How we can Help Your Child

We deeply believe in the power to change and the neuro-plasticity of the growing child’s mind. The key to unlocking change is developing awareness. We work with you and your child to help them become more aware of their thoughts, their behaviors and their feelings - in order to help them adapt and become more successful in all spheres of their life.
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Birth to Three

Parenthood in general can be hugely rewarding, and it can also be extremely challenging. Parenting a newborn is a major transition in life and can be particularly unsettling and stressful. Life stressors and circumstances related to parenting an infant or toddler can arise and impact a family’s stability and well-being. As parents embark on this new and exciting journey they can often also feel insecure about their parenting skills and lack of support.

Our Birth to Three services are uniquely designed to support new parents through this wonderful and stressful period and also to promote healthy development of their baby. We work with parents and their young children to facilitate secure attachments and help them with issues such as feeding, sleeping, toileting, temperament, and limit-setting. By targeting identified concerns that arise during the first years of life and helping parents develop skills and become more attuned to their baby, these services lower the stress of early parenthood and promote the child’s healthy development.

When families are struggling with postpartum depression or parenting a preterm infant they face even greater challenges and stress. Utilizing relational and neuro-developmental models of intervention, our services are aimed at addressing all challenges during this sensitive period in order to strengthen the parent-child bond, promote secure attachment, and support optimal development. We offer 6 session groups as well as private individualized sessions with you and your baby.

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Children

We are all familiar with the physical milestones that mark a child’s development. There are also certain emotional, social, and cognitive developmental milestones that a child needs to achieve in order to be successful in life. Because these milestones are less visible to the naked eye, they are more difficult to discern.

At times, children have difficulty learning how to regulate their mood, manage anxiety, control their impulses, tolerate frustration, and interact effectively with their peers. When a child struggles with any one of these social or emotional skills it can significantly interfere with their overall well-being and enjoyment of life. It can also take a toll on the child’s self-esteem, his/her relationship with parents, and the dynamics of the family.

At The Kahane Center we start by providing a thorough diagnostic consultation in order to understand what is going on and how we can best help. With targeted intervention from our team of licensed child psychologists with extensive training in the assessment and treatment of children, your child can then be helped to overcome their emotional and social challenges. We believe that in order to be effective it is of utmost importance to establish a supportive partnership with parents and, when needed, with schools as well. We utilize evidence-based treatment to help each child develop his/her own strengths.

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Adolescents

Adolescence is a time of both growth and opportunity as well as a time of stress for most children. Moving into the teenage years is a significant transition in your child’s development, and transitions are difficult for even the most well-adjusted child. Peer pressure, social media, substance abuse, issues of sexuality, internet safety, and academic pressures can be overwhelming for teenagers and their parents, who often feel ill-equipped to deal with these new challenges. Unfortunately, all of the disruptions around COVID have only magnified these stressors.  We believe in helping both parents and their teenagers become increasingly more fortified to navigate these challenges. By equipping teens with the skills that they need to better understand themselves and their surroundings, we help them learn to make good choices for themselves and thrive during this transitional time in their lives.

Services

The Kahane Center provides a wide range of services for children & adolescents both in person and via telehealth.

Bonding with Baby: Birth to Three Parent Groups

Are you the parent of an infant or toddler? Are you feeling stressed and overwhelmed from the demands of parenting a young child? Are you struggling with issues related to sleeping, feeding, and soothing? Our Bonding with Baby groups aim to provide support for all parents and give them the tools needed to promote healthy development. We aim to increase parents’ sense of competence and confidence. Our groups provide opportunities for parents to increase their knowledge about infant development and learn new ways of communicating and connecting with their babies. All families can benefit from additional support during this time of continuous change and transition during the early years of their child's life. Our Bonding with Baby groups meet once a week and address topics such as sleeping, feeding, development, relational difficulties, limit setting, and self-care. Our groups provide a unique opportunity for parents to gain guidance and support from experts in early childhood development and find support with other parents struggling with similar difficulties.

CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
The premise behind Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is that the way we think about things affects the way that we feel about them and that affects the way that we behave. Evidence-based CBT focuses on challenging and shifting cognitive distortions in order to help people develop more adaptive behaviors and improve their mental health.
DBT - Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is an evidenced-based treatment that helps people to develop new skills to manage painful emotions and decrease conflicts in relationships. It is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that incorporates mindfulness, distress tolerance, acceptance and interpersonal effectiveness to improve emotional well-being.
Executive Functioning - POWERS PROGRAM COACHING
It is often hard for children and adolescents to manage the many academic, social, and family responsibilities that they have. The recent COVID-19 Pandemic has added to these struggles. Children are expected to structure themselves and manage their time like never before. In addition, the pervasive presence of electronic devices has only compounded the problem. It has become increasingly important for many reasons, including mental health risks, for children to learn the skills they need to balance the use of electronics in their lives. Helping our children to develop their executive functioning skills (the ability to prioritize, plan, organize, time manage, etc) is essential in alleviating some of this stress and helping children navigate their world. At The Kahane Center we use a unique methodology, the POWERS Program, to help children grow these skills.

