Child Anxiety Therapist in Burlington and Across Ontario
When your child's worry has grown bigger than bedtime reassurance, our team offers therapy for anxious kids ages 6-17. Evidence-based, age-appropriate, and paced to what your child can handle.
Book a Free 15-Minute ConsultationConsultations are for parents. We'll talk through what might help your child.
How Child Anxiety Shows Up
Anxiety in children rarely looks the way it does in adults. A nine-year-old won't say "I'm worried." He'll say his stomach hurts at school drop-off. A twelve-year-old won't describe avoidance. She'll just stop asking to go to sleepovers. A fifteen-year-old may seem fine all day and then fall apart at 11pm over a math test.
Worry wears different clothes at different ages. Knowing what to look for helps you act earlier, before avoidance locks into a pattern.
Common Signs, By Age
These are patterns we often see, not a diagnostic checklist. Every child is different.
Ages 6-9
- Frequent stomachaches or headaches with no medical cause
- Hard time with school drop-off or separation
- Same worry question asked over and over
- Meltdowns when a routine shifts
- Bedtime fears, trouble falling asleep alone
Ages 10-13
- School refusal, dragging feet in the morning
- Perfectionism and harsh self-criticism
- Avoiding tests, presentations, or group work
- Overthinking friendships and group chats
- Trouble falling asleep, "what if" loops at night
Ages 14-17
- Constant reassurance-seeking from parents or friends
- Social anxiety, dreading eating or speaking in public
- Panic-like moments, racing heart, tight chest
- Withdrawing from team, friends, or activities
- Doom-scrolling late into the night
What Drives Child Anxiety
Anxiety is rarely about one thing. It usually sits at the meeting point of several forces, and most children carry more than one.
Temperament. Some children arrive more sensitive, more attuned to danger. That's not a flaw. It's how their nervous system is tuned. These kids often grow into careful, empathetic adults. They also need more support learning to handle worry.
Stressors. A move. A new school. A divorce. A family illness. An overloaded schedule. Sometimes the trigger is obvious. Sometimes it's quieter, a friendship that shifted, a scary video that looped at recess, a comment a teacher made in passing.
Learned reactions. Over time, avoidance teaches the brain that the feared thing really was dangerous. Reassurance given again and again teaches the brain to keep asking. None of this is a parenting failure. It's just how anxiety works, and it's what therapy can gently unwind.
We don't look for who's to blame. We look at what's feeding the cycle and where we can interrupt it.
Our Approach
CBT for Children (CBT-C)
The most researched treatment for child anxiety. We help kids notice the worry thoughts, give them a shape ("the worry monster," "the what-if voice"), and test them. For older kids, that looks more like thought records. For younger ones, drawings, stories, and bossing the worry back.
Gradual Exposure
Anxiety shrinks when a child faces the feared thing in small, doable steps. We build a plan with your child, never ambushing them. Exposure starts where it feels safe, often in imagination or role-play, and moves outward at a pace they can actually follow through on.
Parent Coaching
Children rarely do this work alone. We meet with parents to share what's happening in session, practise at-home responses, and help you step out of the accommodation loop without leaving your child stranded. Your steadiness matters more than perfect words.
Play-Based Work for Younger Kids
For ages 6 to 9, play is often the language. Drawing, sandtray, games, and story-building let a child show worry and try out new responses without the pressure of a long conversation. Clinical concepts stay the same. The format meets the child where they are.
Your Role as a Parent
You're not being asked to be the therapist. You're being asked to be the steady presence your child already leans on. Most of the real work happens between sessions, in the small moments at drop-off, during homework, at bedtime.
- →You'll be part of intake. We gather your child's history, what's been tried, and what feels hardest right now.
- →Your child has their own therapy space. Some things they share stay between them and their therapist, within the limits of safety, which we explain clearly up front.
- →Parent-only check-ins are part of the work. We share skills to practise at home and help you respond to worry in ways that build confidence instead of feeding the cycle.
- →Consent is transparent. You'll understand what mandatory reporting means (for safety concerns like abuse or risk of harm), and we'll always be clear about the edges of confidentiality.
When It's Bigger Than Talking
Psychotherapy helps most children with anxiety. But sometimes the picture calls for more than weekly sessions.
Please speak with your child's family doctor or paediatrician if you're seeing frequent severe panic attacks, anxiety bad enough to disrupt eating or sleeping, any talk of self-harm, obsessive-compulsive patterns taking over daily life, or if you're weighing whether medication might help.
Formal psychological or psychoeducational assessments (for ADHD, learning differences, or OCD diagnosis) are conducted by psychologists, not psychotherapists. We can coordinate with your child's medical team when you give consent. Therapy and medical care often work best together.
Looking for a Faith-Integrated Approach?
If you'd like your child's therapy to gently include prayer or scripture when they invite it, visit our Christian child anxiety therapy page.
Christian child anxiety therapy →Session Fees
Children's Therapy
$170-$185
50 minutes
HST included. Insurance receipts provided for extended health coverage.
Child Anxiety Therapy FAQs
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Your Child Doesn't Have to Keep Carrying This
The worry is real. So is the care that can meet it. Let's talk about what might help.
