Family Therapy for Children, Teens, and Parents in Boston
When a child or teenager is struggling, the problem rarely lives in only one person. Family therapy helps families understand patterns, reduce tension, and support children, teens, and young adults without reducing anyone to “the problem.”
Physician-led family therapy for children, teens, young adults, and the adults caring for them
Sessions may include the whole family, parents alone, siblings, or a changing format over time
Psychotherapy and medication, when indicated, coordinated under one roof, not split across separate clinicians
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Request a consultation:
Book a clinician call or call.
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Clinician call:
We review basic clinical information and fit.
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Structured family consultation:
We start with a parent meeting, followed by meetings with the child and/or relevant family members, then recommendations about a useful treatment frame.
Private-pay care enables time, continuity, and depth, with fees discussed during the office manager call.
Located in Back Bay and serving Beacon Hill, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, and surrounding areas. Telehealth is available for established patients in Massachusetts, and for new patients where in-person care is not accessible.
Appointments are often available within a week.
When one child is carrying the symptom, the whole family is often carrying the strain
A child does not live inside a diagnosis alone. A child lives inside a family, a developmental stage, a school environment, and a set of relationships. Sometimes the symptom that brings a family in, anxiety, shutdown, irritability, school refusal, self-harm, stomachaches, escalating arguments at home, is the most visible expression of something larger the family has been trying to manage without enough help.
Family therapy is not about deciding who is at fault. It is not about turning parents into patients, and it is not about gathering everyone in one room simply to talk more. It is a focused treatment that helps a family notice patterns that have become painful, rigid, or exhausting, and begin to do something different.
At Webster Clinic, this work sits inside a physician-led psychiatry model. That matters when a child needs careful assessment, when parents need guidance rather than blame, when schools or pediatricians need to be part of the picture, and when medication may be useful but should remain embedded in a broader therapeutic understanding rather than treated as the whole answer.
What is family therapy?
Family therapy is treatment for the relationships around a problem, not just for the individual who seems to be carrying it most visibly.
Sometimes that means meeting with the whole family. Sometimes it means meeting with parents alone. Sometimes it means seeing siblings together, or shifting the format over time as the treatment becomes clearer. In a family therapy frame, the therapist is often more active than in individual therapy. Part of the work is to slow down familiar reactions, make sure each person’s perspective can be understood, and help the family notice the patterns that keep everyone stuck.
For children and adolescents especially, this often matters. A child may not yet be able to explain clearly what is wrong, but they may show it in behavior, in the body, in play, in school refusal, in perfectionism, in irritability, or in sudden withdrawal. Family therapy helps adults understand what they are looking at and respond in ways that actually help.
Who We Work With
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Families often reach out when a child or teen no longer seems like themselves. A child may become clingier, angrier, more shut down, more oppositional, more anxious, more isolated, less interested in friends, or suddenly unable to manage school in the way they once did. Sometimes the change is dramatic. Sometimes it is subtle but persistent.
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Some families are arguing all the time. Others barely speak directly anymore and feel it. Some have fallen into exhausting roles: one parent overfunctions, another withdraws, a teen becomes the lightning rod, a sibling disappears into the background. Family therapy helps loosen these patterns before they harden further and cause more trouble.
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Many thoughtful parents know something important is happening but do not yet know what kind of response will help. They are trying not to overreact, not to miss something serious, and not to make matters worse. Parent guidance and family therapy can provide a more usable frame.
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New developmental stages can destabilize a family even when nothing is “wrong.” Children become adolescents. Teenagers become young adults. A child leaves for college and returns changed. A new baby arrives. A parent becomes ill. A family blends, separates, relocates, or reorganizes. Family therapy can help families absorb change without losing connection.
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We focus mostly on families with children, teens, and emerging adults, but family therapy can also be very useful when a young adult and parent remain entangled in conflict, dependency, shutdown, or repeated misunderstandings.
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We welcome families of many kinds, including single-parent families, blended families, adoptive families, queer families, multigenerational households, families shaped by separation or divorce, and families whose most important caregivers are not all contained by a simple definition.
What we help with
Anxiety, sadness, irritability, and withdrawal in children and teens
School refusal, somatic complaints, and stress that shows up in the body
Parent-child conflict that has become repetitive and discouraging
Sibling tension, rivalry, exclusion, or chronic imbalance in attention
Behavioral escalation, power struggles, and limit-setting that no longer feels workable
Self-harm recovery support and helping families respond more effectively around risk
Developmental transitions, including adolescence, launch to college, and return home
Young adult dependence, shutdown, or repeated conflict with parents
Family stress around grief, illness, or major change
Family patterns that reinforce perfectionism, overachievement, or chronic anxiety
Parenting differences that leave children in the middle
Cultural, racial, identity, or belonging-related tensions inside family life
Supporting a family member with more significant psychiatric or neurodevelopmental needs
Times when individual therapy is helping, but the family system also needs attention
What does family therapy look like in practice at Webster Clinic?
Family therapy is not simply “everyone talks about their feelings for fifty minutes.”
With younger children, sessions may include play, drawing, games, storytelling, or other structured activity. Children often show us much more readily through action, metaphor, and interaction than through abstract explanation alone.
