min read

Rebuilding Your Life After a Toxic/Abusive Relationship

The Truth About Child Therapy: The Missing Piece Most Families Overlook

When parents begin searching for a therapist for their child, they are often surprised to learn how difficult it can be to find someone who specializes in working with children. Family therapists, social workers, life coaches, and counselors are fairly common. But a therapist who has specifically chosen to dedicate their career to children and adolescents, who has gone through extensive training, supervision, and countless hours of direct experience with young people? That is rare.

Becoming a child therapist is not a path every clinician chooses. It requires patience, creativity, and a deep understanding of child development. It also requires specialized education and training in areas such as play therapy, developmental psychology, trauma treatment, and family systems. Beyond the classroom, it means hundreds, sometimes thousands of supervised hours working directly with kids and teens. This level of dedication creates a very specific skill set, and not everyone is drawn to this work. In fact, when speaking with colleagues, professors, and even classmates during training, many admitted they avoided working with children altogether. Their reason often had less to do with the children themselves and more to do with the complexities of working with parents.

What We Actually Do in Child Therapy

When a child walks into our office, the focus is not on "fixing" them, but on equipping them with the tools they need to thrive. In our sessions, we work on things like:

Learning how to regulate big emotions
Increasing awareness of body signals that often show up before feelings explode
Understanding and naming emotions instead of shutting them down
Practicing coping strategies and techniques that they can use in the real world

These skills may sound simple, but they are life-changing when practiced consistently. And because therapy with children only happens for a short time each week, we make it a priority to share with parents what we are practicing together. This way, you can reinforce those skills at home and help your child use them outside the therapy room.

The Challenge of Family Dynamics

Here is where things often get complicated. Parents come to us hoping that their child will gain confidence, overcome anxiety, or learn to set boundaries. Those are wonderful and important goals. But children do not grow in isolation. They are shaped every day by the family environment around them.

This means that even if a child is practicing emotional regulation in session, progress can be stalled if the home environment is filled with emotional chaos. If a child is learning to set healthy boundaries, but the family dynamic continues to blur or dismiss those boundaries, the child feels stuck. If a child is learning that it is not their job to carry adult worries, but they continue to be used as a confidant or emotional support system, then the anxiety will not simply disappear.

Here are some examples of what we often see:

A parent wants us to reduce their child’s anxiety, but the parent does not acknowledge their own stress that the child absorbs daily.
A parent asks us to help their child stop people-pleasing, yet continues to share adult concerns that place the child in the role of caretaker.
A parent hopes one hour of therapy will teach boundaries, while the other 167 hours of the week are spent modeling enmeshment and unhealthy emotional dependence.

Why Parent Involvement Matters

Therapy cannot exist in a vacuum. We cannot teach a child emotional regulation if the adults in their life are dysregulated. We cannot help a child feel safe if their role at home is to carry the emotional weight of the family. We cannot expect a child’s anxiety to decrease if they continue to overhear adult conversations about financial stress, relationship struggles, or work conflict that they were never meant to worry about.

At Solutions, we view child therapy as family therapy. That does not mean parents are always in the session, but it does mean parents play a critical role in the process. When parents are open to reflecting on their own emotional patterns, when they are willing to practice healthier communication, and when they model what it looks like to set boundaries and cope with stress, children learn far more than we could ever teach them in one weekly session.

The Reality

Your child’s struggles are often not simply their own. More often than not, what we see in the therapy room are symptoms of larger family dynamics rather than isolated individual problems. The good news is that this also means change is possible. When parents commit to their own growth alongside their child, families transform. Children become more resilient, anxiety decreases, and family relationships strengthen.

Child therapists may be rare, but when families engage fully in the process, the impact is extraordinary.

At Solutions Counseling and Family Therapy, we believe child therapy works best when the whole family is engaged. Because when parents model healthy emotional habits, children don’t just learn skills, they live in them.

If you’d like more information about our services or are ready to take the next step toward support and healing, our team at Solutions Counseling & Family Therapy is here for you. Whether you’re seeking guidance for yourself, a family member, or a loved one, we’re happy to answer your questions and discuss how we can help.

Reach out today to schedule a consultation or learn more about our personalized therapy options:

Solutions Counseling & Family Therapy

31473 Rancho Viejo Rd, Suite 102

San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675

PH: 949-200-7723 | FAX: 949-281-5243

EMAIL: hello@solutionsoc.com