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FeedFamily Dynamics
Can’t figure out your kids? Chances are the Child Study Institute can.
(page 1 of 3)
In the days when Elna Yadin was the age of her average client, having a tutor was embarrassing. “Loser,” she jests now, forming the letter “L” with her index finger and thumb and pasting it to her forehead. “Our clients today have tutors because they want to.”
With a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College, Yadin is a licensed psychologist and a neuroscientist. An international expert in manual-based treatments for anxiety disorders, she works with children and adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, social phobia, panic disorder and specific phobias, splitting her time between the Center for the Treatment of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania and the Child Study Institute on the campus of Bryn Mawr College. As it turns out, the Main Line area provides some of Yadin’s most compelling cases.
“With anxieties, we go where the anxiety lives,” she says. “If someone is afraid of bees, we go looking for bees. If it’s spiders, we take a spider trip. I go to the malls, to houses, wherever.”
A little-known private clinic, CSI has been providing services to area families and children for more than 60 years. With its psychologists (many on the faculty of Bryn Mawr College), educational specialists and speech-language pathologists, no other place in the area has a better bead on the latest trends and relevant theories surrounding our kids—or can determine what’s unique about the Main Line family and why.
“Because we’re on the Main Line, we’re taking advantage of the area’s resources and the willingness to pay for some pretty sophisticated programs—and also of the stressful lifestyle that the lives of the rich and famous create,” says Leslie A. Rescorla, CSI’s director since 1992.
Of course, the most popular CSI is the hit TV show. At Bryn Mawr, CSI investigations are fascinating in their own right, and the solving of mysteries heartfelt. “We have our teeth fixed, so why would we want to live with mental cavities?” Yadin asks, rhetorically. “If we’re suffering, it’s all about the suffering—and suffering should be treated.”
When Bryn Mawr’s CSI began in the 1940s, it provided special support services for the Lower Merion school district, doing so into the mid-’80s. Since then, it has greatly expanded its comprehensive assessments of children, its educational support programs and its therapy services. The staff has developed family treatment models, begun a number of group projects, and offers psychotherapy and group skills designed to improve social reactions and responses to teasing. Others are designed to increase play and cooperation skills.
Before Rescorla arrived in 1985, there were three or four psychologists and about six tutors. Now there’s a staff of 18 psychologists, 14 tutors, three speech pathologists and one occupational therapist. On average, they complete 200 evaluations a year. Another 150 seek after-school tutoring, and another 200 get help with school admission testing. About 30-40 people a year are considered therapy clients. No one prescribes medication—though, if necessary, referrals are issued.
“It’s not a highly medical environment,” Rescorla says. “It’s more of a homey feeling. We’re noncommercial and nonthreatening. Many families send multiple members, maybe one for tutoring and another for therapy.”
The Phebe Anna Thorne School on the Bryn Mawr campus offers a half-day and full-day preschool program for children ages 3-5 in its “traditional” program, as well as an afternoon program for kids with language delays (the Language Enrichment Preschool Program). It recently added a program for toddlers (ages 2-3), who attend a few hours a week along with their mothers. In addition, the Thorne School offers two full-day kindergarten programs in a renovated farmhouse building on the Haverford College campus. One program serves typically developing children who would benefit from an extra year before entering kindergarten. The other serves children with language delays.
“We have the ability to do a lot of things,” says Rescorla, who has a Ph.D. from Yale University.
