María, an active adolescent, has recently been diagnosed with diabetes. She is having difficulty eating the right foods, taking her insulin, and monitoring her blood sugar.
Max, who is 18-months old, has begun to eat less and less. As a result, he is now considerably underweight and mealtimes at his home have become battles.
Jenny, a precocious preschooler, has been prescribed a medication only available in pill form. She is frightened of swallowing something so large and refuses to take the medicine.
Paul, an honors middle-school student, is experiencing daily stomachaches that medical evaluations have been unable to explain.
These are the kinds of situations I see often, and they all point to the same thing: when a child’s health is affected, it rarely stays in one lane. Medical care, emotional well-being, and everyday development are all tangled together, which is exactly what pediatric psychology exists to address.
Pediatric psychology is a specialized branch of clinical child psychology focused on health-related issues. I work alongside pediatricians and other members of a child’s medical team to treat the psychological and behavioral side of a medical condition — not just the diagnosis itself, but how a child and family are coping with it day to day. A lot of my work is simply helping kids build the confidence and skills to manage their own care.
I completed a predoctoral internship in pediatric psychology at Texas Children’s Hospital. After earning my Ph.D., I was invited to continue working there, completing a postdoctoral fellowship and staying on for two more years. That experience shaped how I think about supporting kids with medical complications and the families around them.
Modern medicine has changed what life looks like for many of these families — often for the better, but not without new challenges. Parents often struggle with how much responsibility to hand their child, while juggling treatment demands with everyday life. Financial stress, frequent hospital visits, missed school, and uncertainty about the future all add real emotional weight. Part of my job is helping families carry that weight — supporting them through grief, helping them communicate with doctors, and helping their child’s life feel as normal as possible.
Conditions like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and kidney disease require a lot of daily self-management, which can be especially hard for kids and teens who just want to feel normal. I help young patients work through the anxiety, low mood, or fear of procedures that can get in the way — using education, modeling, and problem-solving, along with support for parents.
Pain management is another big part of this work. I support kids dealing with pain from procedures like injections and dressing changes, as well as ongoing pain from conditions like sickle cell disease, juvenile arthritis, or migraines. Tools like relaxation, mindfulness, distraction, and positive self-talk can genuinely reduce a child’s pain and give them back a sense of control — and I also help with the pain that comes from emotional distress itself.
Feeding difficulties in young children are another area I work in often. Whatever the cause — early medical complications, painful associations from something like reflux, or family mealtime conflict — I look closely at both the child’s eating patterns and the family dynamics around meals, and help turn mealtimes back into something positive instead of a daily battle.
Pediatric psychology also covers a wide range of other issues: elimination disorders, habit disorders, sleep problems, trauma, attention challenges, and developmental disabilities. In all of it, I work closely with a child’s broader care team, with the goal of helping kids and families feel more capable and resilient in the face of what they’re going through.
Working with kids like María, Max, Jenny, and Paul, my goal is always the same: help them feel more like themselves again, even while managing something hard.