For Pam Haefner, It’s About Striving for Thriving
By Leonard Shapiro
For Middleburg Life
In her sophomore year as an accounting student at Brockport State in New York, Pam Haefner heard a troubling news story on the radio one
day on her way to class. That report led her to change her major, and ultimately her life’s work.
“It was about the incidence of child abuse being on the rise,” Haefner said in a recent interview. “I decided that if I could help even one child have a better life, it would be worth it. I changed my major to social work that day.”
For most of the last 20 years, Haefner has clearly made a difference, and not just for a singe child. She’s a licensed clinical social worker who recently moved from Leesburg to her Middleburg office at 101 N. Jay Street. Her clients range from toddlers to teenagers, to postpartum moms dealing with breast-feeding and little sleep to mothers and fathers trying to figure out the best way to cope with the complexities of raising their children.
Her psycho-therapy practice is called “Thrive Family Services,” with much of her work involving parent and child interaction.
“The whole focus,” she said, “is for families to thrive.”
And so, she admitted, when she walks into a Target “and I see someone struggling with a child who’s crying or misbehaving, I wish I could get involved, because I really
do think I can help. I just want to see the relationship between a parent and a child be the best that it can be.”
Working with new mothers after the birth of their children is also among her specialties.
“It can also be very stressful on the mother and the father, and their relationship,” Haefner said. “I try to help parents reduce the stress and anxiety. Some women also have postpartum depression.
They have difficulty with breast feeding, or they’re exhausted being up with the baby all night. It’s not like the old days where you’d have the support of a grandma or grandpa living nearby. Out here, people are more isolated and on their own.”
Haefner runs a new mom’s support group every Tuesday at 10 a.m. in her office, just as she did in Leesburg. She also works closely with children, usually two or older.
“They talk about the terrible twos but it’s really the terrible 2 1/2s,” she said. “Tantrums, separation anxiety when mom or dad go off to work. It can be toilet training. My husband calls me “The Poop Queen.” I have had many kids with all kinds of toilet issues. Often these are easily resolved in a short period. Typically, it’s just about how to lessen their anxiety.”
She also deals with children acting out in the classroom, and others she described as “school-refusals,” kids who absolutely don’t want to go to school. One of her more interesting cases involved a pre- school child “ripping the school up, just outrageous behavior.
“I went into the classroom and sat there and watched for an hour,” she said. “He would look over at me every once in a while and I’d just smile at him. Later, I said to the teacher, all I want you to do is smile at him. Don’t instruct him, don’t reprimand him. At the end of the day, the teacher said the child came up and said ‘you know that lady who was here earlier? I liked her.’ She asked him why. He said ‘she smiled at me.’
Then he told the teacher ‘I like you, too, because you smiled at me.’ Then she said to him ‘I like you, too.’ A week later, there was no problem.”
Even in stable, loving family situations, other problems can arise.
“A lot of parents will say ‘I was fine with my first child but I’m having a hard time handling this one,’” Haefner said. “We try to find out what makes that child tick. No child wakes up in the morning and says ‘I want to be a pain.’….Bad behavior is born out of what need is not being fulfilled.”
Haefner is the mother of two well- adjusted teenagers, 16-year-old Justin and 13-year-old Luke. Her husband, a science teacher at Hill School, also had a Leesburg practice as a psychologist before the family moved to Middleburg two years ago in order to “simplify our lives.” Paul Haefner is a rider, as is Justin, and Paul sees patients mainly as an equestrian sports psychologist.
Pam Haefner has a Masters in social work from Catholic University followed by another post-graduate program at the Washington Psychoanalytic Foundation. She’s been practicing for 20 years and said she and her family are definitely thriving after their move to Middleburg.
Plainly put, she also lives to help many others do the same.
Pamela’s website is http://www.pamelahaefner.com/ and she can be reached at 540-687-4114.