The POWERS program was developed by Dr. Tamar Kahane to help students learn to adapt to increasingly challenging environments. This innovative executive functioning and social-emotional learning curriculum has been piloted in schools and studied in collaboration with Columbia University. The methodology and philosophy of POWER is unique and targets the various aspects of executive functioning and SEL (social-emotional learning) that are crucial for successful performance in school, at home, and beyond. The POWERS (Prioritize, Organize, Work, Exercise, Regulate, Social Awareness) Program empowers children to better manage themselves. We offer virtual and in-person, one-on-one POWERS Coaching and as well as POWERS Parenting workshops throughout the year.
Executive Functioning - POWERS Parenting Groups

Led by Dr. Tamar Z. Kahane, the developer of the POWER program, this is a six-week group for parents via telehealth. The program targets specific skills and strategies to empower parents to support their children in growing their executive functioning and social-emotional skills. 

Family Therapy
Family therapy is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the family structure, improving communication and addressing dynamics within the family that don’t work well.
Group Psychotherapy
Group psychotherapy can be helpful throughout the lifespan. It provides individuals with a safe and supportive place to develop awareness of self and others and learn to listen and communicate effectively.

Neuropsychological Evaluations

The purpose of a neuropsychological evaluation is to gain a comprehensive understanding  of your child’s strengths and weaknesses. It includes a thorough assessment of cognitive, academic, neuropsychological, social, emotional, and behavioral functioning. 

The neuropsychological evaluation at The Kahane Center includes approximately 8-10 hours of testing done over 2 days with your child. It includes an initial consultation and final feedback session for the parents with one of our neuropsychologists and Dr. Kahane, as well as a comprehensive written report with the details of our findings, diagnostic impressions, and specific concrete recommendations for all spheres of your child’s life based on the evaluation.

On-Site School Consultation
On-site school consultation can be an important component in helping children thrive. We believe in integrating our care with schools. When indicated, we will observe the child in the classroom and at recess, and meet with the child’s teachers to discuss recommendations to facilitate academic, social, and emotional well-being and success in school.
Parenting
We believe in partnering with parents and empowering them with skills and strategies to support the work that we do with their children. Parenting sessions help provide guidance and tools to support parents and provide them with the resources they need to understand their children and promote their emotional, social and cognitive development.
Picky Eating
Picky eating can be a source of tremendous stress for you and your child. Many parents struggle to expand their children’s palate. At The Kahane Center, we use the metaphor of making new food friends to engage your child in the process of trying new foods. Over time, your child will be empowered to forge new relationships with the foods. We encourage children to take ownership of their food choices and develop positive associations with eating.
Play Therapy (new)
Play is a window into a child’s world. Through play we get to know your child and help them express their thoughts and feelings, organize their world, improve their ability to communicate and learn to problem solve.
Psychodynamic Oriented Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy focuses on the psychological roots of emotional challenges. It helps children learn to become more reflective and aware of themselves and others. Through this awareness children can learn to change behaviors and patterns that do not work well in their relationships.
Sleep Hygiene Consultation
There are many benefits to sleeping well at night. Getting a good night’s sleep contributes to our overall health and mental well-being. Research has demonstrated that adequate sleep improves performance, mood, and brain functioning. Healthy sleep habits begin in infancy. As a parent, helping your child develop healthy sleep habits from early infancy can set them up for sleep success in the future. We help parents to prioritize their children’s sleep hygiene skills throughout their lives.
Social Cognition Therapy Groups
As a pioneer in the field of social skills training, Dr. Kahane and her team provide multiple groups for children in preschool through high school. When she began these groups twenty-five years ago, they were a ground-breaking endeavor based upon her doctoral research to target and remediate the deficits of children who suffer from social skills problems by utilizing small group dynamics. It is now recognized that social skills difficulties are a significant piece of the problem for children that suffer from ADHD, ASD, anxiety and mood based disorders and a host of other issues that affect the quality of their social, school and family life. Dr. Kahane utilizes a unique approach to help children become more aware of their own interpersonal tendencies in order to target and teach the multitude of skills that comprise socialization. The group helps children develop the skills they need to function more adaptively and comfortably in their world. Group members are carefully matched based on appropriate criteria for optimal group dynamics. Groups are limited to a small size and run for 10-14 week sessions.
Teacher Training
At The Kahane Center we deeply believe in the importance of integrating social and emotional learning (SEL) and executive functioning (EF) into schools. On a regular basis we provide teacher training for educators of students of all ages to empower them with the knowledge, skills, tools and strategies that they need in order to provide a classroom environment that facilitates growth in these areas.
The Learning Center: Assessment and Academic Support
When children struggle to read, write, or do arithmetic, it takes an emotional toll on their self-esteem and causes anxiety. Often, these struggles may be the result of an undiagnosed learning disability. Accurate assessment is the key to beginning a process that leads to academic success.We provide full psycho-educational and neuropsychological evaluations with extensive, targeted, concrete strategies for children to use both at home and at school, and with outside professionals. Because we value the important role that school plays in every child’s life, we actively partner with schools, including on-site consultations, to promote growth. Additionally, we provide extensive remediation to children in order to help them learn how to best tap into their underlying strengths, and also work through the areas in which they struggle most. We aim to foster the child’s ability to know how they, as an individual, learn, in order to be a more successful self-directed learner.
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