Franklin Lakes, NJ
High-functioning children in high-achieving communities carry anxiety that nobody sees. We specialize in exactly that presentation and we know how to treat it.
Years Experience
Evidence-Based
Parent Protocol
Telehealth
Years Experience
Evidence-Based
Parent Protocol
Telehealth
No Waitlist
Years Experience
Bergen County Practice
Our Focus
Aspire Psychological Group is a specialty child and family psychology practice based in Bergen County, NJ. Children’s anxiety and the parents working to support them is our entire clinical focus.
Franklin Lakes sits in the northern part of Bergen County, bordered by Wyckoff, Oakland, and Mahwah. Our office is in Upper Saddle River on Route 17, accessible from multiple directions. We also offer full telehealth services for families who prefer to meet from home.
If your child has been struggling and what you have tried has not worked, we can help you understand what is actually going on and build a structured plan to address it.
Serving Franklin Lakes and all of Bergen County
About Franklin Lakes Families
Franklin Lakes families tend to come to us after something breaks. A school refusal that came out of nowhere. A panic attack before a big game. A child who was managing everything and then suddenly could not manage anything. That moment of crisis is usually not the beginning of the anxiety. It is the moment the anxiety finally exceeded the child’s ability to hide it.
The children we see from Franklin Lakes are typically high-achievers. They are in the right activities, making the grades, keeping up with a full schedule. The anxiety has been running underneath all of it for months or years. It was powering the performance in some ways, and paying for it in others: the sleep problems, the emotional fragility at home, the rigid rituals before tests or games, the reassurance loops that could consume an entire evening. None of that registered as a clinical problem because the output was still good. Then the output stopped being good, and suddenly everything was urgent.
What we hear most often from Franklin Lakes parents is some version of: we saw things but we did not know what we were looking at. That is not a failure of attention. Anxiety in high-functioning kids is genuinely hard to read, especially when you are also inside the same high-expectation environment your child is navigating. Part of what we do in the early phase of treatment is help parents understand what they were actually seeing and why the signals did not look like distress from the outside.
We coordinate with schools and every other provider involved. A unified approach to treatment produces substantially better outcomes than providers working in separate lanes.
What We Treat
We specialize in comprehensive evidence-based treatment for the full range of childhood anxiety disorders across all presentations.
Persistent, hard-to-control worry across school, performance, health, and everything in between.
Intense fear of judgment or humiliation that limits participation and leads to exhausting performance.
Consistent inability to speak in school or public settings despite normal speech at home.
Intrusive thoughts and compulsive rituals the child feels driven to perform to feel safe or ready.
Extreme fear responses to particular triggers including vomiting, needles, animals, or medical procedures.
Overwhelming distress about being separated from caregivers that interferes with daily life.
Difficulty attending school driven by anxiety rather than defiance.
Sudden intense episodes of physical fear that feel unpredictable and overwhelming.
Our Services
High-achieving children are among the hardest to correctly assess for anxiety because their performance masks the internal experience so effectively. Our child therapists in Franklin Lakes are specifically experienced with this presentation. We look underneath the performance, understand the full picture including school, home, and all other providers, and build a structured treatment plan using CBT, SPACE, PMT, and PCIT.
Parents are actively involved throughout treatment, not just as reporters on their child’s behavior. What happens in parent sessions is coordinated directly with what happens in the child’s sessions. Treatment is goal-directed and structured, with the endpoint clearly defined from the beginning.
In high-achieving communities, parents often pressure themselves as much as their children. When a child is anxious, many parenting responses that feel right, removing the stressor, answering every worried question, managing every transition, are inadvertently reinforcing the anxiety. Our clinical parent training uses SPACE, PMT, and PCIT to identify those patterns and replace them with responses that actually help the child move forward.
ADHD and anxiety frequently occur together. In high-pressure environments, ADHD symptoms can look like insufficient effort, which compounds anxiety significantly. Our ADHD therapist helps children understand how their mind works and build strategies that work with it, not against it.
Trauma in children presents differently than in adults and is often missed in high-functioning kids. Our trauma therapist provides evidence-based, trauma-informed care that meets children where they are and supports healing at an appropriate pace.
Our Process
Every family at Aspire gets a comprehensive, structured approach built around their child’s specific situation. We start by looking at the whole picture: school, home, medical history, every provider involved. We do not start building treatment until we understand what we are actually treating.
Treatment is built around the most effective evidence-based approaches available, primarily CBT and SPACE including PMT and PCIT. Every session is working toward something concrete. We keep termination in sight from day one because the goal is real improvement, not ongoing support with no clear direction.
We coordinate with schools and all other providers. When everyone is working from the same plan, outcomes improve substantially. That coordination is not optional for us. It is part of how we work.
We talk about what you are seeing and whether Aspire is the right fit for your family.
School, home, medical history, all providers. The full picture before we build anything.
Goal-directed, evidence-based, built around your child with an endpoint clearly defined.
Your child back to full functioning. Not open-ended therapy. An actual finish line.
Why Families Choose Us
Specialty practice focused entirely on children, adolescents, and their families
Evidence-based treatment: CBT, SPACE, PMT, and PCIT
Experienced with high-functioning anxious children who appear fine on the outside
Active coordination with schools, pediatricians, and prescribers
Goal-directed treatment with termination in sight from day one
Over two decades of clinical experience in pediatric anxiety
Serving Franklin Lakes, Wyckoff, Oakland, Mahwah, and surrounding communities
Telehealth available across New Jersey and New York
What Parents Say
"The doctor's happiness and enthusiasm empowered my son to work hard and make real progress. We noticed the difference at home long before we expected to."
N.M. — Bergen County Parent
Common Questions
Yes. Pediatric anxiety is our entire clinical focus. We treat generalized anxiety, social anxiety, OCD, selective mutism, phobias, separation anxiety, school refusal, and panic disorder using CBT, SPACE, PMT, and PCIT.
In high-achieving communities like Franklin Lakes, childhood anxiety often presents in high-functioning children who appear fine from the outside while struggling significantly internally. The worry, the avoidance, the physical symptoms, and the emotional outbursts at home often do not match the public presentation, which is part of why it goes unrecognized for so long. If things feel off at home, a consultation is the right next step.
Yes. Active coordination with schools, pediatricians, and all other providers is a standard part of how we work.
Aspire is a private-pay practice. Many families use out-of-network benefits. We provide all documentation needed for reimbursement.
Yes. Secure video sessions are available for families anywhere in New Jersey and New York.
A consultation is the fastest way to get clarity and a plan. Reach out today and we will talk through what you are seeing and what the right next step looks like.
Private-pay practice. Many families offset costs through out-of-network reimbursement. We provide all documentation needed.
