If your child is struggling emotionally and/or socially, counseling may help. Seeking therapy early can minimize problems at home, school and in forming friendships and setting them up for a healthy future.
Child counselors help children interpret the issues they’re dealing with (or the trauma that’s occurred) in a way that makes sense to them. Keep reading the article below to learn more about My Child’s Therapy.
Storytelling is a great way to bring children into a safe space and provide an opportunity for bonding, connection and nurture. It also provides a wonderful jumping off point for further creative processing through art and play, and can often be used as a bridge to more direct conversation if the child is ready for this.
Therapeutic stories use metaphors to explore emotional issues that are difficult for a child to talk about directly. These stories often speak to a particular coping strategy the child is using that isn’t working, or that they may be feeling stuck in, and offer alternative possibilities and creative solutions for dealing with their issue. These stories will also give the child a new perspective of their situation and an understanding that they are not alone in what they are experiencing, which can help to ease some of their anxiety.
These stories are designed to empower the child by allowing them to empathise with characters in their own stories who face similar situations, and can offer insight into different traditions and values. They can also reveal differences and commonalities in life experiences across cultures around the world, and encourage the children to identify with positive and adaptive patterns of thought, emotion and behavior.
In the process of telling the story, the therapist will typically introduce a container of small tokens, like poker chips, and explain that these are ‘feelings’. The therapist will then tell a non-threatening personal or fictional story that demonstrates both positive and negative emotions and invite the child to put the tokens down on the feelings cards that correspond with each of these emotions.
After the child has identified the different emotions in the story, they will then be prompted to think about their own life and what kinds of feelings they have experienced. The therapist will then ask them to create their own personal or fictional story that reflects these feelings, and encourage the children to continue identifying and sharing their feelings with one another.
The narrative journeys that the child takes in these sessions will ultimately assist them in re-constructing their own positive and adaptive beliefs about themselves, the world they live in and the way they deal with their problems. The CYW will then be better equipped to utilize these tools of therapeutic storytelling within their practice.
The Mad Game
Whether children are dealing with trauma or just the typical stresses and frustrations of childhood and adolescence, therapy can help. Depending on the situation, therapists may use different approaches. In general, child counselors will focus on helping kids understand their feelings, improve self-esteem and confidence, and learn healthy coping mechanisms.
Children who have experienced trauma often struggle to open up in therapy. To encourage them to speak freely, therapists may use the Mad Game, an activity that helps children identify their feelings and practice expressing them in a healthy way. Therapists will read a non-threatening story to children and ask them to mark it with different tokens on feeling cards that represent positive or negative emotions. The therapist will then prompt them to tell their own stories, using the same process with new tokens and feelings cards.
This technique is especially useful for children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can have a devastating impact on their lives if not addressed early. Symptoms include intense and upsetting memories, flashbacks, nightmares, sleep issues like insomnia, and uncontrollable anger, aggression, and/or agitation. Children who have PTSD can benefit from child counseling to help them overcome these symptoms and reclaim their lives.
The therapist will also encourage children to think about the positive aspects of their life and how they’ve grown since the traumatic event. This will help them to realize that change is natural and their feelings will eventually pass.
In addition to talk therapy, therapists will use various other activities to teach children about their feelings. For example, they may have children draw or play. They will also teach children coping skills such as mindfulness and deep breathing. These techniques will allow the children to deal with their emotions in a safe and productive manner, rather than acting out in unhealthy ways.
Most therapists will encourage parents to participate in their child’s therapy, though this depends on the child’s situation and the therapist’s approach. In some cases, parents will meet with the therapist alone while in other cases, the therapist will work directly with the child. Online therapy services such as Amwell and Synergy eTherapy offer child counseling through their network of licensed psychologists and counselors. Their telemedicine platforms are Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant, which means they are secure.
Feeling Cards
Feeling cards are a great visual tool to help kids understand their emotions. You can use them with young children to practice naming their feelings, or with older kids and teens to talk about how certain experiences make them feel. They can also be a good starting point for talking about how to handle those feelings, and what a healthy response would look like.
For example, one program that Heather has worked with uses The Bears cards as a way to give clients who have been severely traumatised and exploited by the sex trade a doorway to connect and share their emotions. She found that using the cards helped them feel safe to share their stories, and also gave them a vocabulary of feelings to express what they were feeling.
Another resource that can be a good way to build emotional awareness is the deck of feeling cards from Tranquille Therapy. These feel-good and feel-bad feelings cards encourage kids to think about how different experiences can make them feel, and provide a range of coping strategies that they can try when they are experiencing negative emotions.
You can also use feeling cards as a pre and post-session check in. Kelly Wisnefske, an equine services manager at Rawhide Inc, which provides support for at-risk youth, says that she often has her teenage boys select a card to describe how they feel before or after each session. This helps them communicate their progress during the session, and also provides a valuable feedback tool for therapists.
If you have kids who are interested in art therapy, a pack of creative prompts that include drawing yourself as a superhero and painting freely with your fingers can be an excellent way to get them started. For a more structured activity, you can try a set of art cards, such as the Feelings and Emotions for Artists card deck, which gives you a variety of ideas for creating different artworks, with suggestions on what to focus on based on the feeling prompt.
You can also incorporate these cards into games that you play with your students, such as Go Fish or Jenga. Alternatively, you could hide the cards around the room, and ask them to find a card that relates to their current state of mind when they come into your office. This is a fun way to promote self-awareness and self-discovery without feeling overwhelmed.
Blocks
Blocks are a classic childhood toy and can be used for many developmental purposes. They are available in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials, making them the perfect tool to teach children cognitive skills like shape recognition, number identification and colors. They are also a great way to work on fine motor skills and to practice the social skill of sharing.
Block play is open-ended and allows children to create structures, settings and stories to express themselves. As kids get older, they can even use their blocks to create scenarios and situations for their imaginary friends to interact with them in. It is important to allow them this creative freedom and not interfere with their imaginative play.
While some types of therapy have specific goals, a child therapist will generally offer an emotionally safe environment, an empathetic ear and tools for a positive change in thoughts and behaviors. The goal of a child therapist is to help a young person learn new ways to solve problems and cope with negative emotions, such as anger.
A child therapist may use different approaches depending on the situation and the needs of the family. For example, a child therapist who utilizes cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques will attempt to teach the child new ways to respond to their feelings and thoughts in a healthier way, while a therapist using humanistic or person-centered therapy will work with a family to build trust and foster strong relationships.
