Chapter 1: Introduction to a Child’s World

Lectures: 09/15/23

Reading Notes:

History
● Children were servants and disposed if they were handicapped
● Children with distressing behaviors = possession of devil
● 17th century: John Locke → children should be reared with thought and care
● Freud
● Children as property of parents until 1960s

Causes of children’s problems:

● Intersection of personal factors, family variables, cultural, environmental, and many other
influences
● Most vulnerable children: face multiple risk factors
● Counselors = adults who help children discover their own strengths and practice their
skills → reach potential
● Difficulty adjusting to natural cognitive, physical, emotional, and social changes
● SOCIETY: Overwhelmed by conditions of changing world
● HOME: Need warm, loving, and stable home environments to grow and develop in a
healthy manner
● CHANGING VALUES: Children form/change values rapidly, struggling with trying to
determine own values

UNICEF “The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child”

1. Children are individuals (not possessions)
2. Children start life as totally dependent beings
3. The actions, or inactions, of government impact children more strongly than any other
group in society
4. Children’s views are rarely heard and rarely considered in the political process
5. Many changes in society are having a disproportionate, and often negative, impact on
children
6. The healthy development of children is crucial to the future well-being of any society
7. The costs to society of failing its children are huge

Well-being:
● Different definitions
● The presence of positive emotions and moods
● The avsensce of negative emotions
● Satisfaction with life
● Fulfillment
● Positive functioning
● Physical, psychological, social and cognitive domains
● Irreducible needs (Brazelton and Greenspan)
○ Continuing, nurturing relationships
○ Physical protection and safety with regulations to safeguard those needs
○ Experiences tailored to individual differences for each child’s optimal
development
○ DEvelopmentally appropriate opportunities as building blocks for cognitive,
motor, language, emotional, and social skills
○ Adults who set limits, provide structure and guide by having appropriate
expectations
○ A community that is stable, supportive and consistent
● Murphey and colleagues: exercising abilities, bonds with others, adapting successfully to
challenges, and being happy

Resilience:
● The ability to handle stress in a positive way
● The ability to continue to progress in their positive development despite being bent,
compressed, or stretched by factors in a risky environment
● The capacity young people have for healthy development and successful living
● Focus needs to be on the strength of people
● Natural drive, self righting tendency toward health not limited to ethinicity, social class,
or geographical boundary
● 4 categories of personal strengths are the positive developmental outcomes of resilience:
○ Social competence → skills needed to form positive relationships with others
○ Problem solving → good intellectual functioning, proactive problem solvers
○ Autonomy → One’s sense of self, positive identity and power, independence
○ Sense of purpose → Life has meaning, belief in positive and strong future
● Environmental characteristics in families and communities that support positive
development:
○ Caring and support (with at least one adult, most important)
○ High expectations
○ Opportunities for participation

Community Services:
● 3 types
 ○ Preventive → provide for space, socializing, physical activity, and mental
stimulation, schools
○ Supportive → goal of preserving healthy family life by helping members
○ Rehabilitative → Enable or restore a person’s ability to participate effectively in
the community by correcting behavior, providing mental health services, and
responding to special needs

Counseling:
● Relationship between 2 people, counselor and client
● A proces to help individuals toward overcoming obstacles to their personal growth,
wherever these may be encountered, and toward achieving optimum development of their
personal resources
● Profession that deals with personal, social, vocational, empowerment and educational
concerns
● Find new ways to behave, feel, think
● Counseling vs. psychotherapy
○ Similar objectives and techniques
○ Main dif: counseling explores conscious processes, psychotherapy examines
unconscious processes

● To be listened to and to be heard

● To be supported while you gather your forces and get your bearings
● A fresh look at alternatives and some new insights learning some needed skills
● To face your fears
● To come to a decision and the courage to act on it and to take the risks that living
demands
● Prevents “normal” problems from becoming more serious and resulting in
delinquency, school, failure, and emotional disturbance
● Create healthy environment to help children cope with stresses and conflicts of growth
and development

3 Areas of counseling:
1. Clients thoughts and feelings about life at present
2. Where the client would like to be in life
3. Plans to reduce any discrepancy between the first and second areas

Children bring 3 pieces of information to the counseling session:

1. Their problem or concern
2. Their feelings about the problem
3. Their expectations of the counselor

5 Categories of problems:
1. Interpersonal conflict or conflict with others
2. Intrapersonal conflict or conflict with teh self
3. Lack of information about self
4. Lack of information about the environment
5. Lack of skill

Goals of counseling:
● Becoming one’s own counselor
● Positive behavior change
● Problem solviong
● Decision making
● Personal growth
● Remediation
● Self acceptance

Counseling Focus Scale: Developing meaning and purpose in everyday living vs. solving
specific problems (or both)

● Quadrant 1: children are solving

problems and seem to be finding
purpose, get along well, staying out of
their way and helping them receive
appropriate teaching
● Quadrant 2: children find purpose in
life but are unable to solve many of
their problems, establishing problem
solvings strategies
● Quadrant 3: children not solving
problems and not finding value in
life, depression, potential suivide,
lack of love and care, remedial, encouragement
● Quadrant 4: children good at problem solving but don’t find life exciting or challenging,
developmental counseling, building high points in their life
 09/15/23 Lecture

Brief summary:
● Children face a difficult world and might need help dealing with societal and
developmental stresses
● Some children exhibit resiliency in spite of difficult conditions
● Counseling is one tool/process to prevent normal problems from escalating, create a
healthier environment and intervene for children already in trouble

Difficult world (sources):

● Societal level
○ Poverty
○ Public health
○ Conflict ridden society
○ War
○ Terrorism
○ Job market
○ Policy and laws/education
● Family level (need a warm loving stable home)
○ Abuse
○ Divorce
○ Changing families, family constellations
○ Changing responsibilities of kids and parents
○ Less constructive parent-child time
● Values that are in flux / shifting values
○ Sexuality
○ Lifestyles
○ Gender roles
○ Drugs
○ Ethical and moral issues

More risk factors → More vulnerability

Most significant indicators of poor long term outcomes:

● Not living with both parents
● Household headed by high school dropout
● Family income below poverty level
● Parents without steady job
● Family receiving welfare benefits
 ● No health insurance

https://www.childrensdefense.org/state-of-americas-children/soac-2021-factsheets/

Resilience: (“bounce back”)

● Not a shield from negative circumstances, but the bounceback
○ Negative things affect them and then they recover from it
● Personal strengths (outcomes of resilience → develop these things when they are
resilient; but also… people who have these things before hand are more likely to be
resilient → CYCLICAL help build resilience and are outcomes of resilience)
○ Social competence
○ Problem solving
○ Autonomy
○ A sense of purpose
● Environmental characteristics that support positive development
○ Caring and support
○ High expectations
○ Opportunities for participation

Counseling
● The application of mental health, psychological or human development principles,
through cognitive, affective, behavioral, or systemic intervention strategies, that address
wellness, personal growth, or career developments as well as pathology
● Building resilience, strengthening the child to face other challenges
● Relationship between 2 (or more) people so that one can help the other resolve or
prevent a problem
● Key areas of focus
○ Client’s thoughts, feelings about life at present
○ Where the client would like to be in life
○ Plans to reduce any discrepancy between these