Matthew Lindgren
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Call 510-394-4686 for a FREE Phone Interview
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?
- Family Concerns and Oakland Child Therapy
- Oakland Child School and Social Concerns
- Child Behavioral Concerns in Oakland
- Oakland Child Psychological and Trauma Concerns
Does Your Child Need Therapy?
As an Oakland child therapist, I help children and parents with a wide variety of concerns, including:
- Family Concerns - such as divorce, grief and loss, adoption, and foster care
- School and Social Concerns - such as academic problems, bullying, separation anxiety and school refusal, and social anxiety or social phobia
- Behavioral Concerns - such as anger management, behavior problems, and parenting coaching
- Psychological and Trauma Concerns - such as depression and anxiety, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
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.
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 disturbing 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 helping 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 devastating 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