Christopher Vaught, NCC, LMHC

Thank you for visiting. Today you are one step closer to helping your family achieve the happiness and success they deserve.

As a cognitive-behavioral therapist, my work with children and adolescents is focused on examining the relationships between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Often, the patterns of thinking that exist are leading them to self-destructive or maladaptive behaviors. In other cases, their choice of behaviors is one that is made due to the reinforcement that behavior receives. In either case, we can work together to help your child or adolescent change those thought patterns or choose healthier and more acceptable behaviors.

Most of my work with children and adolescents is in the form of play therapy. I have a fully stocked play therapy room adjacent to my office featuring art supplies, sandtrays, dollhouses, puppets, books, and many other items of play. It is one of the only dedicated play therapy rooms in the tri-state area.

What is play therapy, you ask? Good question. It has long since been recognized that play is the "talk" of young people. While it is easy for me to ask an adult, "What are your goals?", "What would you like that you are not getting", "If you could change anything, what would it be?", it is much harder to do so with a young person. The fascinating part is, regardless of age, children have those answers! They know what they have, what they want, where they desire to be, what changes they would like to see. The problem for them is verbalizing that--putting words to it. Play therapy is a remarkable medium for therapy with children and adolescents.

Often, when working with older adolescents and teenagers, traditional "talk therapy" works just fine and we can stick with that. The same goes for adults. In addition to working with children and adolescents, I also work with siblings and parents of a child with a diagnosis. The stress and anxiety involved in being a support system to someone who is struggling is often discounted. I am here to help with that.