love. safety. trust.

Oakland Child Therapist and Child Therapy

Matthew Lindgren is a child therapist who offers child therapy for help with divorce, grief and loss, foster care, social anxiety, parenting help, child abuse, and PTSD in Oakland.

 

Does Your Child Need Therapy?

As an Oakland child therapist, I help children and parents with a wide variety of concerns, including:


While it is normal for children to occasionally encounter emotional and psychological problems as they grow, sometimes children do need some assistance.

As a parent or caregiver, you can probably tell if your child requires help if he or she is showing behavior that is affecting the way your child performs in school, at home, or in his or her relationships with family and friends.

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Family Concerns and Oakland Child Therapy

Changes to a child's family account for most of the reasons why I treat children. Children depend on stability and nurturing from their families in order to grow and thrive.

Oakland Divorce and Child Therapy

Divorce can be quite disturing to a child, but does not necessarily need to be. Research shows that children can be quite resilient to divorce if parents can maintain amicable relations and create a stable environment across both households with consistent rules, rewards, and punishment.

Unfortunately, it seems more common that parents are unable to set aside their differences in the interest of their children. When this happens, it is common to see children's develop symptoms from the stress and strain of being placed in the middle. While therapy can definitely assist children in these situations, parents need to recognize that the most effective way of heping their child is to cooperate with each other on parenting tasks and to get along. This can be particularly difficult when one parent is a perpetrator of domestic violence or child abuse and when a parent may reasonably fear for her safety or that of her children.

Although most divorce situations I encounter are challenging, I am happy to help your child adjust to this situation as well as to help you as a parent through the challenging transition through my Oakland therapy practice.

Grief, Loss, and Bereavement and Child Therapy

Death and loss can be devasting to a child's sense of the world and his or her future, as can the loss of a parent to incarceration. It is important that a child work through the loss of an important person by strengthening a relationship to a caregiver.

I work extensively with children in Oakland who have lost a parent or caregiver using play therapy and conjoint family therapy techniques. I also find that it can be extremely helpful for an entire family to participate in family therapy when working through grief and loss, so that the family can grow together and people can draw strength from each other.

Oakland Adoption & Foster Care

Children involved with the foster care system go through a tremendous amount of stress. More than any other factor, children require a stable and safe relationship with a caregiver who will be part of their entire life in order to grow and heal from trauma and abuse. Children in the foster care system are deprived of these consistent relationships with adults, and are forced to deal with the affects of the trauma leading toward their involvement in the foster care system alone, which may include physical, emotional, sexual, and verbal abuse as well as abandonment and neglect, in addition to the trauma of being separated from their parents and caregivers.

As a result, it is very common for children in foster care to show severe mental health problems that overwhelm foster parents, adoptive parents, or parents and caregivers with whom they reunify. It is extremely important that children involved in foster care and their caregivers work with an experienced attachment and child trauma therapist like myself. I am happy to work with Oakland children in foster care to help them through toward reunification, ongoing foster care, as well as permanent placement with adoptive parents.

I am able to fund my work with kids in foster care through the Victim Compensation Program, which pays for therapy for kids involved with the foster care system.

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Oakland Child School and Social Concerns

Teachers are often able to catch psychological and behavioral concerns with children because they spend so much time with a child and see how they related to their peers. I am happy to help Oakland children with the following school and social concerns.

Oakland Academic Problems and Child Therapy

Often when children are having mental health problems, it shows up in their academic work. I work closely with Oakland teachers, school psychologists, pediatricians, and other professionals to diagnose and refer out for evaluation to determine if your child has a learning disorder or medical problem.

If your child's academic performance is related to a mental health concern, I work with both parents and teachers to get your child on the right track. Often academic performance can improve by directly treating any underlying psychological concern, such as depression, anxiety, or trauma. I can help kids who are shy or who have social anxiety to relate better with others by practicing social skills. I help parents learn to design and implement consistent and positive behavorial plans to encourage academic achievement and better behavior.

