Sydney Kohrman
LSW
Pronouns: She/Her
Therapy for Children and Teens Who Need to Feel Safe Before They Can Settle
Play-based, relationship-first support for kids, teens, young adults, and the parents raising them.
LET'S START HERE
You've tried the sticker charts, the earlier bedtime, the calm voice you practiced in the car before pickup. And still the hard moments come — at homework time, at drop-off, at the moment you least expected — and you're left wondering what everyone else seems to know that you don't.. What if the behavior isn't the problem to solve, but the message? Children act out when their bodies don't yet feel safe enough to do anything else, and feeling safe is something a child can learn with the right relationship around them.
What would you say to someone who’s nervous or unsure about starting therapy?
Most of the kids I meet have already been told they're too much — too loud, too angry, too shut down. I'm Sydney Kohrman, a licensed social worker at Tides Mental Health, and I read those behaviors differently. Usually it's a nervous system asking for safety it hasn't found yet. I work with young adults who were once those kids, too. If you've run out of ideas, that isn't a failure. That's a good moment to start.
What would you say to someone who’s nervous or unsure about starting therapy?
Most of the kids I meet have already been told they're too much — too loud, too angry, too shut down. I'm Sydney Kohrman, a licensed social worker at Tides Mental Health, and I read those behaviors differently. Usually it's a nervous system asking for safety it hasn't found yet. I work with young adults who were once those kids, too. If you've run out of ideas, that isn't a failure. That's a good moment to start.
What It’s Like to Work Together
For younger children, a lot of the work happens on the floor — with toys, art, and games, because that's where kids say what they don't yet have words for. You won't be left in the waiting room either: parents get their own time with me, learning what your child's behavior is asking for and how to respond in a way that helps their body settle instead of escalate. With teens, sessions look more like conversation, with room for the parts that are hard to say out loud. Together we'll use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to untangle the beliefs that have quietly hardened — I'm the problem, I always ruin this — and try on other ways of reading the same moment. If you're a young adult, you may be coming on your own, noticing that the ways you learned to stay safe as a kid don't serve you now — in relationships, at work, in how harshly you read yourself. We'll trace those patterns back to where they once made sense, and build something steadier in their place.
What does a session feel like?
My office isn't a place where kids get lectured. There are toys on the floor and usually a game going, and somewhere in the middle of it a child tells me something they've never said out loud. With teens and young adults it's quieter — two people talking, no pressure to perform. Nothing gets forced here. Safety comes first, and everything else follows it.
Why I’m passionate about this work
I've worked with children in foster care and in outpatient clinics, and the same thing keeps proving true: the hardest behaviors soften once a relationship feels safe. Not because someone was fixed, but because they finally had somewhere steady to stand. I want every kid, every young adult, and every parent I meet to get to feel that shift.
Clinical Specialties
- Trauma and attachment – for children whose earliest relationships didn't feel steady, including kids in foster and adoptive families
- Big behaviors — meltdowns, aggression, and shutdowns that families and schools are struggling to interpret
- Anxiety in children and teens — the worry that shows up as stomachaches, refusal, or not wanting to leave your side
- Low self-esteem — kids who have absorbed the idea that they're the difficult one
- Young adults untangling early attachment patterns — trust, closeness, and the sense that you have to earn your place with people
- Life transitions in your late teens and twenties — college, first jobs, leaving home, and the self-doubt that surfaces in the middle of them
- ADHD and neurodivergence — building routines and self-understanding that work with your brain rather than against it, at any age
- Parent and caregiver support — practical coaching for the moments at home that escalate fastest
- Emotional regulation — helping kids, teens, and young adults notice what their bodies are doing before it takes over
Treatment Modalities
- Play therapy — for younger children, toys and games become the language for what's too big or too new to put into words.
- Theraplay — structured, playful activities you and your child do together, so connection and safety get rebuilt inside the relationship itself.
- Relationship-focused therapy — for teens and young adults, what happens between us becomes the place where trust gets practiced, especially if earlier relationships taught you to expect otherwise.
- Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) — a paced way for kids, teens, and young adults to make sense of what happened to them without being asked to relive it.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — naming the beliefs you or your child have formed about yourselves, then testing whether those beliefs actually hold up.
- Parent Management Training — hands-on work with you on responding to behavior in ways that lower the temperature instead of raising it.
Populations Served
- Children ages 5 and up
- Adolescents and teens
- Young adults navigating relationships, independence, and the patterns they grew up inside
- College students and people in their late teens and twenties
- Parents and caregivers looking for guidance on behavior at home
- Children and families connected to foster care, adoption, or the child welfare system
- Neurodivergent kids, teens, and young adults, including those with ADHD
- Families and individuals new to therapy who aren't sure what to expect
Training & Credentials
- Education: Master of Social Work, University of Michigan — Interpersonal Practice pathway in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse - Bachelor's degree, University of Michigan (University Honors designation)
- Licensure: Licensed Social Worker (LSW), State of Illinois
- Certification: CPI and IM+CANS certified
- Training & Experience : Level One Theraplay® trained. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) trained. Parent Management Training experience through Michigan Medicine's Child Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. 40-hour Domestic Violence training, ICDVP.
- Languages Spoken: Sessions offered in English
- Availability: Offering in-person sessions in Chicago and telehealth for clients across Illinois
You don't need a diagnosis, a tidy explanation, or a child who's ready to talk about it yet. And if you're the one coming for yourself, you don't need to have decided what the problem is first. Behavior makes sense once you can see what it's protecting — whether that's a seven-year-old's meltdown or the way a twenty-four-year-old keeps everyone at arm's length. That's the work I do with kids, teens, young adults, and the parents raising them. Click below to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
Insurance We Accept
We accept most major insurance providers and offer several convenient payment methods to ensure accessibility for your care. We also offer various payment methods, including credit cards, bank transfers, and electronic payments.
