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Magination Press is sponsored by the American Psychological Association.  They have complied a list of child-friendly books to help kids through a variety of psychological issues.  Bibiotherapy (a.k.a., therapy through books) is an excellent way for parents to help their children identify with key issues that they may be dealing with, but do not want to talk about directly.  Please take a look and browse through the catalog, it covers a range of concerns from anxiety, depression, self-control, grief, loss, and much more. Click on link below. I hope it's helpful to you or someone you know.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends 9-11 hours of sleep for children ages 6-13 years old and 8-10 hours per night for individuals ages 14-17 years old. This seems like an ever more daunting task as we live in a society with increasing external pressures to maintain high GPA's, along with extracurriculars like sports, band, and leadership activities. While the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued statements indicating that schools should start no earlier than 8:30am, these recommendations have been largely ignored as evidenced by local high school start times as early as 7:20 am. However, it is important for parents to recognize how much sleep plays a role in mental health and how some conditions are more prone to having problems with insomnia. For example, conditions such as depression and anxiety are highly correlated with insomnia. Additionally, up to 73% of children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) endorse sleep issues pertaining to initiating and maintaining sleep. There are a variety of interventions that can be utilized to address insomnia. The first is providing education about establishing good sleep patterns, such as keeping electronics out of the bedroom at night, no televisions, iPads etc. to elicit unecessary light. Electronics should be put away at least an hour before bed. Bedtime should be consistent at the same time each weeknight. Weekends for most adolescents include the chance to sleep in, but parents need to set limits on this as well. Letting your adolescent sleep all day actually does more harm than good. It interferes with his/her natural circadian rythym or natural sleep clock and can make insomia worse. Once good sleep hygiene practices are in place, if this does not improve insomnia symptoms, other interventions can be considered such as melatonin, or other sleep medications that require an evaluation from your child's pediatrician or child psychologist. Psychologists can also work with your child/adolescent on an evidenced-based intervention known as CBT-I, which involves short sessions (4-8) with a trained professional to learn, implement, and follow up on techniques such as sleep restriction, relaxation and relapse prevention, and further education about the sleep process. If your child/adolescent is having ongoing difficulties with insomnia then you may want to consider how a psychologist can help get things back on the right track. Resources: Insomnia in Adolescence Innessa Donskoy and Darius Loghmanee, 2018

