You are trying your best to raise happy and successful children, but sometimes, your child’s behaviors make daily life more difficult than it needs to be. Even the smallest trigger can cause them to have very intense temper tantrums. Maybe they’re refusing to follow directions and rules, even if the yelling and screaming take more time than the requested task. You can’t understand why your child seems angry so much. You wake up in the morning nervous to “go to battle” with your child. You are just drained of energy.
Child Behavior Issues
Their family relationships, friendships, and possibly academics are suffering. You notice that your child struggles with emotion and behavior regulation more than other children.
Whether your child has been kicked out of multiple schools, struggles to make and keep friends, or often gets into arguments with adults, you know that this is not who your child truly is.
Lately, you don’t enjoy spending time with your child anymore. You just want to have a normal relationship and enjoy parenthood. You question if you’ve done something wrong, and you’re ready for answers.
So here you are, wondering if your child’s emotions and behaviors are normal or if intervention is needed.
Often, your child shows remorse after a meltdown. They sometimes appear distressed by their own behaviors and upset that they often drive others away. There are so many moments when they act like their sweet selves, yet you can’t figure out why there is such a different presentation throughout the day. You know they’re struggling, and you worry about their future.
You truly want to help your child, but you have no idea what to do. You never imagined how tiring this journey would be. And, you certainly didn’t expect that you’d need to reach out for profession help.
Signs That Your Child’s Behaviors Might Be Outside of Developmental Appropriateness
- Behavioral: frequent temper tantrums, arguing with others, noncompliance or active defiance, purposely bothering others, vindictiveness
- Cognitive: negative self-talk, negative perception of others
- Mood: frequently annoyed by others, frequent and/or intense anger
- (NOTE: if these signs don’t appear frequently but are still causing distress to your child or impairment in their life such as social or academic, it may warrant professional intervention)
When You Seek Support for Behavior Issues from The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
- You and your child will learn how to structure environments to foster emotional and behavioral success
- Your child will develop greater self-confidence and behavior management skills
- You will learn parenting strategies to increase positive behaviors
- You will learn how to help your child better function at home, in school, with peers, and with other adults
- You and your child will grow closer together and enjoy spending more time together
The Behavior Issues Counseling Process
Therapy for child behavior issues is intended to help your child gain the skills and tools necessary to more effectively engage in the tasks of everyday life without negative disruptions due to emotional or behavioral issues. Behavior issues can stem from multiple factors, so seeking professional intervention to determine the unique factors for your child are important; treatment recommendations may not be the same for each child.
Together, you, your child, and your therapist will work with scientifically-backed, evidence-based therapies to help your child gain control of their inner and outer worlds in more effective ways.
Therapy for children with behavior issues is based upon helping them to structure their environments and behaviors in such a way as to promote their success in school, family, and peer environments.
Here’s what to expect…
FIRST CONTACT: Free phone consult
Prior to beginning treatment with us, we want to make sure that we are a good fit for your child’s needs. For this reason, we offer a free 15-minute initial phone consult to learn more about your child’s current circumstances and to determine if we are the best resource for you. Assuming that we are a good match, you would then set up an intake session.
WEEK ONE: Intake Session
During this first session, the assigned therapist will meet with you as the parent(s) or guardian(s) to gather background information on your child and to fill out rating scales to provide an assessment baseline upon which to build our treatment plan and goals.
WEEK TWO: Child Intake Session
During this 45- to 60-minute session, the therapist will interview your child as well as meet with you as the parent(s) or guardian(s) to ask any follow-up questions which may be helpful in treatment planning and goal-setting to best meet your child’s needs.
WEEK THREE: Feedback Session
Now that we’ve thoroughly assessed your child’s needs, we will meet with you to discuss the diagnoses, identify starting goals, and provide education on the apparent causes and factors which are leading to your child’s troubling thoughts and behaviors.
WEEK FOUR and Beyond: Therapy for Children with Behavior Issues
At this point, you (and depending on your child’s age, your child) will attend regular weekly therapy sessions. A typical course of treatment calls for 12 to 16 weeks of therapy sessions, but treatment length depends on many factors and, therefore, could require more or less weeks. Additionally, your therapist may determine that you need to come more or less frequently, depending upon your child’s presenting symptoms.
Together, in each subsequent session, you, your child, and your therapist will use evidence-based psychotherapy models to help your child learn to identify and address the troublesome thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that they experience. This typically includes the integration of techniques from Behavioral Parent Training (BPT), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), or other evidence-based modalities.
Each session is designed to help your child learn to identify triggers, express emotions calmly and clearly in a socially appropriate way, understand consequences of various choices, have motivation to make the appropriate choices, respectfully follow rules, and gain control of their emotions and behaviors.
TERMINATION: The Final Sessions
As your child gets closer to their therapy goals, we will develop a plan for successfully transitioning them into a life without weekly therapy. This often means moving sessions from once a week to every other week, to monthly sessions, or to finishing out services completely. We also work with you and your child to develop a relapse prevention plan at this time. Our goal is for your child to be able to retain what we have worked on together and to implement all they have learned in therapy outside of sessions in their everyday life.
Are we the right providers for you?
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More About The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
As a team of licensed therapists, we are experts at teaching you to make the behavioral choices that get you closer to your goals.
We work from an evidence-based perspective. This means that our job is to help you and your child understand any struggles and provide solutions proven to be very effective. Negative thoughts, distressing feelings, and unhelpful behaviors don’t have to be part of your life, and therapy at The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management is about changing the way you think, recognizing how your beliefs are holding you back, becoming informed, seeing the world more accurately, and engaging in behaviors that you won’t regret later.
We make it our mission to help you regain control of your life by providing effective strategies supported by science. We are dedicated to being on top of the most recent knowledge and helping you solve problems based on what the research says is effective. It is our passion to educate you on what is and isn’t working in your life so that you can get back in the driver’s seat and take yourself where you want to go.
Who Benefits Most from Behavior Issues Counseling
Therapy for children with behavior issues is best for those who need relief from frequent arguments, intense negative emotions, and social disruption.
Often, the child with behavior issues is doing the best that they can but fighting a battle that feels impossible to win. Counseling can help them to more effectively manage their symptoms so that they can gain more control over the outcome of their life.
Your child will benefit from therapy for behavior issues if:
- They need help to regulate negative emotions
- They need to make better behavior choices
- They need to build awareness of the triggers of negative emotions and behaviors
- They struggle with peer or adult relationships
- They aren’t reaching their full potential
- You are willing to learn ways in which you can restructure the home environment to help your child succeed
There are certain situations where you and your child might not be ready for counseling sessions with us. These include, but are not limited to:
- Situations where your family’s schedules are too busy to commit to weekly therapy
- Situations where the child or parent does not want to practice the techniques outside of session
- Situations where parents are not committed to the process
If you are currently experiencing any of these issues, we can provide you with appropriate referrals for your level of care.
Frequently Asked Questions
All children have times when they are defiant, have tantrums, or struggle to manage their emotions and behavior. These behaviors can be a normal part of development, particularly as children are learning how to manage frustration and communicate their needs. Professional support may be helpful when behaviors are happening frequently, seem more intense than would be expected for the child’s age, continue despite attempts to address them, or begin interfering with school, friendships, family relationships, or daily life. A thorough evaluation can help determine what may be contributing to the behavior and whether additional support is needed.
Yes. The same behavior can happen for many different reasons. A child may refuse to complete a task because they are being defiant, but they may also be anxious, having difficulty paying attention, struggling academically, feeling overwhelmed, or trying to avoid something they find difficult or uncomfortable. This is why it’s important to understand what is happening before and after a behavior, as well as what the child may be getting or avoiding as a result. Understanding the function of the behavior helps us determine the most effective way to address it.
There can be several reasons a child’s behavior looks different at home and at school. The environments have different expectations, routines, levels of structure, and consequences, all of which can affect behavior. Some children also work hard to manage their emotions and behavior throughout the school day and have more difficulty regulating when they are tired or return home. It’s important to look at the specific patterns, triggers, and responses in each environment to understand why the behavior may be occurring.
If consequences aren’t changing a behavior, it’s important to look at why the behavior continues to occur. Sometimes consequences are inconsistent, happen too long after the behavior, or aren’t meaningful enough to the child. In other cases, the behavior may be unintentionally reinforced by a consequence. Children may also need to be explicitly taught the skills they’re expected to use instead. Effective behavior change typically involves more than consequences alone. Parents can learn how to identify what is maintaining a behavior, reinforce more appropriate replacement behaviors, set clear expectations, and respond consistently when problems occur.
Yes. A child does not always need to be motivated to change their behavior for treatment to begin. Depending on the child’s age and the concerns, treatment may involve significant parent participation. Parents can learn to change how they respond to behavior, reinforce appropriate behaviors, set limits, and create more consistency at home. As patterns begin to change, children can also learn skills to better manage their emotions, solve problems, communicate their needs, and respond differently in challenging situations.
Counseling for behavior issues is a fee-for-service program which means that we require payment at the time services are provided. We would be considered an out-of-network provider and would be happy to provide you with receipts which include all of the information you’d need for submitting directly to your insurance company for your own reimbursement.
Our office is conveniently located at 259 Main Street in Chester, NJ, 07930.
Sessions are currently held by appointment only Monday – Saturday.
Your Next Steps
You absolutely can learn strategies to help your family and your child manage intense emotions and negative behaviors.
Knowing how much your child struggles may make a calm home life seem impossible, but that doesn’t mean that your child won’t find their place in the world. They just need the support of a caring professional and evidence-based strategies while they figure out how to best manage it all.
Your child will get the tools they need to be more successful in life, build stronger relationships, and be more comfortable at home. And, they’ll also grow in self-esteem as they begin to better relate with others and better manage their emotions and behaviors.
Ultimately, your child will learn to manage the emotions and behaviors. We can help.
Call (908) 883-4173 or book an appointment to schedule your 15-minute phone consult to see if we’re a good fit for your child’s treatment needs today!
Our Team
Meet our experienced & professional team
Our therapists’ commitment to providing quality treatment and giving you practical, action-oriented strategies are why we are one of the most sought after mental health practices.
