Play therapy tends to be helpful when a child is struggling to express feelings, manage big emotions, navigate transitions, or communicate what's going on inside. Some children come to therapy because of anxiety, aggression, rigidity, separation difficulties, family changes, school stress, grief, trauma, or challenges in relationships with peers or adults.

Young children naturally communicate through play more than through words — so play therapy gives them a developmentally appropriate way to process feelings, build emotional regulation, and work through hard experiences. If you're noticing patterns that feel confusing, intense, or hard to shift at home or school, therapy can offer your child a supportive space and give you more insight into what they may be trying to communicate.

Yes. I work with autistic and neurodivergent children and their families using a neurodiversity-affirming approach. That means I don't view autism as something to fix, and I'm not focused on making children appear more compliant or less autistic.

My work centers on understanding each child — their nervous system, communication style, sensory needs, play, relationships, strengths, and emotional experience. I often support children with emotional regulation, anxiety, rigidity, social stress, big feelings, and transitions, as well as the particular challenges that come from living in environments that don't always understand or accommodate neurodivergent kids.

It starts from the position that your child's brain is not broken. Autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurodivergence are not deficits to be corrected — they're different ways of experiencing and moving through the world. The goal of my work is not to make your child easier to manage or more palatable to environments that weren't built with them in mind.

In practice, that looks like a few things. I follow the child's lead in sessions rather than directing them toward predetermined goals. I don't use reward systems to shape behavior or push children to make eye contact, sit still, or perform social skills they find uncomfortable. I take sensory needs seriously and pay attention to what a child's behavior is communicating rather than trying to extinguish it.

It also means I try to be honest with parents about the difference between helping a child build genuine skills and coping capacity versus training them to mask. Masking, meaning suppressing natural behaviors to appear more neurotypical, tends to come at a real cost to a child's wellbeing, and that's not the direction I want to take the work.

What I am interested in is helping your child feel more regulated, more understood, and more themselves. And helping you understand them better too.

Yes — and I want to be clear about something: I don't work with children without also working directly with parents. This is intentional.

Children don't exist in isolation. The relationships, patterns, and environment at home have a direct impact on what a child can do in therapy and how lasting that progress is. When parents are engaged in the work — not just updated on it — change tends to happen faster and stick better. What we explore together can shift how you understand your child's behavior, how you respond in hard moments, and how connected you both feel day to day.

Parent consultation gives you space to better understand your child's behavior, emotional needs, development, and communication. These sessions might include reflecting on patterns at home or school, thinking through difficult moments, supporting co-regulation, making sense of play themes, navigating school concerns, or finding responses that are both compassionate and boundaried. The goal isn't to give you a script — it's to help you feel more grounded, connected, and effective in your relationship with your child.

It depends on who I'm working with. For parent consultation, yes — I offer telehealth to parents anywhere in California. For child therapy, it's not a one-size-fits-all answer. Some children do well in a virtual format and some don't, and that has a lot to do with age, attention, the nature of what we're working on, and what the child's home environment can support. If you're wondering whether telehealth might be a fit for your child, we can talk through it together during a consultation.

Honestly, it varies, and anyone who gives you a definitive answer upfront probably isn't being fully straight with you.

That said, my work tends to be longer-term and relational in nature. I'm less focused on symptom reduction over a short sprint and more interested in the deeper shifts that happen when a child feels genuinely safe, understood, and supported over time. That kind of change doesn't usually happen in eight sessions.

Some children come for a few months to work through a specific transition or stressor. Others are in therapy for a year or more, especially when the work involves deeper emotional regulation, trauma, or neurodevelopmental complexity. A lot depends on what you're coming in with, how the child responds, how things are going at home and school, and what goals feel most important to your family.

What I can say is that we check in regularly about how things are going, what's shifting, what still feels hard, and whether therapy is still the right fit at that moment. The goal is always to work toward a point where your child and family have what they need, not to keep kids in therapy longer than is useful.