Dr. LaFleur brings active listening, collaboration, and warmth to evidence-based, goal-oriented treatment that leads to lasting change. She helps parents cut through the noise of conflicting advice, understanding the research and drawing from years of experience navigating those challenging moments when children are feeling big emotions. Because Dr. LaFleur’s style of treatment empowers parents, they determine treatment priorities and turn everyday interactions with their child into therapeutic moments via concrete, evidence-based skills. 

Parents may be seeking support for young children who experience:

• Fear, anxiety, or avoidance (including separation anxiety, social anxiety, difficulties trying new things, school avoidance, and selective mutism)
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Excessive tantrums or outbursts
• Inflexibility or negativity
• Difficulties sharing parents’ attention
• Negative self-talk
• Physical aggression
• Challenges following directions, including due to being unwilling
• Difficulties transitioning from preferred activities
• Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Toileting concerns (including daytime and nighttime wetting, avoidance or refusal, holding stool, and avoidance of public bathrooms)
• Bedtime refusal or avoidance of independent sleep
• School concerns
• Refusal of medical procedures

Dr. LaFleur specializes in Behavioral Parent Training, which involves her working collaboratively with parents. Weekly appointments are used to discuss and practice treatment techniques, which parents then utilize on a daily basis at home and in the community. Because treatment is happening on an ongoing basis, during critical moments, and in more natural environments, treatment is often faster and more effective as compared to treatments that are limited to clinical environments and/or rely on treatment occurring only when a clinician is present. And when it’s time to discontinue therapy, families are often able to maintain or continue making progress due to a deep understanding of what works and why.

Dr. LaFleur also specializes in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a type of Behavioral Parent Training. PCIT has many decades of research suggesting that it is an exceptionally effective treatment for children ages 2-7. Dr. LaFleur is a Certified PCIT Therapist. PCIT enhances the parent-child relationship while also reducing challenging behaviors and power struggles. More information about PCIT is available on Stony Run’s PCIT page.

For children experiencing anxiety, in addition to utilizing adaptations of PCIT, Dr. LaFleur supports parents in facilitating exposures so that their child may gain constructive practice facing their fears and tolerating discomfort. She also supports parent reduction in accommodation of anxiety, as more recently researched and popularized by Dr. Eli Lebowitz via Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) Treatment.

Dr. LaFleur takes progress seriously. She collects information to (1) choose the right intervention approach and (2) determine whether it’s working. She wants to know what you’re noticing, and often, she’ll simply ask you about it. In addition, she also collects quantative data using researched rating scales and custom surveys. Dr. LaFleur offers a progress monitoring program in which parents can choose to receive daily emails prompting them to complete a short survey about their child’s behavior. Dr. LaFleur then shares graphs and trends with patients’ families.

Wondering how effective this style of treatment is when done by telehealth? Research demonstrates that PCIT delivered virtually (i-PCIT) is as or more satisfactory and effective as compared to PCIT delivered in person, and that family-based CBT approaches delivered virtually are also an effective treatment for young children.