The pre-teen and teenage years are an essential time for self-discovery, identity formation, and social development. Although with raging hormones, emotional roller coasters, strained family relationships, and social/academic pressures, adolescence is a challenging developmental stage to say the least!

Most teenagers experience confusion, inner turmoil, and conflict as they attempt to cope with peer relationships, school demands, difficult decisions, and complex family dynamics. It is common for teenagers to feel like they are alone and that no understands them, which makes this developmental period all the more stressful and complicated.

During this transitional period, adolescents may isolate from their loved ones making it really tough for families to connect and communicate. Even though teenagers may have difficulty accepting it, parental love, guidance, and understanding are deeply important and adolescent therapy can help you bridge those connections.

Adolescent therapy focuses on enhancing the interpersonal relationships of the teen with their parents and other family members. We use a collaborative and strength-based approach to explore how each member connects, communicates, and individuates.

Our role is to provide a safe, supportive, and non-judgmental space for adolescents to feel more comfortable about opening up and supported when talking about the important experiences they are going through. During the therapeutic process, we will meet individually with the adolescent to get a better idea of what they want and with the family to create lasting systemic changes.

Although parents have the right to know about the content being discussed during sessions, we ask that parents respect their teen’s privacy in the therapy room. Opening up to a therapist takes courage for clients at any age and is especially tough for adolescents, because talking to a therapist is an emotional risk. If teenagers know that everything they say in the therapy room goes straight to the parents, it inevitably has a censoring effect and they are much less likely to speak about issues that are private and important to them. Consequently, little progress can be made.

Growing up is both exciting and scary! Adolescents are constantly influenced by their interactions with friends, family, media, culture, and our society as a whole.

Today’s world presents a variety of unique pressures for teens and stressors for parents, especially with the prevalence of social media and modern technology. With technological advances, teens are now facing unique situations that adults have difficulty relating to such as cyber bullying and “sexting”. Because of these virtual challenges, parents need to be more involved than ever through providing unconditional love and support coupled with stability and structure.

Parenting during the pre-teen and teenage years can be one of the toughest jobs ever! Parents worry constantly about how their teens will develop, whether they will make the right choices, and what kind of a person they will grow up to be. The parental job is 24/7 with no potential raise for a job well done. Most parents won’t feel appreciated until many years down the road. This full-time job can be extremely frustrating, exhausting, and discouraging at times. Although parents may have the best of intentions, sometimes their strategies aren’t as effective as they would like and can even make matters worse. Parents do the best they can and it’s important to recognize when they need additional support.