Counselling children

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Counselling children

• Art, sand tray and play therapy

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Art therapy with children
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Sand tray therapy with children
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Session with parents or parent
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Session with parents
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Initial session with parents or parent

• First session with the parents or parent to get
  information about the situation that doesn't need
  to be talked about in front of the child

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Parents initial session

• What works well?
• What doesn't work well?
• Family background
• Are parents together
• Are parents separated
• Are they re-partnered
• Step parenting issues
• Parenting disagreements
• Boundaries

• Strengths and talents of the child
• Hobbies
• Issues with siblings
• Issues that brings child to counselling
• ? emotional
• ? behavioural

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Who will benefit from counselling? The parent (s)
child / whole family

• Assessment of who will benefit most.
• What are the issues?-
• Do they relate to the parenting or surrounding
  situations between parents

• Childs issues
• Behavioural
• Emotional
• At home
• At school
• With friends
• With separation from parent ?

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Childs emotional signs

• Fears fear of monsters
• Nightmares
• Fear of new things, fear of going to school, fear
  of visits etc
• General anxiety
• Sadness crying a lot, being clingy at
  separation of parents, after moving house loss
  of friends
• Anger and aggression throwing things, generally
  angry after certain events, towards certain
  people,
• acting out, destroying toys, hurting siblings,
  pets etc

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Childs behaviour

• Aggressive behaviour kicking things, destroying
  things like toys,
• hitting or kicking others, siblings friends etc
• Bullying others ,
• acting out at school
• Not listening
• Not obeying, being disrespectful to others
• Back chatting to parent (s)
• Not wanting to go to school being bullied by
  other kids,
• Shyness and feeling anxious about going to
  school,

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Play is therapeutic in itself
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What is play and sand tray therapy and how does
it work?

• Sand tray therapy has been developed by a Jungian
  therapist over 50 years ago.
• She found that this kind of therapy is a non
  intrusive, non-judgemental approach to help the
  child express itself
• Play is the natural language of a child
• It works often on a symbolic level and lets
  children work inner and outer conflicts out in a
  non threatening way

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Self directed play story telling

• Figurines are placed in the sand tray
• The child either talks or is silently placing
  figures in the sand and moving them around
• I ask about the story and who is in the story

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How it works

• Fears can be externalised as a dragon or monster
  in the sand tray
• Sadness can be expressed by choosing a figurine
  that looks sad or by isolating a figure
• Anger can safely be expressed (motorbikes or
  warrior figures often help)

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Kids skills

• Kids skills
• Learning to have courage
• Learning to challenge fears
• Turning fears into challenged that can be
  overcome
• Creating support to help challenge fears
• Reward system