Families

These precious feet belong to the family of one of our former CPP interns.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates

walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

– Maya Angelou

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Welcome to Child-Parent Psychotherapy. One of our main goals is to support and strengthen your relationship with your child. We believe that you are central to your child's development and well-being. If your child is facing challenges, you are critical to your child's healing.

Unfortunately, many families go through stressful experiences. Families and children we work with teach us that young children (even babies) are very sensitive to stress in their environments. They are not immune to these experiences, but they can recover with the support of parents and other caregivers.

Very stressful or scary experiences can teach young children unspoken lessons that then affect their development and their behavior. For example, if people your child loves have gone away, your child may worry that others may also leave them. If children have gone through painful or serious medical procedures or if they have seen or experienced violence, they may have a heightened sense of danger. This sense of danger may cause the child to respond in different ways when triggered.

Stressful experiences can also affect young children because these experiences can affect the mood and functioning of the grown-ups around them. Young children learn from watching us. Our worries can become their worries, and when we are under significant stress, we might become irritable, impatient, or withdrawn. Young children often blame themselves for their parents' moods and behavior.

For all these reasons, we believe it is critical to:

Support caregivers, so they can support the children in their care

Our role is to understand your family's experiences and help you support your child. We learned that when children have been through challenging experiences and/or have difficult behaviors, the following things help:

  • Loving parents and caregivers who help them feel safe
  • Recognition and acknowledgement of any experiences they may have had that continue to affect their sense of safety
  • Adults who respond to them in ways that are responsive to their experiences and point of view
  • Support in learning how to understand and cope with challenging feelings
  • Adults who help them learn new, more adaptive ways of being
  • Positive experiences with others

We believe in the commonly used phrase "it takes a village to raise a child." We hope that we can become part of your village.

– From the CPP Team

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