Ann Arbor Services

Supporting the wellbeing of infants and young children (ages 0-3) within the context of a healthy attachment relationship is key to building a foundation for healthy social, emotional, and cognitive growth. Infant Mental Health (IMH) aims to promote the development of secure relationships between infants/young children and their parents and caregivers; support the healthy physical, emotional, and cognitive development of babies; and, strengthen the capacity for each partner in the parent-infant relationship to learn and grow together.

Therapists provide relationship-focused therapy, including: Relationship-focused parent child therapy, including Infant-Parent Psychotherapy (IPP), emotional support, developmental guidance, play therapy, and advocacy/referrals to outside supports.

IMH can support parents/guardians who:

• Feel stressed by the demands of early parenthood
• Are experiencing mental health concerns impacting parenting, including Postpartum depression and Postpartum Anxiety
• Have experienced trauma that makes parenting difficult
• Want support to address concerns about their child, including concerns that their child:
  • Is fussy or difficult to soothe
  • Appears unusually quiet or uninterested in the world around them, including the parent
  • Has difficulties eating or sleeping
  • Exhibits hyperactivity, aggression, or frequent temper tantrums
  • Experiences separation anxiety
  • Has a history of childhood trauma

• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Social anxiety
• Specific phobias

In Exposure Therapy, clients (children or adults) learn to face their fears. With the help of a caring therapist, the client confronts the thoughts, images or objects that makes him/her anxious in a gradual, step-by-step manner. By the end of therapy, the client should be able to function well, without avoiding what they previously feared.

In insight-oriented therapy, clients focus on understanding and expressing their feelings and exploring relationship issues- both past and present.

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For parents and caregivers, these presentations mobilize the family environment to support better functioning, thereby relieving pressures on the child and the family. These presentations offer information about growth and development, as well as provide practical help with management.

Examples of clinical topics we have made presentations on include:

• Resiliency
• Parenting
• Discipline
• Navigating Adolescence
• ADHD/executive function challenges
• Working memory
• Learning disabilities
• Autism spectrum disorders
• Giftedness
• Self-esteem
• Mood
• Anxiety management
• Differential diagnosis

If you are interested in having a clinical staff member from Arbor Psychology Group make a presentation at your school, organization or place of work, please contact us.

We are often asked what advocacy entails. The answer varies depending on the individual needs of the child, though there are several common components, including:

• Educating parents to understand what the legal rights and options for the child are
• Interpreting the student’s learning profile, including information from the school or private assessments
• Empowering parents to advocate for their child
• Observing the child in the classroom
• Discussing alternative school placements
• Attending school meetings
• Preparing parents for school meetings
• Developing intervention plans
• Assisting with IEP/504 plan development
• Understanding the instructional needs of gifted and twice-exceptional students

Our Educational Advocacy Services are based on the following core principles:

1. Every child has strengths and an intrinsic desire to succeed. Many children who struggle in school no longer have an identity as a learner and, as a result, fail to put forth sustained effort because they do not expect to succeed. Our strength-based advocacy services aim to build on your child’s assets and re-establish their underlying desire to succeed.
2. Collaboration and mutual understanding with schools is critical. Advocacy does not need to be an adversarial process! At its best, it is a creative and individualized process that brings the family and school together to help the student be successful in school and in life.
3. Children do best with a unified team behind them. In other words, don’t go it alone. Take advantage of those in the community who are able to help. Our staff believe in the importance of supporting the family during an advocacy process and are available to meet with you and/or the school to make sure your student is receiving the best educational support. We also have an extensive referral network of professionals who can assist with the care of your child.

If this seems overwhelming or daunting to do by yourself, know that you don’t have to go through the process alone. Our staff has dozens of years of experience and training, a detailed understanding of special education law and policies, and the willingness to help you navigate this territory from a point of strength and knowledge.

Arbor Psychology Group therapists respect and support healthy relationship development for people of all sexual orientations.  We are allies who provide culturally affirming care for those who identify as LGBTQ+ and those exploring their sexuality or gender identification.

Effective therapy will likely address many aspects of the relationship, although communication patterns tend to be the primary focus of marital or couples therapy. In most cases, neither partner is considered the “the problem” rather the relationship is viewed as cycle in which each party contributes positively and negatively to patterns that have developed over time. Evidence-based techniques are used to help both partners better regulate their emotions, develop greater awareness of relationship triggers, and experience a shared sense of emotional safety and connection. Each therapist will work with a couple to collaboratively establish treatment goals. With commitment to the process, couples can expect to become better listeners and communicators and experience a substantively improved sense of intimacy through using relationship skills that offer lasting success.

Frequency and Duration

Marital or couples therapy is often held once per week, but this may vary depending on your therapy goals and whether you are also attending individual sessions. Counseling is often short-term, though healing takes time and, ultimately, the therapy will proceed for as long as the couple is committed to seeing it through or until resolution is reached.

Types of Marital/Couples Therapy

There are a multitude of different approaches to relationship counseling. For example, Imago Therapy explores how we unconsciously choose partners who reflect the very things that we must work on ourselves. Emotionally-Focused Therapy encourages partners to examine how communication styles or attachment experiences present themselves in interactions. This allows partners to better understand the patterns that play out in their relationship and to better understand one another. The Gottman Method focuses on removing barriers to connection and heightening a sense of empathy and connection. Arbor Psychology Group’s couples therapists blend these different therapeutic approaches to best suit each unique couple.

Speech-Language services at Arbor Psychology Group includes assessment and evaluation, generating treatment goals, and therapy for a range of concerns including Articulation Disorders, Childhood Apraxia of Speech, Developmental Delays, Expressive and Receptive Language Disorders, Fluency Disorders (Stuttering), Language-based Learning Disabilities (e.g. Dyslexia), Nonverbal Learning Disability, Phonological Disorders, Pragmatic & Social Language Disorders, Reading Comprehension, and Written Language Disorders.

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