Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Counseling Children
Counseling Children
Resilience = the dynamic process of people who do better than expected in adverse circumstances;
they beat the odds
Issues in counseling often center on relationships, careers and the search for
meaning and purpose in life
Age 0-2: Normal achievements are eating, sleeping, attachment. Common behavior
problems are stubborness, temper, toileting difficulties. Clinical difficulties are mental
retardation, feeding disorders, autistic spectrum disorder.
Age 2-5: Normal achievements are language, toileting, self-care skills, self-control, peer
relationships. Common behavior problems are arguing, demanding attention, disobedience,
fears, overactivity, resisting bedtime. Clinical disorders are speech and language disorders,
problems stemming from child abuse and neglect, some anxiety disorders, such as phobias.
Age 6-11: Normal achievements are academic skills and rules, rule-governed games, simple
responsibilities. Common behavior problems are arguing, inability to concentrate, selfconsciousness, showing off. Clinical disorders are ADHD, learning disorders, school refusal
behavior, conduct problems.
Age 12-20: Normal achievements are relations with the opposite sex, personal identity,
separation from family, increased responsibilities. Common behavior problems are arguing
and bragging. Clinical disorders are anorexia, bulimia, delinquency, suicide attempts, drug
and alcohol abuse, schizophrenia, depression.
Cognitive:
Universalization: people get better when they understand they are not alone, that
other people have similar problems, suffering is universal.
Insight: people understand themselves and gain new perspectives
Modeling: people profit from watching other people.
Affective:
Acceptance: receiving unconditional positive regard from a significant person, such
as the counselor, builds a person's acceptance of self.
Altruism: change can happen when a person recognizes the gift of care from the
counselor or others or from the sense of giving love, care and help to others.
Transference: it implies the emotional bond created between the counselor and the
client.
Behavioral:
Reality testing: people can change when they can experiment with new behavior and
receive support and feedback.
Ventilation: Having a place to express anger, fear or sadness and still be accepted
promotes change.
Interaction: people improve when they can admit something is wrong.
Step 1: defining the problem through active listening: "In other words, you are feeling ___
because___, and you want ____."
Step 2: clarifying the child's expectations:
Step 3: exploring what has been done to solve the problem
Step 4: exploring what new things could be done to solve the problem
Step 5: obtaining a commitment to try one of the problem-solving ideas
Step 6: closing the counseling interview
To know about the evaluation process, rationale, and results in understandable terms
To be told about the interventions and reasons for them in clear language
To receive information about confidentiality and its limits
To be involved with the counselor and/or parents in decision making and goal setting
To control the release of their personal information
To be released from treatment if unsuccessful
Not to be the scapegoat in a dysfunctional family
Psychoanalytic Counseling
Primary defenses
Identification - the development of role models that people identify with or imitate. It often
occurs with the same-sex parent and may be borne out of love or power.
Projection - attributing ones own unacceptable characteristics to others or to things in the
external world.
Rationalization - an attempt to prove that ones behavior is justified and rational and is thus
worthy of approval by oneself and others.
Denial - a refusal to face unpleasant aspects of reality or to perceive anxiety-provoking
stimuli.
Fantasy - seeking gratification of needs and frustrated desires through the imagination.
Withdrawal - becoming passive or learning to avoid being hurt.
Fixation deciding to remain at the present level of development rather than move to the
next stage.
Undoing - engaging in some form of atonement for immoral or bad behavior or for the
desire to participate in such behavior.
Acting Out - reducing the anxiety aroused by forbidden desires by expressing them.
Compensation - covering up a weakness by emphasizing some desirable trait or reducing
frustration in one area of life by over-gratification in another area.
Intellectualization - the act of separating the normal affect, or feeling, from an unpleasant or
hurtful situation.
Regression - a retreat to earlier developmental stages that are less demanding than those of
the present level.
Sublimation - redirect the libidinal desires and energy into productive and acceptable
activities and outlets.
Person-Centered Counseling
The counseling process
outlined by Rogers (1942) includes 12 steps.
1. The individual comes for help.
2. The helping situation is characterized as a chance to grow.
3. The counselor promotes free expression of feelings about the concerns.
4. The counselor accepts, recognizes, and clarifies these feelings.
5. The persons negative feelings are followed by positive drives toward growth.
6. The counselor accepts and recognizes the positive feelings, which gives the person a chance
to understand himself as he is. Insight and self-understanding emerge.
7. This insight provides a foundation from which the person can move to a new level.
8. Mingled with it is an awakening to clarification of possible decisions and courses of action.
9. Then the beginning of small but significant positive actions begin.
10. Further insight occurs.
11. More integrated positive action, less fear, and more confidence follow.
12. The person feels less need for help and recognizes the relationship is near an end.
Basic principles
of the child-centered relationship are as follows (Virginia Axline):
1. The counselor has a genuine interest in the child and builds a warm, caring relationship.
2. The counselor accepts the child unconditionally, not wishing the child were different.
3. The counselor institutes a feeling of safety and permissiveness in the relationship, allowing
the child freedom to explore and express him- or herself.
4. The counselor maintains sensitivity to the childs feelings and reflects them in a way that
increases the childs self-understanding.
5. The counselor strongly believes in the childs capacity to act responsibly and solve personal
problems, and allows the child to do so.
6. The counselor trusts the inner direction of the child, allowing the child to lead the
relationship and refusing to override the childs direction.
7. The counselor does not hurry the therapeutic process.
8. The counselor uses only the limits necessary for helping the child accept personal and
appropriate responsibility.
Messages:
I am here (nothing will distract me).
I hear you (I am listening carefully).
I understand you.
I care about you.
Play therapy
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