You have always known that your teen struggled to focus, but lately, this seems to be keeping them from being successful in day-to-day life. They can’t seem to focus on instructions or pay attention in school, and you’re tired of getting calls from the school or seeing your teen’s failing grades. Or, at home, they get “off-task” easily and have to be redirected. What you expect to take 5 minutes could take your teen an hour or more to complete. Your teen has become incredibly irritable, exploding with anger over some minor incident. You’re exhausted and tired of arguing with your teen.

Their grades, friendships, and family interactions are suffering. And the impulsivity, defiance, or irritability are making you feel like life is out of control.

Whether your teen has been failing in school, is incredibly angry or irritable, struggles to make safe choices, or seems to be going in a million directions at once, you know something isn’t quite right.

So here you are, wondering if the answer to your teen’s struggles might be ADHD.

Often, your teen feels frustrated by the inability to focus, distressed by their own behaviors, and upset that they often drive their peers away. They want to do well in school but have become discouraged, ready to give up. You worry about their unhappiness, anxiety, and their future success in life.

You truly want your teen to fit in with others and do well in school and at home. But, you have no idea how to help them manage the many demands being placed on them. 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 Teen is Struggling with ADHD

Behavioral: your teen is aggressive, restless, impulsive, irritable, or fidgety
Cognitive: your teen is absent-minded or forgetful and has difficulty focusing, problems paying attention, or a short attention span
Mood: your teen often feels angry, anxious, bored, excited, or experiences mood swings

When You Seek Support for ADHD from The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management

You and your teen will learn how to structure environments to foster emotional and behavioral success
Your teen 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 teen better function at home and in school
You and your teen will grow closer together and enjoy spending more time together

The ADHD Counseling Process

Therapy for teen ADHD is intended to help your teen gain the skills and tools necessary to more effectively engage in the tasks of everyday life without negative disruptions due to attention difficulties or struggles with self-management. Together, you, your teen, and your therapist will work with scientifically-backed, evidence-based therapies to help your teen gain control of their inner and outer worlds in more effective ways.

Therapy for teens with ADHD is based upon helping them to learn 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 teen’s needs. For this reason, we offer a free 15-minute initial phone consult to learn more about your teen’s current circumstances and to determine if we are the best resource for you. Assuming that we are a good match, you will then schedule an intake session.

WEEK ONE : Intake Session

During this initial 90-minute session, the assigned therapist will meet with you as the parent(s) or guardian(s) to gather background information on your teen and have you fill out rating scales to provide an assessment baseline upon which to build our treatment plan and goals.

WEEK TWO : Teen Intake Session

During this 45- to 60-minute session, the therapist will interview your teen as well as meet with you as the parent(s) to ask any follow-up questions which may be helpful in treatment planning and goal-setting to best meet your teen’s needs.

WEEK THREE : Feedback Session

Now that we’ve thoroughly assessed your teen’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 teen’s troubling thoughts and behaviors.

WEEK FOUR and Beyond : ADHD Therapy

At this point, you and your teen 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 teen, and your therapist will use evidence-based psychotherapy models to help your teen learn to identify and address the troublesome thoughts and behaviors that they experience because of ADHD. This typically includes the integration of techniques from Behavioral Parent Training (BPT), Family Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), or other evidence-based modalities.

Each session is designed to help your teen learn to effectively focus, to better listen to authority figures, and to gain control of their impulsive symptoms.

TERMINATION : The Final Sessions

As your teen 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 teen to develop a relapse prevention plan at this time. Our goal is for your teen to be able to retain what they’ve worked on and to implement all that they have learned in therapy outside of sessions in their everyday life.

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 understand your 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 anxiety 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 ADHD Counseling

Therapy for teens with ADHD is best for those who need relief from the constant battle to stay on task and to manage behaviors.

Often, the teen with ADHD is doing the best that they can but fighting a battle that feels impossible to win. ADHD counseling can help them to more effectively manage their symptoms so that they can gain more control over the outcome of their life.

Your teen will benefit from ADHD therapy if :

They need help to focus in school
They struggle with peer 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 teen succeed
You are willing to work with your therapist to advocate for changes in your teen’s school environment

There are certain situations where your teen 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 teen or parent does not want to practice the techniques outside of session
Situations where parents are not committed to the process
Situations in which you want a quick fix

If you are currently experiencing any of these issues, we can provide you with appropriate referrals for your level of care.

What Does Therapy for ADHD Cost?

ADHD counseling for teens 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.

When and Where are the ADHD Counseling Sessions?

Our office is conveniently located in Chester, NJ, 07930 next to the New Toys with Love building.

Sessions are currently held by appointment only Monday – Saturday.

Your Next Steps

Your teen can absolutely learn strategies to help them manage attention problems, irritability, and impulsivity.

Knowing how much your teen struggles with impulsivity and attention issues may make a calm home life feel impossible, but that doesn’t mean your teen 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 teen will get the tools that they need to be more successful in school, build stronger friendships, 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 teen will learn to manage the symptoms of ADHD. We can help.

Call 908-914-2624 or email us (info@anxietyandbehaviornj.com) to schedule your 15-minute phone consult to see if we’re a good fit for your child’s anger needs today!

Teen ADHD