You provide therapy focused specifically on children's emotional and behavioral health. As a Child Psychotherapist, you're treating anxiety, depression, trauma, and developmental issues in young patients—adapting clinical techniques to meet kids where they are developmentally.
Child and Family Therapist pay typically runs $49K–$85K at this level, and jobs in this field are projected to grow 13% through 2034.
Child and family therapists typically provide psychotherapy that addresses children's emotional and behavioral difficulties within the context of their family system. You might be treating a child's ADHD, working with a family navigating a parent's mental illness, or helping siblings after a traumatic event. The clinical breadth is real.
Coordination with schools, pediatricians, and child welfare systems is often ongoing. Children's mental health doesn't exist in isolation—what's happening at school, at home, and medically all intersects. Managing those external relationships while maintaining therapeutic focus in sessions requires organizational skill and clear communication.
People who tend to do well combine clinical training in child development with genuine flexibility. You can't use the same approach with a 5-year-old that you'd use with a 15-year-old, let alone with parents. If you find developmental psychology genuinely interesting and can build strong alliances across generational and cultural differences, child and family therapy tends to be rich and varied. Early-career supervision in this specialty is particularly valuable and shapes long-term clinical development.
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Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Social Services roles →You provide therapy focused specifically on children's emotional and behavioral health. As a Child Psychotherapist, you're treating anxiety, depression, trauma, and developmental issues in young patients—adapting clinical techniques to meet kids where they are developmentally.
Median pay for a Child and Family Therapist is about $64K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $43K to $112K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Active Listening, Social Perceptiveness, Speaking, Service Orientation, and Complex Problem Solving.
Most people in this role hold a master's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 12.6% through 2034, with roughly 65,870 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Youth and Family Director, Outpatient Therapist, and Behavioral Therapist.
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