www.katyteenandfamilycounseling.com TEENAGERS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH The teen years can be a difficult time for a teen. It is a time when teens are trying to figure out who they are as an individual. Friends take on a whole new meaning and become some of the most important people in their lives. Navigating the social scene during teens years can be tricky causing distressing emotions, along with the increase in hormones that are raging in the body. Add on a global pandemic that has turned the world upside down and it is a recipe for a roller coaster of emotions. So, how as parents can we tell when it's time to take our teen to see a psychologist? Below are some tips that parents can keep in mind when determining whether it is common teen behavior or when it might be time for your teen to see a psychologist: Change in Personality Despite the ups and downs during the teen years, a teen's personality is fairly consistent. For example: If you have a teen who is normally a very social person and they start to withdraw from family and friends, this is a sign that there may be a more serious problem. You have a teen who usually is very calm, cool, and collected start getting upset over seemingly small things. Your teen may start arguing more, becoming irritable, or having anger outbursts. Your teen is a happy teen but you've noticed that their mood has declined and that it doesn't seem to improve. They talk less, spend more time in their room, and don't hang out with their friends as much. You may have a teen who seems confident in themselves start to worry excessively over small things in their life. They voice these concerns or worries and despite your best efforts to help them not to worry, they can't get these worries off their mind. Change in Friends If you notice a change in the friends that your teen is hanging out with, this may be a sign of something more serious. If your teen starts hanging out with friends who drink, smoke marijuana, or other drug use, this is a serious indicator or a deeper problem. The best time to intervene and seek professional help through teen therapy with one of our psychologists is when this shift first occurs. When parents intervene early, we tend to see better outcomes among our teens. Drop in Grades You've noticed your teen struggling to focus and concentrate. Their grades are starting to slip. After a semester or two you can see that nothing seems to be changing. This can be a time to seek out professional help. A drop in grades when there does not seem to be a clear explanation is a general indicator of something more serious. Anytime you observe a shift in your teen’s personality, it could be a sign that it's time to seek consultation from a psychologist. At Katy Psychological Services, PLLC, we can provide the psychological testing for your teen to determine if your teen may benefit from individual and/or family therapy. Benefits of Individual Teen Therapy In individual therapy teens are able to have a neutral, non-judgmental, psychologist to talk to about their struggles. When teens don't open up to their parents, it is usually for the following reasons: They don't want to add stress to their parent’s lives. The teen themselves may not fully understand what they are experiencing. If one is to struggle with depression or other emotional struggles, this usually emerges during the teen years. This means that this may be the first time your teen is experiencing these emotional struggles at this level. They simply may not have the words to describe what they are experiencing. Individual therapy can help in the following ways: Teen therapy provides an opportunity for the teen to explore their inner experience. They have a professional psychologist to help put words to it. Once the teen makes meaning out of their inner experience, they can start the healing journey towards managing that experience. They can talk about topics that they feel they don't want to talk publicly about. They have someone to talk to about those things that they may not be ready to talk to their parents about. Individual therapy with a psychologist can help them develop the skills to be able to talk to their parents about their inner experience. Teen therapy can help a teen learn the skills and tools to tackle the complicated emotions they may be experiencing. Teen therapy provides a trained, professional psychologist to partner with the teen and family. In partnering with a psychologist for teen therapy, you have a highly trained and experienced guide that can help your teen navigate the complex and tricky adolescent experience. Individual therapy can be provided by a licensed psychologist at Katy Psychological Services. Benefits of Family Therapy Working with teens in therapy is different than working with adults in therapy. As adults, depending on the reason we are attending therapy, we can attend once a week and not involve anyone else in the therapy process. Teens are in a stage of development where they are gaining independence but still need the support of their parents. They aren't quite there yet to be fully on their own. Teens are part of a family system that influences their success. A teen's chances of success increase when there is family involvement in the teen's therapy journey. Also, the teen tends to sustain long term changes if the family comes along during the healing journey. Family therapy can help a teen in some of the following ways: The teen does not feel like the 'problem' when the family participates in therapy. It demonstrates to the teen that this is not a 'teen problem' but a 'family problem' and we are all in this together. The family can learn the skills and tools that the teen is learning from their psychologist in individual teen therapy. The family can help support the use of those tools between individual therapy sessions with their psychologist. Family members can learn ways they may be able to interact differently with their teen to help speed up improvements. The teen can learn how to talk to their parents about what they are experiencing. The teen can learn how to draw on the family for support going forward. Family therapy can be a powerful change agent in the teen's therapeutic journey with their psychologist. When the teen knows that they are not alone in this journey, they feel a sense of support that propels them in teen therapy. When parents are also willing to take a look at what they can do differently to support change in the teen and family, we have all the ingredients of success. Family Therapy can be provided at Katy Teen and Family Counseling, PLLC. About the Author Jason Drake is a Licensed Clinical Worker-Supervisor (LCSW-S). He is the owner of Katy Teen & Family Counseling, PLLC, a group practice specializing in teen therapy and family counseling. Jason has provided therapy to teens and families since 2003. Through his expertise, he helps teens who struggle with depression , anxiety , panic attacks , trauma , ADHD/ADD , and PTSD . He works with talented teen athletes who have experience mental blocks. Gifted students have unique challenges that Jason understands well. He works to improve both teen athlete's and gifted student's peak performance through neurofeedback and EMDR. Jason uses CBT , EMDR , Neurofeedback , FFT , and Motivational Interviewing . Katy Teen & Family Counseling, PLLC only work with teens and families which allows us to focus on what teens and families of today need. Resolving the struggles of today can assure a more successful tomorrow. Proudly serving Katy, TX and Houston.

Mindfulness has been getting a lot of mainstream attention, but what exactly is it? Mindfulness is about taking time out of your day (and this can be one minute to thirty minutes) to just stop what you are doing and be present in your current surroundings. It can be meditation, that is also a form of mindfulness, but it does not have to be. Think of mindfulness as taking a brief pause in your day. Why is this helpful? Well, there tons of research that support the efficacy of mindfulness to decrease anxiety, depression, and one's overall level of stress. Not sure it works or want to know more about it? Well, then try it for yourself. It is helpful to use guided exercises (think of a narrator in a story) that walks you through each step. There are things like "progressive muscle relaxation" which means the narrator walks you through tightening and then relaxing certain muscles in your body. There is "belly breathing" which teaches you to pay attention and focus only on your breathing to take meaningful and intentional breaths. Most people don't realize that they are doing breathing the wrong way. Truly helpful stress relieving belly breathing teaches you how to breath in and out through your stomach, instead of your chest (which is what most people do and find it not very effective). The last one I want to mention is called "guided imagery", which is a narrator that sets the scene usually accompanied by soothing music and takes you to a peaceful, quiet place (for me I think sandy white beaches in Hawaii). Due to our great technology, there are many ways that you can start to practice mindfulness exercises. You can search You Tube for words such as "belly breathing", "progressive muscle relaxation", or "guided imagery". There are also apps on your phone, my favorite is the Calm app. (The downside is that it is a paid subscription, around $45 a year if you happen to get their sale for 40% off. Another way to think of it is that it is way less than a therapy session for a whole year of stress relief at your fingertips when you need it). I'm also including a link from the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance DBSA) below. These are for kids, but can easily apply to adults as well. These mindfulness tips are a great way to compliment but not substitute regular therapy sessions with a psychologist. I hope you found this explanation helpful, and I encourage you to give it a try. You'd be surprised how doing something so small can actually make a difference in reducing stress.

