TEENS AND FAMILIES
Because "nothing" is not an answer.
Max Hogan Counselling
The Door That Closed and Nobody Explained Why
A diagnosis explains a lot. It rarely tells you what to do on Tuesday.
Every question you ask gets one word back, and it's usually "fine."
You've tried talking. You've tried not talking. You've asked the school and the school said they'd keep an eye on it.
Here is the part that's hard to hear and worth hearing anyway. Teenagers are often more willing to talk to someone who isn't their parent. That isn't a failure on your part. It's how adolescence is built.
They need somewhere to work out who they are that isn't inside the family they're separating from. That's the whole developmental task. You can't be both the person they push against and the person they confide in.
What Teenagers in Hong Kong Are Actually Carrying
Academic pressure that starts younger here than almost anywhere on earth.
A friendship group that reshuffles every June as families leave. By sixteen, most international school students have said goodbye to more close friends than most adults do in a decade.
An identity assembled across two or three countries, with no single place that answers the question of where they're from.
Parents whose own stress is running high in a demanding, expensive city, which teenagers absorb whether or not anyone discusses it.
Social media, constant comparison, and a version of adolescence that no adult in their life actually experienced first-hand.
How I work with them
I'm direct and I don't talk down. Teenagers pick up on a performance faster than anyone and they shut down the moment they see one.
Sessions aren't a lecture and they aren't a report card. We work on what's actually happening: friendships, pressure, anger, anxiety, identity, family. Practical where practical helps, and slower where it needs to be. Leave with practical skills and more understanding of WHY.
Some sessions are conversation. Some are more useful walking, drawing, or doing something else while we talk, particularly with teens who find sustained eye contact difficult.
One thing I do differently with teenagers: I try to put the problem on the table rather than inside them.
There's a difference between "you're an anxious kid" and "anxiety has been running your mornings." The first is an identity. The second is something we can look at together, from the same side.
Teenagers who have been the problem at home and the problem at school for a while tend to respond to that shift quite quickly.
And we'll figure out what to do about it. Not someday. Now.
Common Issues
Withdrawal
A teenager who used to talk and doesn't anymore, and nobody can say exactly when it changed.
Anxiety and School Refusal
Mornings that have become a daily battle nobody is winning.
Third Culture Identity
Belonging everywhere and nowhere, and moving again next year.
Anger at Home
Escalation that's frightening everyone, including the person doing it.
Parents Separating
A teenager holding the middle of something they didn't cause.
After a Diagnosis
ADHD or autism identified, report received, and no idea what happens next.
Friendships and Isolation
Exclusion, bullying, or a social world that reshuffles annually.
Perfectionism
High achievers quietly terrified of the first thing they can't do well.
Neurodivergent Teens and the Families Around Them
A diagnosis explains a lot. It rarely tells you what to do on Tuesday.
Plenty of families here go through assessment, receive a thorough and expensive report, and then discover there's almost nothing afterwards. Your child knows they have ADHD or is autistic. Nobody has helped them work out what that means for how they study, how they handle friendships, or how they think about themselves.
I work with neurodivergent teenagers on the part a report can't cover. Understanding themselves without shame attached to it. Managing frustration and overwhelm. Handling a school system built for a brain that works differently to theirs. Rebuilding confidence after years of being told to try harder.
I'm currently completing a clinical placement in a Hong Kong school working with adolescents, including neurodivergent students. That's daily, practical exposure to how these young people actually experience school, and to what parents are up against.
On scope, plainly: I don't carry out assessments and I don't write educational psychology reports. If your child needs an assessment, I'll point you toward people who do it well. My work begins after, or runs alongside.
Supporting Younger Children
I specialize in getting teenagers to come out of their shell, but work well with children of all ages (typically therapeutic services can start around age 5)
For Parents
You're part of this and you will be involved.
How it usually runs. A first conversation with you, without your teenager. Then I meet them on their own. Then regular check-ins with you alongside their sessions.
What I'll tell you. How the work is going, the themes we're on, and anything that raises a genuine safety concern. Always the second one, immediately.
What I won't tell you. The specifics of what they said. Teenagers only speak honestly when they're certain the room holds. I explain that boundary to you and to them in the first week, so nobody is surprised by it later.
Most of the parents I meet are exhausted, second-guessing every decision, and receiving contradictory advice from every direction. Some of the most useful work I do is with the parents, not the teenager.
And if your child needs something I'm not the right person for, I'll say so early rather than late.
Fees block:
Teen session, 50 minutes: HKD 1,200
Parent consultation, 30 minutes: HKD 700
Family session, 75 minutes: HKD 1,550
Online sessions or in person, Central. The free 15-minute consultation is for parents first.