Child and Family Psychology
The Pediatric Neurodevelopment Institute works with parents, teachers, and other caregivers to encourage and implement strategies and interventions based on a research-supported understanding of children with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges. Children with these challenges are often poorly understood and, as a result, are given therapeutic interventions that are not useful. If an intervention does not account for a child’s neurodevelopmental issues and the ways in which these problems impede a child’s ability to attend, handle frustration, and problem solve, then the intervention will not be useful in helping the child to succeed.
The Pediatric Neurodevelopment Institute provides clinical services, training, and consultation within a Family Psychology framework. The specialty of Family Psychology is based on systems theory, recognizing the dynamic reciprocal interaction between individual factors, interpersonal dynamics, and environmental factors in understanding human behavior. Family psychology focuses on relationships in families, couples, groups and organizations and the larger settings and contexts in which those relationships exist.
In the Pediatric Neurodevelopment Institute, we use the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) approach to help children, families, and schools work together to solve problems. The CPS approach was developed to assist parents and other caregivers in understanding children who have challenging emotional and behavioral difficulties. The CPS model recognizes that a child’s neurodevelopment impacts his or her ability to master important skills such as frustration tolerance and flexibility—skills that are essential to doing well in interactions with others. Using this empirically supported approach, clinicians at the Pediatric Neurodevelopment Institute teach adults and other caregivers, as well as children, the skills needed to address the problem and develop a solution that works for all parties.
