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A new school year means a new team of teachers and school professionals to partner with you in supporting your child. For caregivers with children experiencing mental health issues, communicating with the school team can be useful for ensuring everyone is on the same page. Teachers and school counselors often have insights to success and challenges kids experience at school that parents may not be aware of. Keeping the line of communication open and healthy is key. Here are some ways to engage with your kid’s school team about their mental health in a respectful and productive way.

Kids must go back to school every year once summer wraps, so why can it feel so hard for the whole family each time it comes around? Even though most of the year is taken up by school, the transition back can often feel challenging for kids and parents for a variety of reasons. For kids, going back to school means new teachers, new kids in their classes, and maybe even harder homework or more time spent away from family. For parents, it means managing a new routine, communicating with school professionals, and for some, getting back into a rigorous extracurricular activity schedule with their kids.

Families come to the Center for Effective Therapy with a wide range of backgrounds and varied levels of experience with mental health care. Some families and kids have had a long history of engaging with mental health services prior to coming to us, and others come to the Center without having sought out services before. No matter what your experiences with mental and behavioral health care have been like in the past, talking to your child about scheduling an appointment and engaging with an assessment or treatment can seem intimidating. Many caregivers worry about saying the wrong thing to introduce the idea to their kids, and about the reaction their child will have to the idea. To help set you up for success when you’re coming in for your initial appointment, here are some tips for communicating with your child about coming into the Center.

To get started with effective treatment, the first step is participating in a thorough, mental health assessment. Beginning your treatment journey with a mental health assessment can ensure that you and your treating clinician have a clear understanding of the challenges at hand, any applicable diagnoses, and what treatment pathways will be most effective for addressing symptoms.

Noticing that your child is beginning to struggle with their mental and behavioral health can be a hard moment for any caregiver. The challenges that your child is facing may have begun slowly and grown over time, or may have seemed to come up abruptly, with no easy cause or event to blame. It can be paralyzing to watch your child suffer, and to feel the impact on your own family and home, without knowing the next steps you need to take to secure effective support. When you’re faced with a moment like this, pursuing an evidence-based assessment is a good place to start.