Psychologists and counselors provide ongoing therapy services to preschoolers through young adults to address concerns related to mood, behavior, and social skills. In children and adolescents, playing, drawing, building, and pretending, as well as talking, are important ways of sharing feelings and resolving problems.

Parent training, is a family of treatment programs that aims to change parenting behaviors, teaching parents positive reinforcement methods for improving pre-school and school-age children’s behavior problems (such as aggression, hyperactivity, temper tantrums, and difficulty following directions). Treatment focuses on parents learning to provide positive reinforcement, such as praise and rewards, for children’s appropriate behaviors while setting proper limits, using methods such as removing attention for inappropriate behaviors.

Social skills are the tools that enable people to communicate, learn, ask for help, get needs met in appropriate ways, get along with others, make friends, develop healthy relationships, and protect themselves. Children or adolescents who have difficulty forming age-appropriate friendships, demonstrate avoidance of social situations, or impulsive or aggressive behaviors that interfere with successful social functioning may benefit from participation.

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future. Emotional self-regulation or regulation of emotion is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed.