Every May, parents start asking versions of the same question. Should we start therapy over the summer? Should we pause the therapy we've been doing? Is summer a good time to dig into this stuff, or is it better to wait until school starts again?
These are good questions, and the answers depend on your specific situation. But there are a few things that hold true across most families, and understanding them can help you make a decision you feel good about rather than one you're second-guessing by August.
This surprises a lot of parents. The instinct is often to think of mental health support as something that belongs in the school year, tied to the pressures and routines that make things visible. But summer has real advantages for starting therapy, especially for children and teenagers.
The most obvious one is time. During the school year, getting to a weekly appointment is logistics on top of an already packed schedule. Homework, sports, activities, dinner - therapy becomes one more thing to squeeze in, and that squeeze affects how present a kid is when they get there. In the summer, there's room to breathe. Appointments feel less rushed. There's space to actually process things between sessions.
The second advantage is that the school-year pressures are off. A teenager who's been white-knuckling it through finals and social stress and college prep has more capacity to actually engage in therapy when that load lifts. The presenting symptoms may look different in summer, but the underlying material is the same - and it's often easier to access when a kid isn't already maxed out.
A third advantage, and one that doesn't get talked about enough: summer is a natural window for preparation. If something hard is coming - a new school, a transition year, a family change - working through it therapeutically before it arrives is almost always better than trying to do that work in the middle of it.
Many families take a break from therapy in the summer under the assumption that things are quieter and the work can wait. Sometimes that's the right call. More often, it's worth thinking through carefully before deciding.
Therapy, especially with children and teenagers, builds momentum. Skills that have been practiced over months can soften without regular reinforcement. For kids working on anxiety, emotional regulation, or social skills, a two or three month gap can undo progress that took a long time to build. Coming back in September often means spending the first several weeks re-establishing the relationship and re-engaging with work that had already been done.
This doesn't mean every child needs to stay in weekly therapy all summer. But reducing frequency to every two weeks, rather than stopping entirely, tends to preserve the relationship and the progress in a way that a full pause doesn't.
The kids for whom summer pauses tend to be most costly are those dealing with anxiety, ADHD, significant family stress, or trauma. These are kids for whom consistency matters most and whose symptoms are least likely to simply quiet down when school is out.
One thing parents sometimes don't anticipate is that summer introduces its own stressors for certain kids and teenagers.
For children with anxiety, the loss of the school routine can be destabilizing. Structure, predictability, and clear expectations are actually anxiety-regulating. When those disappear, some kids don't feel relieved - they feel unmoored. If your child tends to struggle with unstructured time, summer can paradoxically be a harder stretch than the school year.
For teenagers, the social dynamics of summer can be complicated. Friend groups shift. There's more unstructured time and less scaffolding around social interaction. FOMO and social comparison - amplified by social media - can be more intense when everyone else's summer seems more interesting than yours. Teenagers who were doing reasonably well during the school year sometimes find the summer harder than expected.
Summer transitions are also a real thing. Moving from elementary to middle school, from middle to high school, or from high school to whatever comes next are among the most anxiety-producing transitions young people face. Using the summer to prepare for and process those transitions therapeutically is one of the higher-value uses of that time.
If your child hasn't been in therapy before and you've been thinking about it, here's how to approach it.
Start the search now, not in August. Good therapists in Los Angeles fill their summer availability quickly, especially for children and teenagers. If you wait until late July to start looking, you may find yourself waiting until September anyway.
Use the summer to find the right fit rather than just any available therapist. The relationship between a child and their therapist is one of the most consistent predictors of whether therapy actually helps. Summer's slower pace gives you more room to go through a consultation call or two and find someone your kid actually connects with.
Set realistic expectations for the first few sessions. The beginning of therapy with a child or teenager is almost always about relationship-building first. Don't expect dramatic change in the first month. Expect your child to slowly get comfortable with a new person and a new kind of conversation.
For children: play-based, skill-building sessions that feel different from school. Good child therapists know how to make the summer therapeutic without it feeling like more academics. There's often more room in the summer to use outdoor sessions, creative approaches, and activities that wouldn't fit into a tight school-year schedule.
For teenagers: deeper work becomes more possible when the immediate pressure is off. Teenagers who spent the school year in survival mode often find more capacity in the summer to actually explore what's going on for them rather than just managing it. Some of the most productive therapy I've done with teenagers has happened in June, July, and August.
For families: summer is a good time for parent coaching sessions, for family sessions, and for the bigger-picture conversations about what's been hard and what you want to look different in the fall. Parents have slightly more bandwidth in the summer too, which matters.
If your instinct is that something has been off with your child this year and you've been telling yourself you'll deal with it when things settle down - summer is when things settle down. This is the window.
If your child is already in therapy and you're wondering whether to pause - talk to their therapist directly before deciding. They'll have an informed view of whether this is a moment to maintain momentum or a natural stopping point.
And if you're not sure whether therapy is even the right call - that's exactly what a consultation is for. You don't need to have it figured out before you reach out.
Schedule a free consultation here.
Max Cadena is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) based in Echo Park, Los Angeles. He specializes in therapy for children, teens, young adults, adults, and families, with in-person sessions in Echo Park and telehealth available across California.
