At What Age Can Kids Start CBT?

Research shows that CBT is effective for children, but children of what age? You might be questioning if CBT is appropriate for your 4 year-old, especially in comparison to play therapy since play is what your child’s daily functioning is surrounded by.

The great thing about CBT in St. Louis is that it can be adapted to fit the developmental and/or functional level of any age.

Since CBT is a therapeutic approach that focuses on challenging thoughts and feelings to ultimately change behaviors. Maladaptive thinking can look like anxiety, anxiety driven anger, and perfectionism. For young adults and adolescents, CBT therapists in St. Louis can use more abstract thinking and emotional processing approaches, but with young children (ages 3-5) you can use play, which really is their language, to help them change their thinking or learn more helpful ways of thinking.

This is why we love CBT, because it can be molded and tailored to fit the approach needed by the client. For adults and adolescents, it may fit the image of traditional talk therapy, whereas for young children it may mimic art or play therapy—or an approach that is more fun and engaging, as we know the one of the best predictors of a good outcome from therapy is that your child enjoys therapy.

Image Credit: Alvin Mahmudov @alvinmahmudov on Unsplash

We asked our TF-CBT therapist, Molly Schaffer, for an example of how she uses CBT with her younger clients and she said:

An example I think of for teaching young kids CBT skills is “super hero versus villain thoughts.” It is a way to teach recognition, while challenging and reframing negative thought patterns. With this, you can explore how villains are bad, unhelpful, destructive, negative, etc. while superheroes are helpful, good, positive, safe, etc. Then you can take different statements (or, thoughts) and put them in the category they fit—villain or superhero. “I am so stupid” is a villain thought because it does not help us and makes us feel bad. We can challenge that thought by finding a superhero thought to change it to.

Learn more about St. Louis counseling and our anxiety therapy approach here.

At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis we typically see young children, adolescents, and young adults from ages 4 to college students. We even have a certified art therapist and two TF-CBT therapists on staff so we can really bring specialized interventions and approaches as needed. We make sure to tailor our approach to you and/or your child so that you and/or your child really make progress, learn from therapy, and leave with tools that are helpful and can be used throughout life.

We’re ready and happy to help! During your phone consultation we will discuss details, answer questions, determine the therapist who is the best fit for you or your child, and can get you scheduled. Don’t worry, even if we aren’t the best fit, we have a robust referral team that we’d be happy to refer you to - we really just want to help you get the help you need, even if it means referring you out.

Curious to learn more about anxiety therapy for kids, teens, and college students in St. Louis? Wondering if you need to connect with a therapist in St. Louis? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis specializes in anxiety therapy for teens, kids, and college students, along with partnering with parents through parent coaching - basically therapy for parents here in St. Louis. We’re located in Clayton and work with clients throughout the St. Louis region. To schedule a free phone consultation, please use our contact page.