The Williams Counseling Center

I've been a high school dean, worked with homeless youth, and have worked with elementary students with 504s and IEPs; which means I spent a long time with kids in the place where their struggles actually show up. I saw a lot of kids called defiant, dramatic, or "bad" who were really just misunderstood and lacking proper support. I look at patterns and behaviors as symptoms of something deeper. A child's behavior almost always makes sense once you can see what's happening around them, which is why I take a deeply collaborative approach with parents, schools, and pediatricians when necessary. Working with children means I see where things start. So I see adults, too. Often, we're looking at the same thing from the other end: what got pushed down, what never got said out loud, or what was said and nobody caught it. That doesn't disappear because time passed. It gets quieter and finds other ways to show up. If your child is struggling, or something in your own life keeps repeating and you can't quite put your finger on it, reach out. I received my Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a specialization in children and adolescents from Northwestern University. My clinical and parenting insights have been featured in New York Magazine, Newsweek, and Upworthy. *In compliance with advanced clinical training requirements, I work with board-approved supervisor Krystal Speier, LCPC.