About Adolescent and Child Psychologist Thomas Packard, Ph.D. Dayton, OH

My Approach

I assume that each family and child that I work with is unique, and I take an individualized approach to helping each determine their needs and goals. I begin with the assumption that you are the best judge of what you and your child need. My job is to put my education and technical knowledge together with your knowledge of your child and family to develop a plan to address your goals.

The work  I do as a pediatric psychologist is based in what is called cognitive-behavioral therapy, which focuses on understanding and changing the connections between our thoughts and our actions. Most of the problems I encounter in my work with families are based on accidental patterns of learning, which produce habits that, while they may be hard to change, can be altered by first understanding them, and then taking specific, targeted actions to do things a different way.

My Experience

I have been licensed as a psychologist for the past 25 years, and have always worked exclusively with families, children and teenagers. I worked for nearly 10 years at Dayton Children’s Medical Center, with a short stint at Children’s Hospital of Stanford in the early ‘90s. I have extensive experience in working with children with chronic medical problems as well as more general behavioral and emotional issues. For nearly 15 years now I have been in private practice in the Centerville-Dayton area, where I continue to work closely with many of the area’s pediatricians, as well as with school districts throughout the south Dayton suburbs.

My Education

I am a proud alumnus of the University of Oregon, where I graduated with a B.A. in psychology in 1980.

I received my Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Michigan State University in 1986, having completed one of the few training programs in the nation at that time which offered specialization in work with children and families. I completed my doctoral program with an internship in the Section of Pediatric Psychology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. Since then my continuing educational pursuits have continued to focus on cognitive-behavioral and behavioral therapy, pediatric populations, learning and attention disorders, and psychophysiological reactions to stress.

My Place in the Community

My wife and I have lived in the same home in Centerville for the past 20 years, where we have raised a son and a daughter. Like just about every other dad I know, I have coached soccer and most other sports, eventually settling in the stands as a soccer and gymnastics parent. For the past 6 years I have been proud to play a small role in helping coach the nationally prominent Science Olympiad team at Magsig Middle School. For most of the years that I have been in private practice I have worked part- time in order to devote as much of my energy as I can to doing what I love doing the most – being a dad.

Confucius: “To study, and then to repeatedly apply what you have learned — is this not a source of pleasure?”