Through its Center for Children and Families, the National Institute of Relationship Enhancement offers a wide variety of individual and family counseling services for children and adolescents who are experiencing problems at home and school. Counseling services can be effective in helping children improve behavioral self-control (decrease tantrums and defiant behaviors), improve self-confidence and self-image, decrease depression and increase happiness, and improve parent-child and peer relationships. The Center for Children and Families also offers counseling services which are especially helpful for children experiencing grief, loss, or stressful transitions (i.e., death of parent or sibling, separation/divorce of parents, stepfamily life, move to new school, etc.).

NIRE offers individual counseling services both for children (ages 3-12) and for adolescents. For younger children, this may involve the use of Child-Centered Play Therapy, a research validated intervention that has been proven effective in helping children with a wide range of emotional challenges and/or behavioral issues. Parents are kept actively involved in the treatment of their child or adolescent by NIRE's staff through regularly scheduled parent sessions in which progress is reviewed and parent concerns can be addressed.

Filial Family Therapy is a research validated family intervention that also has been proven effective in helping children with a wide range of emotional challenges and/or behavioral issues. The Filial Family Therapy model involves teaching parents how to conduct therapeutic play sessions with their own children, and is generally appropriate for families with children between the ages of 3 and 12. Through the Filial Therapy process, parents not only learn ways of helping their children overcome current problems, but also learn child management techniques and other skills which can be used to prevent future problems from developing.

NIRE utilizes the research-based and proven effective Relationship Enhancement^® approach to family counseling with parents and adolescents. Counseling is generally short-term in nature and focuses not only on helping families resolve current family issues, but also empowers families by teaching family members skills for improving communication and developing the ability to cooperatively and effectively resolve family conflicts which develop in the future. Relationship Enhancement family counseling is generally appropriate for older children and adolescents.

NIRE offers both its Filial Family Therapy and Relationship Enhancement Family Counseling services in an intensive multi-hour format for families which are in crisis and need to resolve serious issues quickly, as well as in cases in which families are traveling from a great distance or cannot attend counseling sessions on a regular basis. Scheduling of "marathon" counseling sessions is flexible and weekend scheduling is frequently possible.

For more information about counseling services for children and adolescents offered by NIRE, please call us at (301) 986-1479.