Do you ever wonder why your child or young person is sometimes reacting to a situation, but don’t understand why?
Being a parent or carer can be challenging and at times despite our best efforts to try and show we support and understand our child we may still feel at a loss and question what can we do to help.
Sometimes being a child or young person can bring up lots of unexplainable and big feelings, like anger, frustration, sadness and worry.
Do you remember what it felt like to be an anxious child or teenager?
When we are young we make sense of the world around us naturally through play. social, emotional and physical skills develop and cognitively from those experiences we learn to develop life skills. Children seek basic human needs such as safety, acceptance, unconditional love and approval and will often repeat their favourite game or revisit areas that help them to feel safe to build confidence in their abilities as they interact with the world around them. Central to this is how they communicate with people and experience their surroundings through parents, family and significant others.
However, as a child grows and relationships change in the family, friendships and their community coupled with navigating transisitions into school/college negative internal beliefs may develop. They may doubt if they can be loved impacting their ability to build good relationships with others leading to feelings of unhappiness.They can find this overwhelming, confusing and sometimes painful. It may feel too much for them to talk to you as they may feel scared by what they are feeling and experiencing leaving them muddled with mixed thoughts; reluctance to share for fear of upsetting or burdening the ones they care for the most. It can be heartbreaking to watch and sometimes the more loved ones try to help, the more they withdraw and the deeper the distress they bear.
One to one talking/play therapy sessions can really help children and young people as it is unique to age and individual need. By tapping creatively into art, play, music, dance, drama, story telling to work through specific difficulties at a pace fostering curiousity and attunement. It offers children and young people the unconditional space to process what may be going on for them, understand who they see themselves to be and learn how to express their thoughts and feelings in a more positive way. The therapy session becomes their space to say/feel what they want without fear of judgement.
By fostering them to develop strategies to become un-stuck as they learn to move through their feelings hopefully the ripple effect on the family helps everyone to get along a little better.
An important part of the therapeutic process is that they feel comfortable with their Counsellor and the environment. So the first step is to book an initial assessment. This is an information gathering process but also serves as an opportunity for them to see how it ‘feels’ and then make their own decision if they want to move themselves forward with continued sessions.
Our Therapeutic Counsellor, Nita Mehta works specifically with children from aged 3 upwards and young people up to the age of 19. If you are a parent/carer and or know of any children or young people that may benefit from counselling please do get in touch with us – we would be very happy to help: Tel: 07590 663938 or email info@yourcounsellingservice.co.uk