Counseling for Children

Counseling engages people of all circumstances and backgrounds in a therapeutic process. It involves gathering information and building upon a trusting connection between counselor and client, to foster emotional and mental well being. At Frisco Christian Counseling, children’s counseling incorporates all the above, yet is specialized, considering unique approaches to addressing a child’s developmental needs.

While behaviors and symptoms may flag and alert household adults of a child’s counseling need, it is more than behavior modification and symptom reduction. There is root and reason under the network of behavior and symptoms eliciting parental concern. They often indicate a problem with a child whose issue is based on fear, having experienced some degree of trauma.

He or she may not be fully able to verbalize their feelings about the pain that warranted therapy, let alone understand the process in the way an adult would. For this reason, therapists who engage with children must be skilled at fostering rapport and connection with younger clients.

They help them navigate their past and present:

• to interpret difficult experiences,
• interrupt negative and unhealthy patterns of thought and behavior, and
• cultivate healthy and positive mindsets and actions through creative approaches effective with young populations.

Parents and caregivers sometimes avoid counseling, due to ignorance or unfortunate experiences of their own. However, negative mindsets about therapy hinder the healing made available through effective engagement and treatment. Let’s note some myths and dispel hesitation before further identifying the benefits and features of children’s counseling.

Myth 1: They’re only kids! They’ll grow out of it.

Children are a vulnerable population because of their age, size, and evolving developmental status. They are not fully equipped with the tools, comprehension, or language for the full scope of all they may have encountered to date in their young lives. Their exposure or experience may produce an external response, resulting in an undesirable behavior or a shift in disposition.

These outward expressions represent attempts to process and extinguish internal pain. Children’s affect, ability to regulate their emotions, changes in appetite and sleep, and behaviors can signal a need for support and intervention beyond an assumption that they will naturally outgrow something that has likely shifted the trajectory of their lives.

Myth 2: They don’t even know what’s happening around them.

Outside of a literal cry for help, children’s actions and reactions tell a story, sometimes pleading with caring adults to peer beneath the surface. While they may not be able to fully articulate, their feelings are real and valid. Children are sensitive and perceptive, often discerning the subtle nuances of complex situations. They know, without complete comprehension, when something is imbalanced; the disconnect can engender emotional and behavioral difficulties as they try to make sense out of what doesn’t make sense to them.

Myth 3: That’s just how they are; That’s just how our family is.

The experiences of childhood shape kids as they grow within family groups. If repetitive issues are not properly attended to and resolved (even those that have been noted in siblings or family members), dysfunction lingers, impairing them and others they will relate to in future generations.

Children are not independent agents but are nested within families. They rely on parents, guardians, or institutional entities responsible for holistic mental, emotional, and social care. When counselors partner with the family or home ecosystem, there are clear benefits, addressing the child’s individual needs. Furthermore, effective therapy engages and transforms the adults and environments who influence those children long after therapy terminates.

Support your child, honor the investment of the therapist, and trust the integrity of the process. That may mean that you, as the primary adult, may have to adapt to unexpected elements.

Caring adults in a child’s life must demonstrate patience and flexibility as the child and therapist build rapport and sustain an alliance. Hence, you may be asked to leave the room as the process evolves. Fostering the initial therapeutic bond is part of counseling, which may be inhibited by your presence. Most children naturally want to please their parents and may censor themselves if they fear negative repercussions such as ridicule, punishment, accusation, or disbelief or if they sense that what they share may endanger or upset their parents.

Your child’s progress advances with your attitude and actions. Parental contributions link to the gains you want to see, requiring time and consistent investment for results to show themselves.

Beyond sessions, you have a stake in your child’s well being, so you may seek to do the following:

• Consistently affirm your child’s identity apart from his or her symptoms and/or behaviors.
• Establish and maintain appropriate boundaries and reasonable expectations marked by firm, clear, and warm communication.
• Acknowledge your child’s efforts and commitment to the process.
• Be specific and consistently praise the positive behaviors and changes you see.

Although it can frustrate parents to navigate the challenges of children’s disruptive behaviors or feeling disconnected from a child who cannot verbalize “what’s the matter,” therapy can be a teaching tool for parents and family. Consequently, counseling professionals may engage the adults directly and peripherally.

Your child’s counselor may engage you through observation and engagement in a joint session. It teaches parents, in the moment, how to play, which is something many adults forget to do as life heaps its realities. Yet, the shared experience in therapy reconnects parents with their inner child, often reacquainting them with their own needs, past and present. Joint sessions align adults with their kids, inviting them to learn or refresh themselves about how to listen, empathize and engage, developing the language and responses that fortify the bonds between them and their children.

Practitioners also offer psycho-education as a teaching instrument, often pre- or debriefing with parents. When necessary, joint sessions permit therapists to supportively coach a parent/guardian through direct engagement with the child in play or activity, which fosters developmentally appropriate exchanges that children embrace and find relatable.

Additionally, counselors support parents by listening, providing feedback, or sharing strategies for adult coping, appropriate behavior modeling, and practicing healthy responses to children’s triggered behaviors or reactions to trauma.

Children’s counseling at Frisco Christian Counseling may combine elements of talk therapy with a modified emphasis on creative engagement. To adults, it may seem like a play session, but therapists use play to communicate fluently with children. It is the language and work of childhood. Through play, children convey accounts of their experiences clearly and honestly. It allows them to process emotion, enabling them to speak hard truths about their experience or exposure. Creativity affords children the opportunity to apply insights to the behavioral and emotional choices affecting their interactions with peers and adults at home and beyond.

Consequently, therapists at Frisco Christian Counseling may facilitate projects and play experiences to effectively engage children in healing and building from a place of strength. Children’s communication, especially through recreation, is uncluttered by the ways adults have learned to hamper their truest feelings. Creative therapies serve dual aims: to unlock a child’s curiosity while providing a means to safely express uncomfortable feelings without camouflaging emotion from self or others. Children’s counseling hones this skill, translating the universal language of play into real-life principles, in real-time, ready to impact their lives now and later.

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6

At Frisco Christian Counseling, therapy provides an avenue for kids to address life conflicts, yet in a child-palatable manner. Thereby, children reap the benefit of processing grievous experiences in a life-giving setting with an empathetic support person. It furnishes them with a framework for navigating deep pain while activating childlike insight and innocence to build resilience. The sampling below highlights topics that may be present during children’s counseling:

• Family trauma
• Grief, loss
• Addiction
• Abuse
• Incest
• Adoption
• Foster care
• Change in family status
• Transition
• Behavior
• ADD/ADHD
• Relocation
• Anger
• Depression
• Anxiety

While adults may occasionally choose therapy as a check-up and not only as a response to an issue, children often enter the therapeutic environment because of a precipitating incident or an evolving transition. They don’t necessarily choose to go on their own, but the decision is often made with them in mind. Hence, compassion must be exercised in the process of selecting a counselor that fits.

Consider someone who can work well with your child, while effectively including you and your family. Ask questions and be willing to listen to their responses. Pay attention to how they engage and address your concerns and questions. Notice how your child responds in the first few sessions. Allow them time and opportunity to establish a rapport and a pace for their initial work together.

At Frisco Christian Counseling, you have the available support of well-trained and experienced counselors whose approaches accommodate the population we serve. Please contact us today to continue the healing journey through children’s counseling that will not only support your child but also champion you and your entire family.