Quick answer: For younger, primary-aged children, the most effective help is usually given through the parent rather than to the child directly. Research shows that when parents are coached to respond differently to a child’s worry, the child improves as much as they would in one-to-one therapy — with less stigma and longer-lasting results. That’s why my work with under-12s focuses on supporting you, the parent.
If you’ve spent any time searching for child therapy in the UK — typing “child anxiety therapist near me” into your phone at 11pm after another hard bedtime — you’ve probably noticed something about my practice that sets it apart. When it comes to younger, primary-aged children, I don’t work with the child directly. I work with you, the parent.
It’s one of the first things parents ask me about on our free call, usually with a worried frown: “But it’s my child who’s struggling — shouldn’t they be the one in the room?” It’s a completely fair question, and the answer sits at the heart of how I practise. So I want to explain it properly here — the reasoning, the research, and what it actually looks like — so you can decide whether this approach is right for your family.
The short answer
For a young child, you are the therapy. You are the safe base they return to, the voice that calms their nervous system, the person who is there at the school gate, at the dinner table, and in the dark at 3am. A child psychologist who sees your seven-year-old for fifty minutes once a week is a kind stranger in an unfamiliar room. You are there for the other 9,990 minutes.
So rather than asking a small child to do the difficult, abstract work of “talking through their feelings” with someone they barely know, I coach and support the people who hold their world together. That tends to produce change that is faster, gentler, and — most importantly — lasts.
What the research actually says
This isn’t a personal quirk or a way of avoiding work with children. It reflects what the evidence base has shown for years, and it’s why so much modern child mental-health practice has moved in this direction.
A major 2024 trial led by Professor Cathy Creswell at the University of Oxford, involving more than 400 children aged 5–12, found that parent-led CBT was just as effective as standard, in-person therapy delivered directly to the child — while needing roughly half the therapist time. In other words, supporting the parent didn’t water the treatment down; it made help more effective and more accessible.
This approach now underpins the widely used programme “Helping Your Child with Fears and Worries” (Creswell & Willetts), a parent-delivered CBT model for children aged 7–12 that is recommended within NHS services precisely because the results hold up over time. It matters, too, because access is a real problem: research in England has found that only a tiny fraction of children with an anxiety disorder ever receive evidence-based CBT. Equipping parents is one of the most reliable ways to close that gap.
There are good developmental reasons behind all this. A young child’s brain is still building the capacity for the kind of self-reflection that talking therapy relies on. Ask an adult “what were you thinking when you felt anxious?” and they can usually have a go. Ask a six-year-old the same question and you’ll often get a shrug, a wriggle, or a request for a snack — not because they’re being difficult, but because that machinery simply isn’t online yet. Their emotional regulation is co-regulation: it happens with and through their attachment figures, which is to say, through you.
There’s also the matter of where change actually needs to happen. A child’s anxiety or challenging behaviour almost never lives in the child alone. It lives in the patterns of the home — the bedtime routine, the morning rush, the way big feelings are met, the things that quietly get rewarded or avoided. You can’t shift a pattern by removing one person from it for an hour a week. You shift it by working with the people inside it every day. This is why I draw on a family and systems lens alongside CBT — because the family is the system the child grows within.
Young children don’t “do therapy” the way we imagine
There’s a picture many of us carry of what child therapy looks like: a small person on a sofa, thoughtfully describing their inner life. In reality, that’s rarely how it goes with primary-aged children, and when it’s pushed too soon it can backfire.
A child sent off to “see someone about their behaviour” can quickly absorb the message that they are the problem — that they are broken, naughty, or the reason the family is stressed. That’s a heavy thing for a little person to carry, and it can deepen the very anxiety or low confidence we’re trying to ease. Working through the parent sidesteps that completely. The child experiences change as their home simply becoming calmer and more predictable, with a parent who suddenly seems steadier and more in tune with them. No labels. No stigma. No weekly reminder that something is “wrong” with them.
What working with parents actually looks like
When parents picture “parent guidance,” some imagine being handed a generic behaviour chart and sent on their way. What I offer is much closer to proper, tailored therapy — it just happens to have your child’s wellbeing as its focus. Drawing on over twenty years of psychotherapy practice and more than thirty years across NHS mental-health settings, here’s broadly how it works.
Understanding the patterns at home
We start by getting curious — not judgemental — about what’s actually happening. When does the worry or the meltdown tend to show up? What happens just before, and just after? Who responds, and how? Often parents arrive convinced their child is “just anxious” or “just difficult,” and within a session or two we can see the loop the whole family has, completely understandably, got caught in. Naming that loop is the first relief.
An illustrative example. A pattern I see again and again: a child becomes anxious at bedtime, so a loving parent stays longer, lies down with them, checks the room “just once more.” It works — for that night. But the child’s brain quietly learns that bedtime is dangerous, because look how much reassurance it needs. Together, a parent and I would gently reverse that loop: small, planned steps towards independence, warmth without over-reassurance, and praise for brave behaviour. Within a few weeks, bedtime often stops being a battle — not because the child was “fixed,” but because the pattern around them changed. (Details here are illustrative, not a specific client.)
