The most common reason families tell me they've been putting off getting support for their teenager is timing. The school year is too busy. There are exams coming up. They have a lot of extracurricular activities. Waiting until summer when things slow down would be better.
Summer is here. And I want to make the case, plainly, that this is not a reason to keep waiting.

The Argument Against Waiting for the Right Moment

There is no right moment for a struggling kid to start therapy. There's only the moment where you stop waiting for a better one.

I've heard "after finals," "after the holidays," "after college applications are done," and now "after summer." The academic year that follows this summer will bring its own reasons to put it off.

What I know from 20+ years of doing this work is that early is almost always better than late. Problems that are addressed in June are easier to work with than the same problems in September, after another summer of momentum in the wrong direction.

Skills that get built over the summer have three months to become habits before the pressure of the new school year arrives. That matters.

What Summer Actually Offers

Lower Stakes  
The school year is a relentless source of evaluation: tests, grades, social dynamics, applications, and performance. Summer strips most of that out.

A teenager who is rigid and defended during the school year, when everything feels high-stakes, is often more open in July. There's less to lose. The pressure is off. That openness is genuinely useful clinically. It's often when the real work gets done.

Time to Practice  
Skills-based therapy, including DBT and CBT, requires practice between sessions to stick. During the school year, a teenager's bandwidth for practicing anything new is limited.

Over the summer, there's room to actually try things, to use a distress tolerance skill when they're dysregulated instead of just discussing it in a session, to notice thought patterns in real time, and to build the habits that will hold when fall arrives.

A Chance to Use the Environment  
This is specific to how BODA works, but it's real: summer is the season for outdoor sessions and retreats.

A kid who does a five-day retreat in the Catskills in July, hiking, paddling, and doing real clinical work outside, has an entirely different entry point into the school year than one who sat through an office session once a week for nine months.

Different setting, different nervous system, different version of the kid.

Doing the work doesn't have to mean sacrificing the summer. It can simply mean using it better.

The Short Version

If you've been waiting for the right time, this is it.

Reach out for a free 15-minute consultation before July. The summer is long enough to build something real.

BODA Therapy provides therapy, coaching, and immersive retreats for preteens, adolescents, young adults, and families. Based in New York and the Catskills.