We recently connected with Dean Beckloff and have shared our conversation below.
Dean , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?
Our business, called Beckloff Pediatric Behavioral Center, is focused on helping families with kids of all ages, young kids, teens, and young adults. We have a number of types of therapies that we do, from play therapy for young children, activity-oriented therapy for older kids and teens, to the typical sitting and talking about what may be going on in a kid’s life of any age. We have play therapy rooms, art therapy rooms, games and activity rooms that include ping pong, a pool table, and other games and activities. These can help many kids to not feel more relaxed, and allows them to talk about their internal struggles and life issues in a natural setting. We, of course, do a great deal of family counseling as well. We deal with any issue that may be more internal – anxiety/depression, as well as behavioral like behavior problems, academic problems, struggles at home. We have a speech and language therapy program with our esteemed speech pathologist. Ensuring good language development ensures good growth mentally and emotionally as well. We also have a strong assessment program, assessing academic problems, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, as well as spectrum disorders. We also do a full psychological evaluation here as well. We work with kids who may be academically struggling, who may have issues with ADHD, or who may be on the spectrum. We work with kids with social skills issues and engage with kids in groups to develop social skills. We do a great deal of work with families moving through divorce. Before, during, and after the divorce, to help the kids to stay on track in their growth and development. Everything we do is geared to helping kids and families move forward in good growth and development. We have a motto here, ‘Where Kids Become Kids Again.’ That came from many years ago, when I was working with a young child, and his mother finally told me after working with him regarding abuse issues, “I’ve got my kid back.” To some extent we want to do that too, help families get their kid back, their family back. We aspire to assist the kid to get back on track in their development.
Dean , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
What is unique about your business (what sets you apart from the rest)? First, we have excellent therapists, clinicians – who are well trained and want to help kids. Secondly our facility is large, with a number of ways, tools, and modalities to help kids in a number of ways. This has been important to us, to have a center where we can utilize many different modalities to help kids and families. We believe we need to apply everything we can to aid kids in getting back on track, growing and developing in positive ways. We also work a great deal with parents to give them a great deal of support, as well as helping give them tools to not only understand their unique child, but to assist in finding and implementing positive interventions to help their unique child. Our work with parents is extremely strong, believing not only that change is affected by the whole family, but believing that parents are in the most unique position to help their child or teen!
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
Given your business expertise and the nature of what you do, what advice (whether general or specific) can you offer? We live in a complex society and world, perhaps especially so in an urban/suburban area like the Dallas metroplex. Kids have struggles. Kids really do have challenges. These struggles and challenges are complex living in a unique area like Dallas. Additionally, we know much more from research, about how kids and teens ‘come built.’ Genetically. It’s important that when parents realize there may be an issue, that they get their kids in to see someone with good experience and training, early on. I believe, the earlier the better. Get help in knowing how your child has come uniquely put together. As a parent knows from early on what some of the issues may be, then they can be equipped to know how to help their child grow and develop well. And – the child can get some benefit as well – with some ‘equipping’ that they can acquire through counseling assistance. If your child is having behavioral problems, great anger, seem depressed, not doing well in school, much anxiety – we can help. We want to see every child we work with make great strides in moving out of anything that is an issue, and into doing well in life.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
What else we should know about you, your family, or your business? We believe in excellence and being aware of the needs of kids and teens, and their parents. From the waiting room to the play therapy rooms and activity rooms, we strive for excellence in all that we are building and doing. We believe in excellent and compassionate customer service. Many folks are coming in with much on their plate that they are dealing with. We try from our staff to our therapists to ‘be there’ in every way possible to help folks in making the trip a helpful one and not a frustrating one.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.drbeckloff.com,