Practical, evidence-based tools
I’m a CBT-trained therapist, and a lot of what I share with parents is essentially CBT translated for the home — recognising anxious thinking traps, gently stepping a child towards the things they fear rather than rescuing them away from them, and rewarding brave, flexible behaviour rather than the worry. I weave in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), too, which helps you hold your own difficult feelings — the guilt, the frustration, the 3am dread — without being run by them. A calmer, more grounded parent is genuinely one of the most powerful tools a struggling child can have.
Shifting the emotional climate
Beyond techniques, much of our work is about the emotional weather in the home. Children are extraordinarily good at picking up on a parent’s stress, and a household running on low-grade anxiety will tend to keep a child’s nervous system on alert. By supporting your wellbeing — through Compassion Focused Therapy ideas and a kinder inner voice — we change the climate your child is growing up in. That’s not a soft extra. It’s often the main event.
Not sure whether this is the right approach for your family? You’re welcome to a free, no-obligation 20-minute phone call — call 07712 904220 and we’ll talk it through, with no pressure to book.
“But my child is the one who’s anxious”
I understand this worry completely — I’m a mum myself, and I know how much you want to do something directly for the child in front of you. So let me be reassuring: choosing to work through you is not a way of overlooking your child. It’s the most direct route to helping them.
Think of it like this. If you were anxious about flying, the most useful thing wouldn’t be for a stranger to sit your nervous self-down once a week. It would be to have a steady, well-prepared companion beside you on every flight, who knew exactly how to help you breathe through take-off. For your child, that companion is you — and my job is to make sure you’re well-prepared, supported and confident in the seat next to them.
When I do work directly with young people
This parent-led approach is specifically about younger, primary-aged children. Older children change the picture. Teenagers and young adults I see directly, because by adolescence that capacity for reflection has developed and young people usually want — and benefit from — their own confidential space.
So if you’re searching for teen counselling in the UK, support for exam stress, social anxiety, low mood or identity, that’s work I take on one-to-one, in person near Ely or as online therapy for teens anywhere in the country. With teens, the balance shifts: they lead, and I’ll involve you as much (or as little) as is helpful, always with their trust at the centre.
“Erica has a wonderful way with teenagers. My son went from refusing to talk about his anxiety to actively looking forward to sessions. She gave him practical tools that he still uses today — a real lifeline for our family.” — Parent of a teenage client
Child anxiety, behaviour — and knowing when you need more
Most worry and behavioural wobbles in childhood are a normal, if exhausting, part of growing up, and respond beautifully to the kind of parent-focused work I’ve described. But part of practising ethically is being honest about scope.
If a child is showing signs of something that needs specialist assessment — for example, possible neurodevelopmental differences, an eating difficulty, trauma, or risk of harm — the right next step may be a paediatric or clinical child psychologist, your GP, or your local CAMHS service rather than counselling with me. I will always tell you plainly if I think that’s the case, and I’ll help you understand who to approach. Good therapy includes knowing its own limits, and I’d never keep a family in the wrong kind of support simply to keep them as a client.
If you’re worried about a child’s immediate safety — including thoughts of self-harm — please contact your GP, call NHS 111, or in an emergency call 999. For urgent under-18 mental-health support you can also contact your local NHS crisis line.
Whether you’re local to Ely or anywhere in the UK
I see families in person from my calm therapy room in Haddenham, near Ely in Cambridgeshire — so if you’ve been searching “child therapy services near me” or “anxiety therapists near me” from this corner of the country, do get in touch.
But none of this work depends on being local. Parent-focused sessions translate especially well to video, which means I can offer online counselling for parents right across the UK. Whether you’re after parenting counselling online from a city flat or the only family for miles in a rural village, the work is exactly the same: warm, practical, evidence-based, and built around your particular child and home. For many parents, doing it from their own kitchen table — without arranging childcare or a long drive — is what finally makes getting help possible.
A gentle first step
If your child is struggling with worry, low confidence or difficult behaviour and you’re not sure where to turn, you don’t have to have it all figured out before you reach out. The hardest part is usually the first message.
I offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute phone call so we can talk through what’s happening and decide together whether this approach feels right for your family. There’s no pressure, no jargon, and no commitment — just a friendly conversation about your child and where things have got stuck. Call 07712 904220 or get in touch through the contact page.
You’re the most important person in your child’s recovery. My job is simply to help you do what you already do, with a little more knowledge, a few more tools, and a lot more support behind you.
Common questions from parents
At what age should a child start therapy?
There’s no single answer, but for primary-aged children (roughly under 12), working through the parent is usually more effective than one-to-one therapy with the child. From the teenage years onwards, young people generally benefit from their own sessions.
What is parent-led (or parent-mediated) therapy?
It’s an evidence-based approach where the therapist coaches the parent, who then becomes the agent of change at home. For child anxiety, trials have found it as effective as therapy delivered directly to the child.
Do you ever see the child at all?
Occasionally, and only when it’s genuinely useful — for example, a brief joint session so a child can meet me and feel reassured. But the steady, ongoing work is with you.
Is this the same as seeing a private child psychologist?
Not quite. If you’re searching for a “private child psychologist near me” expecting one-to-one sessions with your child, my model is deliberately different — and, for younger children with anxiety or behaviour, often more effective. Where a formal psychological assessment is needed, I’ll point you towards the right professional.
Can this work as an online child therapist for UK families?
Yes. Parent-focused work is one of the formats that translates best to video, so distance is no barrier — I support families from Cambridgeshire to the far ends of the UK this way.