When kids are struggling, parents often see it before anyone else — a quieter child, a sudden meltdown over something small, a change in sleep or appetite, a worry that won’t go away. Counselling can be a place where what your child is working through gets met with care.
You may notice your child:
- has a delay in developmental milestones
- is showing an abnormal amount of anger, temper tantrums, acting out, bed-wetting, or changes in eating habits
- has experienced changes in academic or athletic performance
- appears sad more than normal or has large swings in mood
- isn’t social, or you’ve seen a change in their social behaviour
- has lost interest in activities they once loved
- is showing aggressive behaviour
- has changes in sleep patterns
- complains of headaches, stomachaches, or not feeling well despite being healthy
- is navigating major changes to family life — divorce, re-marriage, or death
- has experienced sexual, physical, or emotional abuse
Understanding Child Counselling
The Child Psychologists and Counsellors at River’s Edge know that what parents most want for their kids is to be happy and healthy. They work closely with parents to understand what is developmentally normal for kids, identify areas of concern, and find solutions that help kids thrive.
Our therapists use play therapy (including sand tray) and other therapies that help them connect with kids and develop trusting relationships, in a peaceful and caring environment. They work from a family-centred perspective, understanding that for kids to do well, parents and caregivers also need support and the right tools to meet their needs.
Counselling can help children:
- strengthen resiliency and coping through tough times
- learn how to regulate emotions (happy, mad, sad, worried)
- heal from trauma
- improve self-esteem
- develop better relationships with peers and siblings
- work through experiences of grief and loss
Counselling can also help parents:
- understand the emotional needs of a child who is struggling
- more effectively deal with behaviour challenges
- support children facing transition or loss
- advocate for their child’s best interest at school
- improve sibling relationships
- introduce and support new coping strategies
By understanding what your child is going through and how to support them, you can help them grow into who they’re meant to be.
Our Therapeutic Approaches
We draw on a range of evidence-based approaches, grounded in a flexible, collaborative, and client-centred way of working that adapts to what is most helpful for your child. Our work with children is rooted in play therapy and related developmental approaches. Learn more about our approach to care.
Play Therapy
Children and adults experience the world and express themselves in very different ways. An adult’s natural form of expression is language, while children’s natural form of expression is play. Play is important to the development of children in many ways, including facilitating logical memory, abstract thinking, emotional regulation, mastery of language, and physical and motor development.
Play therapy helps children to explore emotions, identify and work through challenging experiences, organize thoughts, nurture mastery and resilience, improve relational abilities, and make sense of self, other, and the world through the use of metaphor and symbol.
Play therapy can help children work through many issues, including difficult emotions (anger, worry, anxiety), grief and loss, divorce and separation, blended family adjustment, bullying, emotional regulation, problems relating to peers or siblings, trauma, self-identity, and self-esteem.
Play therapists are trained to work with children from a developmental perspective, identifying themes in the children’s play and creatively working with different interventions — puppets, sand, clay, games, books, art — to help the child work toward resolution and healing.
Our playroom is fully equipped with a sand tray, art materials, therapeutic toys, and board games. Caregivers are always included in the process and are considered essential to a child’s therapeutic success. When required, other helpers (doctors, teachers) may be included.
Sand Tray Therapy
Sand tray is a specific form of play therapy where children create scenes in a tray of sand using miniature figures. The process invites children to externalize what they’re feeling in a way that talking often can’t. It’s particularly useful for trauma, grief, and experiences that don’t have words yet.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Attachment-based work focuses on the relational foundation between a child and their caregivers. When a child is struggling, strengthening that relationship is often a key part of healing — and our therapists work with parents and children together on this.
Family Systems
Family systems work understands that a child rarely struggles alone — the whole family is part of what’s happening and part of what helps. We meet with parents regularly, help the family understand the child’s experience, and support adjustments at home that make a real difference.
Trauma-Informed Approaches
When a child has been through abuse, loss, frightening events, or major change, we work with care for the nervous system and the timing of when and how to talk about what happened. Healing happens at the child’s pace, in their language, with support that respects what they’ve been through.
For older children with anxious or worry-based patterns, age-appropriate CBT can help them understand how thoughts and feelings work — and build skills to work with both. Often combined with play-based approaches for younger children.
Meet Some of Our Counsellors Who Work With Children
Nikita Eglinski
Lindsey McColl
Emily Collins
Sabrina Roach
Deni Fitzpatrick
Sasha Seliga
Webinars on This Topic
Frequently Asked Questions About Child Counselling
We work with children as young as 4 or 5 through play therapy approaches, and on up through later childhood and into adolescence. The right starting age depends on what’s bringing your child in and your therapist’s clinical judgment — the intake conversation will help clarify.
For younger children, parents are essential to the therapeutic process. Your therapist will update you to share what’s coming up in sessions (within appropriate limits for the child’s privacy), discuss what’s helping at home, and work with you on supporting your child between sessions.
Play therapy looks like play, but the therapist is trained to follow themes, notice what your child is working through, and guide the play toward healing. Children process and resolve experiences through play in ways they can’t always verbalize, which is why play therapy works as well as it does for kids.
It’s common for kids to be unsure or hesitant at first. We work to make the space welcoming and your child’s pace is respected. If your child has strong resistance, we can talk with you about how to approach it — sometimes a parent consultation first is the better starting place.
Our child therapists have experience working with children who have been through trauma — abuse, loss, frightening events, family disruption. We work in trauma-informed ways that respect your child’s pace and capacity, and we’ll talk with you about what to expect.