Hello, my name is Melissa Ellison. I have lived in the Tri-Cities since 1999 and enjoy living in this wonderful community. Like many of you, my life can get quite busy with work, family, church, friends and everything else life throws my way. I understand that sometimes the only opportunity someone has to do something for themselves is after most of the world has shut down for the day and on the weekends. I do not believe that someone’s busy life should keep them from being able to seek counseling or help with their questions about parenting and family life. This is why I started Family Tree Counseling. My goal is to provide families with an opportunity to get help in an environment where they are comfortable, the privacy of their own home.

I earned my Masters of Education, with a specialization in counseling, in 1998 and became a Licensed Mental Health Counselor LH00007030 Mental Health License Verification in Washington State. I have spent my career working with children and families in their own homes, foster homes and residential settings. The families I’ve worked with have dealt with a variety of issues including grief and loss, attachment issues, abuse and neglect histories, depression, ADHD, trauma, anxiety disorders, and a variety of other mental health issues. Often, I work with parents to find different ways of working with behavior and how to best manage their stress and frustration. My work has been largely Behavior Modification (click here for more information on Behavior Modification), although I like to take an eclectic approach to counseling, using strength based and solution focused ideas whenever possible, setting goals and working from strengths to achieve these goals. My job has been not only to work with the child, but more, to work with and support the families, helping them to improve their mental health and skill base so they are better able to work with and support their children. Parenting is a tough job and I stress to families that we need many different skills to pull out of our parenting “toolbox” in order to best parent our children. It often takes trial and error, thus, having many techniques can make life easier on us. Additionally, anger management and taking the time to take care of ourselves, is critical to a healthy life. Without it, we are unable to effectively deal with what life throws our way.

I can offer you many different approaches to dealing with particular behaviors, through various behavioral techniques, or more structured parenting plans such as Positive Parenting With A Plan – Family Rules (www.family-rules.com) , Love and Logic (www.loveandlogic.com), Explosive Child (www.ccps.info link) and 1,2,3, Magic (www.parentmagic.com). If you follow these links they will take you to the web sites of the creators of each program. Figuring out which technique will work best for your family can be tricky, but together we will sort through it and find the best fit for you and your family. All the above mentioned plans are well known, widely used and actually work.