Before We Send Our Kids to Therapy: An Invitation for Parents/Caregivers to Look Within
As an integrated therapist with over 25 years of experience working with children, teens, and families, I’ve sat in many rooms—classrooms, therapy offices, school communities, restorative justice circles, and community support spaces. I’ve worked as a teacher, facilitator, consultant in social-emotional and experiential learning, and as a conflict resolution and restorative justice practitioner. I am also a parent myself.
Across all of these roles, one truth continues to surface:
Children do not struggle in isolation.
And many children are responding and adapting intelligently to environments that were not designed with their nervous systems, learning styles, or sensory needs in mind.
Children Don’t Exist Outside of Their Environment
Kids are exquisitely and brilliantly sensitive. They adapt to stress, relationships, expectations, and emotional climates in ways that help them survive and stay connected. What adults often label as “symptoms” (aka anxiety, self-harming behaviors, negative self-talk, physical aggression, etc.) are frequently intelligent coping strategies.
Children want to be loved. They want to belong. And they will often “behave” in ways that reflect what they are experiencing internally and relationally, even when they don’t have words for it.
So when you see a child having a “moment”, meltdown, acting out, expressing - whatever you learned to call it…before asking, “What’s wrong with my child?” it can be far more useful to ask:
What is my child experiencing right now?
What is happening around them? (environment, world, stressor, etc)
What am I experiencing emotionally?
What conclusions am I drawing about my child—and where did those beliefs come from?
What anxieties do I hold about parenting, development, success, or failure?
What is happening within our family dynamic in this season of life?
These are not easy questions. They require honesty, buckets of self-compassion, and a willingness to look beneath the surface.
When Parental Fears/Anxiety Leads the Way
Many children are brought to therapy not because they want to go, but because a parent is understandably anxious - about social withdrawal, emotional expression, academic performance, neurodiversity, or perceived challenges.
A question I often encourage parents to explore gently with self-compassion and humility is:
Does my child want therapy—or do I want my child to go to therapy because I am scared, anxious, and fearful?
Neither answer is “bad.” Yet they matter.
Unaddressed parental/caregiver anxiety - aka unprocessed, expressed, or acknowledged feelings - has a way of moving quietly or sometimes quite loudly through a household. Children feel it. They respond to it. Sometimes they carry it. Sometimes they express it.
Before sending a child to therapy—especially if there has not been a clear traumatic event, major life change, or acute stressor—it can be profoundly helpful for caregivers and parents to seek support themselves first. This is not about blame. It’s about compassion. It is about collective responsibility and awareness. These ingredients can lead to feeling more empowered and connected to yourself first, and as a byproduct to your child(ren) and other relationships. It can also reduce the shame that comes up so often for parents in parenting.
Children are Not a Problem to Fix
Children adapt to what is around them. And this world is inherently unsafe. Yup. Promising safety is not realistic. As humans, we are exposed to suffering, trauma, and the complex paradoxical existence of human experience - surviving in capitalism, tending to our relationships and self-care, pressures from work and deadlines, systems that aren’t necessarily designed for creative spaciousness, taking time, and ease. And then we are expected to parent on top. No wonder everyone is anxious! As adults, we have formed coping mechanisms, defenses, and adaptations to our experiences. If you are a human being and you are connected to your feelings and experience empathy, your worries, anxieties, and fears make sense!
Children are new to figuring out how to “cope” and manage the intensity of the world. Children process what they are trying to understand about the world by “externalizing” - expressing outwardly, or “internalizing”- turning inward ot towards the self what they are feeling.
Notably, highly sensitive or neurodivergent children - whether autistic or ADHD, neurospicy and creative- are often referred to therapy because they do not conform to dominant developmental expectations. When this happens, we must pause and ask:
Am I trying to support my child—or trying to make them easier to manage?
Am I confusing difference (and brilliance !) with dysfunction?
What expectations am I holding that may not actually belong to my child?
Children adapt. They cope. They mask. They withdraw. They act out. These are not moral failures or behavioral problems—they are communications.
Before Asking “What’s Wrong With My Child…”
It can be transformative to first ask:
What is my child experiencing in their body, their nervous system, and their relationships?
What am I feeling about their development, differences, or struggles?
What fears am I carrying—about the future, about judgment, about what I imagine might happen?
What would connection look like right now, instead of correction?
Am I giving them space to express themselves or trying to “fix it”?
What might be getting in the way of truly seeing my child?
The Key is understanding before intervention.
When Therapy Is Helpful—and When Parents Look Within and Go First
If your child has experienced a traumatic event, a significant loss, a major life transition, or acute distress, therapy can be deeply supportive.
But in the absence of those factors, it’s worth considering whether the behaviors you’re worried about may be rooted in:
family stress (let’s get real - hard to be “regulated” with so much on most of our plates)
parental anxiety and/or urgency to “fix”
mismatched expectations
systemic pressure to conform, which can lead to comparison traps
a lack of attunement to your child’s unique way of being
In many cases, parents beginning therapy or parent coaching first can lead to profound shifts for the entire family.
Play-Based Therapy Is Relational, Not Performative
If a child does enter therapy—especially play-based therapy—consider this: children’s unresolved experiences will emerge, regardless of what adults think the “problem” is.
Play-based therapy is relational. Through play, children express fear, overwhelm, grief, joy, and vulnerability in ways that feel safer than words. Neurodivergent children often communicate most authentically this way.
If parents feel unsure about how to tolerate or respond to what surfaces, that doesn’t mean they’re doing something wrong. It means they may need support, too.
Parent coaching can help caregivers build the capacity to stay regulated, present, and connected—without needing to control the process.
Trusting Difference, Trusting the Process
Do not force your child into therapy without listening to them. And if therapy is part of the path, trust the therapist to work relationally and developmentally—not to “normalize” your child.
Healing and connection happen when children feel safe, seen, and accepted as they are. Sometimes we - the parents and caregivers - need to take a step back, give space, and learn how to tolerate the unknown, the feelings, and all the brilliance of children’s self expression - not matter what it may look like.
A Final Invitation
I am a parent, and this work has deeply transformed my experience parenting my child…and MYSELF! There are many times when I come across my own fears and anxieties, and I see my child respond to them. I do not have the answers. But you know who does? :
YOUR CHILD(REN).
If we as caregivers and parents slow down and observe, listen to understand…we will see clearly that children teach us what is off, what is happening, what needs tending to, comfort, or attention.
Before sending your child to therapy, consider slowing down and turning inward first.
Explore your unconscious fears. Your expectations. Your grief. Your hopes. Your anxiety. Your story.
When parents and caregivers do this work, children no longer have to carry what was never theirs to hold.
For parents wanting to explore this more deeply, here are my recommendations:
Dr. Shefali’s Parenting Map, which offers a powerful framework for examining parental consciousness, family dynamics, and how to create a home environment that supports children’s emotional worlds—particularly when engaging in play-based therapy.
The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind- By Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, & Listen So Kids Will Talk- By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
When we begin with ourselves, we don’t just help our children cope.
We make room for them to be fully who they are.