I came across this flyer and wanted to pass it along! It is a 6-week virtual training for parents who have young children with autism. Incredible Years is a well-established and efficacious program. Please see the attached flyer and pass it along to anyone who may benefit from this FREE opportunity!

With the start of the new school year quickly approaching, I wanted to share with you a website that has helpful guided meditations that can be downloaded for free. Why is using guided meditations important? Children and teens (and let's face it, us too!) are inundated with many stressors and responsibilities trying to successfully balance school and extracurricular activities. I'm seeing in my practice, many teens who are trying to juggle too many balls at once. While they may be "able" to do it, I'm also seeing it is taking a toll on their mental health. They often have lack of sleep, anxiety, and a depressed or irritable mood as a result. While guided meditations are not the only fix, it is a simple, evidenced-based tool free to use that can be one thing to focus on daily to help reset the mind/body to help reduce stress load. If you or your teen could benefit from additional resources to get a better handle on things, consider talking to one of us here at Katy Psychological Services, PLLC, we are here to help. For kids: Mindful Kids--You Tube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwHO92Tu97JWHzl3RmadNug Guided Meditation for Children | Your Secret Treehouse | Relaxation for Kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWOHcGF1Tmc For teens: New Horizon - Meditation & Sleep Stories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgVIslcSeo Relaxing Sleep Music • Deep Sleeping Music, Relaxing Music, Stress Relief, Meditation Music (Flying) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZYbU82GVz4 Apps to download: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/new-horizon-kids-meditation/id1457179117#? https://www.moshikids.com/ For more research-based information on mindfulness: https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness/meditation

Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a persistent pattern of anger, irritability, arguing, and defiance toward authority figures (usually parents but it can also include other adults in the child/teen's life). Treatment for ODD involves meeting with a psychologist trained to treat the disorder and it involves teaching parents to better manage the very challenging behaviors. I'd like to pass along a few helpful tips: ODD behavior thrives on negativity. Emotions are at the center of the child/teen's behavior, and they control him over logical thinking. This usually means that the child/teen will lose perspective and even spit him/herself to win any control battle with the parent. ODD children will sabotage a situation to spoil the parent's hopes that things will turn out positively. Successful treatment of ODD involves the teen to experience failure, whether that be making bad choices, or even failing school. Many parents are not comfortable with this, and try to rescue their child so this does not happen. However, natural consequences will fall into place (e.g., failing school means more pressure from the school administration rather than the parents). Parents then feel that they need to give more consequences, which the teen resents and rebels against even more. Parents should accept short-term failure to diffuse the spoiling tactics of the ODD teenager in the long-run. It is important to keep in perspective that most ODD teens turn out just fine in adulthood. It is impossible to resolve clinical levels of ODD without detaching emotionally and remaining detached while the the teen is in pain. (This is particularly difficult for mothers.) In essence, during this period, you can’t show him that you love him and this is hard (but temporary!) Solutions: Remain neutral, set firm expectations of what is expected (and this should be just the minimum for now) and outline in advance what consequences will be imposed if the teen does not follow them. Then, disengage and do not show your emotions, take personal timeouts when needed. You stay true to these rules, even if your teen does not follow the rules. Testing your limits and patience is to be expected. Do not use aggression (verbal or physical) to address your teen’s behavior or get him to comply. If you do, you just added to the ODD fire and the negative cycle continues. It sounds too basic to have an impact, but parents must change the dynamic of interactions so that it shifts from telling him what to do, what he hasn’t done, what he should do, to more neutral times when you are trying to connect with your child. (This is very tough to do and it will try your patience immensely. A great opportunity to try this is when you are in the car). Neutral interactions should not be topics related to school, family problems or conflicts, or getting him to express his emotions. They should be trying to relate by asking him about his preferred interests (e.g., show interest in learning about video games, movies, music, etc. your teen likes) or small talk conversations about upcoming events (in general, not related to him). These interactions are so important to creating an invisible shift in the ODD teen. Parents should strive for 8 positive or neutral comments/interactions for every 1 directive comment getting him to do something. This will not be easy. The ODD teen is fully driven by his emotional brain, not his rational brain. The emotional brain is stubborn overrides the teen’s rational brain. This is why it is important to recognize the two dichotomies in the teen, and try your best to speak to your child from the emotional brain. This does not mean try to get him to speak about how he is feeling, this means to empathize that he’d love a world where he could do as he pleases, wants no boundaries, and/or thinks adults don’t know anything. These solutions are by no means easy to implement. If you have an ODD child/teen and want things to reverse course and improve, contact our office for an appointment with one of our psychologists-we will start to guide you on your way to improved family functioning so you can start to enjoy your child again. At Katy Psychological Services, PLLC we specialize in treatment of ODD. It involves both the individual teen but also includes parents in the process.

