The following services are offered to Bay Area families:
- Virtual Home Visits for Infant-Parent Support
- The NICU Parent Program
- Perinatal/Postpartum Assessment and Psychotherapy
- Parent Coaching: From Birth to Teens
- ‘Tween and Teen Individual Counseling
- Parent Individual Psychotherapy
- Couples Counseling
Virtual Home Visits for Infant-Parent Support
Infant-parent support home visits via convenient telehealth video sessions provide fast response to parental worries about infant fussiness or sleep problems, questions about parent-infant attachment and bonding, or parental postpartum mood or anxiety issues.
The NICU Parent Program
A unique specialized program of perinatal support is available to parents of newborns hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit or who started out in life as a preemie or medically fragile infant.
Perinatal/Postpartum Assessment and Psychotherapy
Worried about your experience of the baby blues, and whether your postpartum feelings are “normal” or not? You can be seen by a private practice therapist in your home or in the office to screen for postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, and make sure you receive the treatment and/or referrals you need to start feeling better. Both mothers and fathers/partners can experience symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression following a difficult birth experience. Rapid assessment and intervention are needed to set you on the path to recovery so that you can fully enjoy being with your new baby.
Parent Coaching: From Birth to Teens
Kids don’t come with an instruction manual! And at the same time, there is a dizzying plethora of books out there with conflicting directions for what to do, there are always new and interesting challenges to overcome, and you may be choosing to counteract (or, more rarely emulate!) some of the ways you were parented as a child. What’s a parent to do? Especially with the “moving target” of development to keep in mind, as your child grows from infancy, through toddlerhood and the school-aged years, and into adolescence.
Our providers can help with individualized, developmentally appropriate, and neuroscience-informed guidance in those tricky moments when you need it.
‘Tween and Teen Individual Counseling
Strengths-based counseling for children and teens ages 11-18 is offered to support adjustment to family and school stress, development of social skills and emotional awareness, and to address symptoms of depression or anxiety. Counseling sessions may include mindfulness, use of expressive arts, trauma-focused work, or other interventions as appropriate. For individual counseling as well as for play therapy, sessions are available in Spanish or English. Counseling can also be integrated with Educational Therapy if desired to address learning issues, develop study skills, and support academic progress.
Parent Individual Psychotherapy
Two programs of individual psychotherapy for parents are available:
- Brief (8-10 sessions) support for adjustment issues. This program is designed for parents who need short-term support for parenting stress, or to help with the transition to parenthood, return to work, or adjustment to a child diagnosis, behavioral issue, or chronic condition. The time can be extended as needed to support parents in integrating their own past experiences of being parented into how they are choosing to parent their little ones.
- Assessment and longer-term treatment for parents who are struggling with symptoms of depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress. Sometimes an experience with clinical depression earlier in life can be re-triggered with the transition to parenthood, requiring intensive intervention, or a potentially traumatic experience during or after birth can lead to symptoms of posttraumatic stress.
Couples Counseling
Non-judgmental, attachment-based couples counseling services are offered to help parents work through difficulties that may arise due to the stress of parenting, sharing of caregiver responsibilities, or problems in the couple relationship. The main approach to couples therapy offered is based on Emotionally-Focused Therapy, an evidence-based therapy that is designed to help people accept, express, regulate, make sense of and transform emotions such as fear, sadness of abandonment and shame of inadequacy that have developed from past negative learning experiences. The goal of therapy is to help both partners increase their sense of security, closeness, and connection in their relationship with each other.
Bay Area Parent & Child Psychology Associates 