I have experience helping Oakland parents advocate for individualized educational plans (IEPs) to help children with mental health problems that affect academic performance.

Bullying

Bullying is a huge concern for kids in Oakland, both those who bully as well as those who are victims of bullies. If your child is bullying other kids, I can help him or her develop self-esteem and confidence to feel safe around other kids, as well as to offer both you and your child behavioral interventions to teach frustration tolerance and anger management.

If your child is bullied, I can help him or her learn how to handle antagonistic behavior and nurture a sense of self esteem.

Oakland Separation Anxiety and School Refusal

Most children show some symptoms of separation anxiety at some time. You can tell if your child's symptoms may require therapy by checking in with his or her teacher to see if their behavior is consistent with other children of the same age, as well as by seeing if the separation anxiety is seriously affecting your child's social and academic functioning.

Quite often, though certainly not always, children will refuse to attend school if their has been a great deal of trauma in their lives and they feel much more safe at home. Sometimes they will do so as part of having social anxiety or social phobia. School refusal may also happen as a result of overly permissive or inconsistent parenting in which a child has little consistent structure. No matter what the underlying cause, I am happy to work with you and your child in Oakland to be able to be separate and attend school.

Child Social Anxiety/Phobia and Shyness

All children go through periods of shyness and insecurity as part of growing up. If social anxiey has become a problem for you child, you may want to seek help from a therapist like myself who can help with this concern.

I am able to help kids with social anxiety, social phobia, and shyness in Oakland through interventions that include play therapy, art therapy, family therapy, narrative EMDR therapy, and CBT.

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Child Behavioral Concerns in Oakland

Parents often bring children to therapy because of behavioral problems, such as anger, disruptive actions, and rule breaking.

Oakland Anger Management for Children

Children can show problems with anger for a wide variety of reasons. Often children may not even know why they are so angry. A child may be angry because they have suffered abuse, neglect, or abandonment. They may be angry because they have found that it helps them get what they want from parents, siblings, or peers. A child may be angry that his or her parents are no longer together.

I help Oakland kids who are angry by offering them the respect and safety they need to explore any underlying causes of their anger, as well as by coaching children and parents on behavioral interventions geared toward learning other ways of expressing anger and frustration.

Child Behavior Problems & Parenting Coaching in Oakland

Behavioral problems are very common in Oakland children who have been abused or neglected, as well as with children whose parents implement inconsistent rules, rewards and consequences.

With children who have been abused, I focus on strengthening their relationship with safe and loving caregivers as a way of directly addressing their rage and confusion contibuting to defiant and oppositional behavors. Children who have grown up around abusive adults who do not themselves follow consistent rules, often do not feel compelled to follow anybody else's rules but their own. As such children learn to bond with safe, consisten caregivers, they will hopefully learn that it is safe to accept direction from adults. I help such children and caregivers by focusing on attachment oriented family play therapy.

With children who live in families with inconsistent parenting, I tend to focus more of my attention on helping parents implement behavioral plans and parenting techniques to help shape behavior.

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Oakland Child Psychological and Trauma Concerns

As a child therapist who specializes in anxiety, trauma, and PTSD, I am able to help children with a variety of psychological concerns.

Depression and Anxiety in Oakland Children

Children often express depression and anxiety differently than adults. Sometimes depressed kids will appear angry, or they will show a lack of interest in common activities. Nightmares and bed wetting can be common signs that your child is dealing with a great deal of anxiety.

I help Oakland kids who are depressed or anxious with a variety of techniques including play therapy, art therapy, family therapy, and EMDR.

Oakland Child Therapy for Physical, Sexual, Emotional Abuse, & PTSD

I have extensive experience helping Oakland children who have been victims of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as for children who have witnessed domestic violence. I also work extensively with children who have witnessed or experienced violent events - such as homicide or gang violence - that result in post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

I help abused kids with a variety of techniques including play therapy, art therapy, family therapy, and EMDR.

I am able to recieve funding for much of my work with abused and traumatized children through the Victim Compensation Program.

Call 415-820-1487 for a free phone consultation.

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