She specializes in working with children and their families to understand the challenges they are facing and to help them develop skills to cope with those challenges. Dr. Paczkowski has a background in evidence-based practices. She integrates psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and family systems interventions to best address the concerns that children, adolescents, and their families bring to treatment.

She views therapy as a collaborative and dynamic process in which goals and interventions are re-evaluated as clients progress. She views her office as a place where children and adolescents learn how to help themselves, and where the important people in their lives can learn to provide support and create an environment that fosters therapeutic change.

Dr. Paczkowski employs psychological testing using measures of social-emotional, cognitive, and academic functioning to provide families with a comprehensive picture of their child’s strengths and struggles. The goal of such testing is to increase parents’ understanding of what underlies their child’s distress or difficult behavior, as well as to clarify recommendations for treatment. She aids parents in obtaining appropriate educational accommodations to help their children succeed in their school environment. Her work in this domain is strongly informed by her past experience in a therapeutic school setting, where she participated in IEP meetings with her clients’ teachers and parents as part of the treatment team.

Dr. Paczkowski earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She completed her internship at The Help Group in Sherman Oaks, California, where she provided both outpatient and school-based treatment. Before moving to the D.C. area, she worked with adopted children and their families in a community mental health setting in Los Angeles, where she developed additional expertise in providing services through an adoption-specific lens.