I remind parents of children and adolescents in my practice that you must set limits on a child's access to technology early on in order to prevent bigger battles down the road. When you decide it is the right time to introduce technology (iPad, iPhone, etc.) to your child(ren), it is important to set the clear boundary that having this access is a privilege, not a right. This means that they agree to use electronics under your supervision, which means having access to their passwords and having the parental right to check their devices at any time. There is a lot of bad content on the Internet and it's way too easy to gain access to subjects or content that is not yet appropriate for their viewing (even accidentally). Once it is seen, in cannot be "unseen". Just as you would not let your child go out late at night and wander the streets, you would not let your child go and surf the Internet unsupervised. Remember that by setting up the terms early on, your child learns limits are part of the terms of having the privilege of using electronics. If they don't agree or they push back, listen and see if there is some room for compromise. If you can't agree, then you as the parent, have the right to withhold this privilege until they can understand that you as the parent have the responsibility to ensure that what they are engaged in is appropriate and safe. If you'd like more information on setting parental controls, I invite you to check out this link: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/parents-ultimate-guide-to-parental-controls If you haven't set these limits early on and now have a battle on your hands, call us for help to re-establish healthy boundaries for using electronic devices.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is an evidenced-based treatment for anxiety. As psychologists, we work with kids to help them understand what is healthy anxiety and what is just too much. We teach them how our bodies react (e.g., physiological cues) to too much stress and anxiety, and we teach concrete skills to use on how to deescalate anxious thoughts that often seem to snowball into bigger problems than they need to be. One research based kid friendly curriculum is called Coping Cat. We use this program with children who are highly anxious to help them identify what they are feeling frightened about, what bad things they are expecting to happen, what attitudes and actions they can use to help, and then trying it out and reviewing how well it worked. We also teach parents these skills so that they can help guide their child when an anxious moment is happening so that they can put this plan in action. A good parent resource is by Tamar Chansky, Ph.D., she has a book called "Freeing Your Child from Anxiety". In this book, she teaches parents how to avoid common mistakes and how to help their children in anxious situations or when they go down a spiral of doom and gloom anticipating the worst in an upcoming event. One strategy is to not to provide reassurance (e.g., "Oh, it won't be so bad, or "You'll be okay"), but rather empathize with them in the moment so that they are feeling heard (e..g, "Wow, seems like worry brain really has you wound up about this today, that must feel awful"). If you'd like to learn more helpful tips and strategies, or if your child would benefit from a therapist to get a good handle on that worry brain, feel free to schedule a consult with us. Untreated anxiety will only get worse, your child will not likely grow out of it. So, let's treat it now.

The ADOS-2 stands for Autism Diagnostic Observation System-Second Edition. It is a standardized, activity-based assessment used for diagnosing autism spectrum disorders. It has five different modules broken down by age and language ability. A young toddler that is 18 months, would take the toddler module. This consists of play based activities designed to better assess the child's behavior in a play based setting. For young children, the parents participate and they are present during testing. The adolescent/adult module is for individuals with fluent speech, and the focus is on assessing nonverbal gestures, quality of back and forth conversations, and observing any repetitive behaviors. Testing usually lasts one hour. It is only one part of a full assessment for autism, but it is considered the gold standard in the field, so we always include it as part of our testing. Please call us if you have any specific questions we can answer about an autism spectrum disorder assessment, we're happy to help.

Here are some helpful links: Adult tips for stress/anxiety https://www.virusanxiety.com/take-care  A helpful video to share with kids from BrainPop: https://www.brainpop.com/health/diseasesinjuriesandconditions/coronavirus/ For individuals and kids who want to try/enjoy guided imagery and mindfulness). The CALM app is usually a paid subscription, but it is offering a lot of free access to its content right now: https://blog.calm.com/take-a-deep-breath Wide Open School features  a free collection of the best learning experiences and activities for kids, organized by grade band and subject (PK-12th grade). You will also find daily schedules with creative breaks and recommendations to keep kids engaged and exploring, one day (or one hour) at a time. https://wideopenschool.org/ We are here for you! 832-913-8747