With adolescents and young adults, the work is usually less playful but no less active. We may focus on communication that has broken down, family roles that have become fixed, boundaries that are either too rigid or too porous, and the ways parents and children respond to anxiety in one another.
Some sessions include the child or teen, and others are parents-only. Some are whole-family sessions. Often the most helpful move is to begin with parents so the frame becomes clearer and the child is not prematurely pulled into a room full of adult confusion. At other times, seeing the family together from the start tells us something important very quickly.
The goal is not to corner a child, expose a family, or force everyone to agree. The goal is to create enough structure and emotional clarity that the family can begin to think better together.
How Family Therapy Works: the Sequence
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A parent-only meeting
We gather history, development, school context, family structure, and the current picture of concern.
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1-3 meetings with kids and/or relevant family
This may include the whole family, one parent and child, siblings, or other combinations depending on the clinical picture.
REC’s
Feedback to include recommendations
We discuss what we are seeing (the formulation) and recommend the most useful frame going forward.
COMMON TAILORED ELEMENTS OF FAMILY THERAPY
ongoing family therapy
parent guidance
individual psychotherapy with family work
integrated treatment that includes medication
school or pediatric collaboration, with consent
Why families choose Webster Clinic
When useful we coordinate with pediatricians, schools, and other clinicians so treatment is not happening in pieces.
We do not isolate the child from the family story
Children and teens are treated in relation to the people and systems around them, not as stand-alone problems to be fixed.
We are psychiatrists who also do deep psychotherapy
This matters when symptoms are complex, when diagnosis is not straightforward, and when a family needs both psychological depth and medical judgment.
Parent guidance is part of the treatment, not an afterthought
Often the fastest way to help a child is to help the adults understand the child more clearly and respond with greater steadiness.
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![A woman sitting in a green armchair with a bookshelf behind her, smiling at the camera.]()
Jacqueline Buchanan MD
Child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist
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![A woman with long dark hair, wearing a purple dress, smiling and sitting on an olive green armchair in a room with a bookshelf and a potted plant in the background.]()
Christine Crawford MD MPH
Child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist
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Cecil R Webster Jr MD
FOUNDER & CEO
Child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist
Psychoanalyst
FAQs
What is family therapy, exactly?
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Family therapy is a form of treatment that focuses on relationships, communication, roles, and patterns inside a family rather than looking only at one person in isolation. It is often especially useful when a child or teenager’s symptoms are affecting the whole household, or when family stress is part of what is maintaining those symptoms.
Does every session include my child?
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No. Some sessions include the child or teen, some involve parents only, and some include multiple family members together. We usually begin with a parent meeting so we can understand the history and current concerns clearly. From there, we build a treatment frame that fits the family rather than using a one-size-fits-all structure.
Is family therapy only for families in crisis?
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Not at all. Some families come in during clear crisis. Others come because something is off and they want to understand it early. Family therapy can be useful for conflict, shutdown, developmental transitions, launch to college, parenting strain, sibling dynamics, or a child’s symptoms that are beginning to affect the whole family.
What if one parent or family member will not come?
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Meaningful work can often still begin. We can work with the willing parent, with the child, or with the family members who are able to participate. We do not require every relevant person to attend every session. For treatment of a minor, however, we do need the appropriate legal consent.
Is family therapy the same thing as parent guidance?
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Not exactly. Parent guidance focuses specifically on helping parents understand and respond to their child more effectively. Family therapy more explicitly addresses the relationships and patterns among family members. The two often overlap, and sometimes parent guidance is where family treatment begins.
Can my child do family therapy and individual therapy at the same time?
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Yes. In some cases, family therapy is the main treatment. In others, it is paired with individual therapy. Sometimes a child needs both a private place of their own and a family-level treatment that helps change what happens at home.
What if medication is part of the picture?
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At Webster Clinic, medication can be integrated into the same overall treatment plan when clinically indicated. That means it is considered in relation to the child’s development, symptoms, family context, and psychotherapy, not as a separate, disconnected service.
Do you work with young adults and their parents?
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Yes. While this page is centered on children, teens, and parents, family therapy can also be helpful for emerging adults and their families, especially when launch, dependence, repeated conflict, or communication breakdowns are part of the picture. This is common in the transition to college or the launch into early independence.
Do you coordinate with schools or pediatricians?
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Yes, when useful and with consent. We often find that children do better when the adults around them are not working from conflicting assumptions. Coordination can help reduce confusion and improve follow-through.
Why see a psychiatrist for family therapy?
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A board-certified psychiatrist brings medical training, diagnostic depth, and the ability to integrate psychotherapy with medication when needed. At Webster Clinic, that expertise is embedded in an ongoing therapeutic relationship rather than separated into brief medication-only visits.
Yes. We offer in-person care in Boston’s Back Bay and telehealth for Massachusetts-based patients when clinically appropriate.
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Do you offer in-person care?
Family therapy can help when the family has become organized around stress, conflict, or one child’s symptoms
You do not need to know in advance whether the right next step is family therapy, parent guidance, individual treatment, or a more integrated plan. That is part of what consultation is for.
Or call 617.859.5953