Grow Together

How is your child talking to you?

Could fears, tantrums and power struggles be communicating something important?

What's the need behind those harsh words, prickly transitions and big behaviors?

My job is to help you understand what they’re trying to say. Words aren’t always the way in. Play, art-making, and guided activities are a wonderful developmental match for the ways in which preschool and elementary kids are growing and building new skills.

  • With kids under 10, talk therapy is not likely the way in. Play therapy lets us engage at different and deeper levels. It’s a way in when kids clam up, and a way out when kids feel stuck.

    We can use therapeutic play to teach skills, tell important stories, encourage sharing feelings, and help kids manage their wishes and worries.

    My job is to help kids find their voice and settle into their bodies in ways that feel better—often this includes more regulation and coping skills, fewer fears, and more capacity for connection.

    Play is how kids show us their perspective and make meaning of their world.

  • Your child needs your support to change how they’re showing up and trying to get their needs met. While their current strategies may be clumsy or frustrating, they’re likely working with coping skills that were adaptive at some point. They’ve just outgrown these old strategies and need help building new ones.

    Let’s work together to cultivate tools that are much more effective!

    You may be invited into our play sessions, exploring new ways to communicate and collaborate with your child, or meet with me 1:1 between sessions to support the goals we’re working on at home and school.

  • With my training in psychology, together with a background in early childhood, high school tutoring, and running afterschool and summer programs, I have a deep and wide perspective on the range of child development.

    Over the past five years, I’ve become a specialist in understanding the brain and nervous system aspects of trauma, the role of regulation in neurodivergence, and the sequence of development from infancy through adolescence.

    My approach in working with families starts with a parent-child play observation, exploring attachment and communication patterns, and helping parents match our goals to your child’s strengths and current challenges.

    By request, more specialized assessment is offered to understand the impacts of trauma experiences (foster care, NICU, complex medical interventions), suspected ADHD or autism traits, explore PDA, or review prior evaluations needing more input for diagnostic clarity and practical supports.

Meet MereAnn

I bring a neurodiversity-affirming approach to making sense of big behaviors and supporting kids’ development, starting with seeing their strengths and engaging them in the social, creative, dynamic language of play.

I believe in the power of playfulness, curiosity, loving limits, and (sometimes) conflict—in building trust, resilience, and true cooperation.

I include active partnership with parents at the heart of my work.

I’m a play therapist. I help families grow together, get unstuck from patterns of stress, update coping strategies and find new solutions that just feel better.

Maybe you want to feel less worried, and understand what’s fueling funky behavior. Or maybe you need another perspective on next best steps for support at school or around the dinner table.

Got questions about play therapy? Hop right to it!

Areas of Specialty

Family Transitions—moving, new sibling, changing schools, fostering and adoption, grief and loss

Toileting Issues—night wetting, pooping issues, developmental worries, sensory aspects, regression during times of stress

Adoption Support—post-adoption, attachment, navigating open adoption

Regulation Issues—making sense of BIG behaviors, play therapy with sensory supports, music-based therapy, emotional coping skills, tantrums & meltdowns

School & Social Challenges—school refusal, educational advocacy, identifying school-based supports, skills for building friendships and self-expression

Neurodiversity-Affirming Care—understanding the neuroscience of behavior, adaptive strategies for regulation and learning needs, educational advocacy, parent coaching for regulation and connection, setting realistic expectations for academics and behavior, embracing your child’s temperament, honoring your own needs and limits

Your family can grow together.

I'd like to help.

My practice is dedicated to raising resilience in growing families.

I have a heart for supporting overwhelmed and resourceful parents during the preschool and elementary years. And I do my best work with kids age 3-10.

My specialty is helping parents and kids create new ways to cope with challenges together. I invite both of you to co-create our goals and often share that I have three main roles:

  1. Helping families have more fun together

  2. Helping families communicate better

  3. Working together on any worries or problems that come up

Neurodiversity-Affirming Support

A majority of my practice is working with kids and parents who are highly sensitive or neurodivergent—this isn’t a problem, it’s a fact of nature and our biological range that we bring different skills and perspectives to the table.

But the world and our education systems aren’t built with sensitive nervous systems in mind. In fact, school-based accommodations often expect the kid to adapt to the system rather than partnering to figure out where each child is orienting from—so we adults can meet them there and engage sturdy learning and social skills that make good use of their strengths.

I work with families to get curious about the best supports, regulation tools, and communication strategies for your child’s way of being and learning—while helping ease their stress and find their voice of self-advocacy.

Our partnership as caring adults supporting them is vital, since they’ll borrow regulation and coping skills from us while they’re developing their own.

We’ll collaborate, so you can find cooperation more easily at home and access your best thinking in tough moments.

What if you could spend more energy connecting and enjoying each other than tangling over schoolwork or behavior issues?

Adoption-Competent Support

Another important aspect of my practice is working with adoptive families. If we can acknowledge that adoption includes layers of attachment, identity, belonging, and making meaning of intergenerational stories—we can recognize the dynamic role of adoption across the lifespan.

While I’m not part of the “adoption triad,” I’m honored to be part of the larger “adoption constellation,” and grateful to the many adopted people, birth parents, and adoptive parents who have invited me into both personal and community conversations. I have been honored to listen and moved by how “something magical happens whenever adoptees gather and share our experiences as adoptees,” as described by adoptee, author and master storyteller, Shannon Gibney.

Clients can expect a Good Faith Estimate of Therapy Costs, following our first meeting and assessment, before starting therapy sessions.