Child Therapy
Clinically guided therapy that helps children understand emotions, build coping skills, and handle everyday challenges.
Children experience emotional and behavioral challenges differently than adults. Anxiety, frustration, attention difficulties, relationship struggles, or changes in routine may show up as behavior changes, withdrawal, stomachaches or headaches, or struggles at home and school. Understanding what your child is experiencing often means looking beyond the behavior itself.
Child therapy gives children a developmentally appropriate setting to explore emotions, build coping skills, and develop healthier ways of responding to challenges. Depending on your child’s age and needs, sessions may use conversation, play-based activities, behavioral strategies, and other approaches that help children express themselves and practice new skills.
At Philadelphia Integrative Psychiatry, child therapy is informed by your child’s developmental stage, emotional and behavioral needs, family environment, and history.
Who Child Therapy May Help
Support for the emotional, behavioral, and developmental challenges children experience.
Child therapy may help when emotional or behavioral difficulties start affecting your child’s relationships, school experience, family life, or daily routines. Treatment is adapted to your child’s development and focuses on building practical skills while addressing what’s contributing to their distress.
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Anxiety & Worry
Helping children recognize anxious thoughts and feelings, manage fears, and develop strategies for approaching situations that cause distress.
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Emotional Regulation
Building skills to identify emotions, tolerate frustration, and respond more effectively to disappointment, anger, or overwhelming situations.
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Behavioral Challenges
Understanding patterns such as frequent outbursts, defiance, impulsivity, or difficulty following expectations and developing more constructive responses.
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Attention & Executive Functioning
Supporting children who struggle with focus, organization, task initiation, impulse control, or managing responsibilities at home and school.
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Social Skills & Peer Relationships
Helping children navigate friendships, understand social interactions, communicate needs, and respond to disagreements or challenging peer experiences.
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Life Changes & Emotional Adjustment
Supporting children through family transitions, grief, school-related stress, changes in routines, or other experiences that affect their emotional well-being.
Privacy and Parent Involvement
Children tend to open up when they have private space to talk. Your child’s therapist will explain what stays between them, what’s shared with parents, and the exceptions made for safety.
Parents and caregivers can stay involved through check-ins, guidance, or joint sessions, depending on your child’s age, needs, and goals.
Understanding More Than the Behavior
When Child Therapy Can Be Useful
Child therapy can help when your child’s emotions or behavior start interfering with everyday activities, relationships, or comfort at home and school. You might notice growing worry about ordinary situations, trouble managing frustration, pulling away from activities, or difficulty with transitions that used to feel manageable.
These difficulties don’t always have an obvious cause. Development, temperament, relationships, environment, and sometimes an underlying mental health or neurodevelopmental condition all play a part. What looks like a behavior problem may reflect anxiety, difficulty regulating emotions, communication challenges, or an unmet developmental need.
Younger children often communicate through play and behavior, while older children can usually describe their thoughts and feelings. Therapy adapts to your child’s age, with a focus on skills they can use outside sessions.
Parents and caregivers are often an important part of child therapy. Your child’s therapist may offer guidance on responding to emotional or behavioral challenges, reinforcing skills at home, and building consistency in daily routines. How involved you are depends on your child’s age, goals, and needs.
If your child also receives a psychiatric evaluation, medication management, psychological testing, or behavioral services here, those services can be considered together when clinically appropriate and with your permission.
Therapy works best when children feel safe sharing. Your child’s therapist will explain what stays between them and your child, what’s shared with you, and the exceptions made for safety.
The goal is to help your child better understand their experiences, develop practical ways to manage challenges, and build skills that support them as they grow.
Meet Our Providers
Find therapists who work with children and their emotional, behavioral, and developmental needs.
Not sure whether child therapy is the right place to start?
Tell us what’s going on, and we’ll recommend a starting point.
Answer a few questions about what you’ve been noticing in your child. Our team reviews your answers and recommends where to start.
Our Insights on Child Therapy & Childhood Mental Health
Explore perspectives from our clinical team on childhood anxiety, emotional regulation, behavioral concerns, developmental needs, and strategies for supporting children's mental health.
