Chances are, if you're on this page, it's because there's something about your child that is concerning you.  

Maybe your child seems to have more tantrums, more fears, more difficulties socializing than other young children their age.  Or the teacher has shared that your preschooler or kindergartener seems to be struggling in school, not making friends, or is unhappy a lot of the time.   

Maybe your child has gone through something really scary, and now you can't leave the room without your child crying or clinging to you and you've had to shift your life to avoid those moments of distress.  

Or you've recently welcomed a new baby to the family, and bonding with your infant has proven to be challenging.  They might be colicky, difficult to soothe, and deep down inside you sometimes wonder if maybe they don't like you.  You yearn to feel closer, but don't quite know how to turn things around.

Perhaps the relationship between you and your toddler/preschooler is not what you had imagined it would be, and you seem to always end up in a power struggle.   You might go to bed at the end of the night wondering what you could be doing differently, and hoping that tomorrow will be better.

Or perhaps your child has just been diagnosed with autism and you'd like to actively work on the relationship and foster your child's engagement at home.  

While many times a "wait and see" approach is enough, early intervention in the form of psychotherapy can help your child and your family get to where you'd like to be, faster.  

The first years of life are the most important and formative for a person.  It is during this time that children begin to form templates (or "working models") of whether adults can be trusted to provide love and safety, whether the world is a safe place to explore and conquer, and whether they feel worthy of love, affection and protection.  Infancy and early childhood is a time full of magic, discovery, wonder and possibility.  It is also a time when young children can feel scared, overwhelmed and confused by a world that doesn't always make sense.   However, their caregivers can help them make sense of their feelings, the world, and help them regain a sense of safety.  These day to day interactions become the building blocks of a child's mental health and well-being. 

Wouldn't it be great if your child came with a user manual?  If your baby's cries, protests and body movements could be more easily interpreted?  Or if your toddler or preschooler's distress and confusing behavior could be understood?  This way you could do what you instinctively want to do: make it all better.  Unfortunately, there isn't a single strategy, checklist, app or foolproof formula to decipher a young child's inner world.  This can often leave you feeling at a loss for how to help.  It's not uncommon to feel like you're failing at this whole parenting thing.

There are a million parenting books.  You may have read one (or four) and tried the strategies suggested, with limited or short-lived success.  The reality is that every child and every caregiver is different, and a strategy from a book or a website can't take that into account.  Your child has their own temperament and ways of understanding the world based on their developmental level.  You also bring your own experiences, thoughts and dreams about what it would be like to be a parent, as well as your own history of being parented.  Understanding how all of these factors interact with each other in the context of a supportive holding space is the best way for your child to thrive and for you to be the parent you want to be.  

You don't have to be a carbon copy of the perfect parent described in the books.  Instead, you can be an authentic, responsive version of you as a parent to your particular child.  This is where I can help.