Therapy for children in Honolulu

As a parent, you’re doing the best you can to raise a healthy and happy child. However, negative life circumstances have left your child feeling overwhelmed with emotions such as sadness, anger, hurt, and grief. You find your child having anger outbursts, isolating themselves in their room, or having sleeping or eating issues. Things feel out of control and you want to help them, but you’re not sure what to do.

First, know that it’s typical for children to have a hard time verbally expressing how they feel or describing what’s going on inside their heads. The way kids experience anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief can look different. Your child’s developing brain and body are learning how to do so many things at once. We want to help your little one manage all these big emotions! Therapy for children in Honolulu, Manoa, Kaimuki, or Waikiki can help you and your child find solutions.

• Academic Issues: difficulty completing tasks such as homework/school work, poor performance in school  

• Adjustment Issues: difficulty adjusting to or understanding a new life transition or change (i.e. moving homes or changing schools)

• Anger Outbursts: quick-tempered, throwing things, hitting people, fighting, bullying others

• Anxiety: constant worry or fear about certain people, places, or things

• ADHD symptoms: trouble concentrating, forgetful, fidgety

• Depression: a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest in activities they used to enjoy 

• Disruption of Family Dynamics: divorce, separation, family member incarceration, death of a family member

• Victim of Abuse: abuse from a family member(s) or another person(s)

• Inappropriate or poor communication: arguing, yelling, screaming, or temper tantrums

• Isolation: disinterest in engaging with family or friends

• Lack of motivation: slow-moving or showing little to no effort to complete certain tasks

• Low-Self Esteem: feeling like they can’t do something or avoid tasks due to decreased self-confidence, frequently saying negative things about themselves

• Social Justice Issues: difficulty understanding or processing issues related to discrimination, prejudice, violence, access, rights, privilege, etc.

• Trauma: witnessing or experiencing overwhelming/stressful events

Therapy for Children in Honolulu, HI Can Help Them Find Balance!

Our child therapists know that kids can lead busy lives that can include going to school (online and in-person), participating in extracurriculars, spending time with family, and socializing with friends. Your child may love these various activities, but at times it can feel like a lot of moving pieces.

Therapy for children provides a safe and consistent space for your child to process their thoughts and emotions, and learn healthy coping skills. We’ll teach your child how to control their emotions and support them in finding age-appropriate language to communicate how they feel. Our goal is to create a comforting environment for your child to heal from their past trauma and find inner peace.

We Want Your Child to Shine!

One of our goals in working with your child is to allow your child to be themselves and let their inner child shine! We do this by using a variety of play therapy techniques such as playing card games, tossing a football, playing with toys, and more. We create a space where a kid can be a kid. It’s important that your child knows it’s safe to be themselves and that they are unconditionally accepted. Your child does not have to fear being punished or criticized in therapy. In play therapy, we aim to build your child’s self-confidence and encourage them to explore who they are.

Milk & Honey Therapy’s Approach to Therapy for Children in Hawai’i

From a child’s perspective, it can be really scary to open up to anyone who is not their parent or caregiver. Whether it’s dealing with depression in children, anxiety in children, or trauma, children can have trouble with telling you what is going on. For this reason, we focus on gaining your child’s trust and creating an authentic relationship with them. Trust is the foundation of the client-therapist relationship. From that foundation of trust, we’ll begin to explore different therapeutic techniques that fit your child’s individual needs. We’ll allow them to have a say in what they do in therapy. It is important that your child feels empowered during therapy and that they know their voice matters.

Therapy is meant to be enjoyable for kids.

Our goal is to make therapy fun for your child. We’ve seen that when children enjoy coming to therapy they have much better results. Therefore, we will incorporate a variety of therapeutic methods with your child such as Play Therapy, Walk & Talk Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Motivational Interviewing. Your child will begin to think more positively, sleep better at night, and use their strengths to overcome future challenges. No matter what therapeutic approaches we use, our hope is that your child leaves therapy feeling heard, seen, validated, and empowered.

We want to equip you and your child with resources.

As we work with your child, we will give you recommendations on how to best help your child at home and at school. We’ll offer suggestions and a variety of tools to help reinforce the skills they learn in therapy for children. We’ll work together as a team to help your child smile more and live freely. Our child therapists in Honolulu, HI are looking forward to joining your child on their healing journey!