Children

Nurturing Positive Self-Esteem in Children: Empowerment Through Counselling

Positive self-esteem is crucial for a child’s overall well-being and success throughout their lifetime. It serves as the foundation for healthy relationships, academic achievement, and emotional resilience. However, many children struggle with low self-esteem, which can have long-lasting effects on their mental health and self-confidence. While self-esteem can naturally fluctuate during chil... »

Strategies for Career Counselling

As a counsellor, you will likely encounter clients who are anxious about career-related concerns. They may be kids, teenagers, or adults, and may come from any number of social or economic strata; vocational pressure effects people of all demographics, and there is a robust literature that suggests strategies that counsellors can use to attend to these anxieties as they appear in these populations... »

7 Powerful Strategies to Help Your Child Balance Their Brain Budget

This article has been republished with the permission of Superpower Kids. Superpower Kids develop fun, engaging social and emotional learning programs for children aged 5 to 10 years. You can find more informative articles like this at Superpower Kids Blog »

The Dangers of Teen Sexting (And How to Help Their Parents Help Them)

You may have faced this scenario before: anguished parents turn up in your rooms and plead with you for help: their cherished teenager, they find, is now sending and/or receiving sexually explicit text messages, photos, or videos. Oh, what to do? »

Counselling Parents: The Early Stages

The counselling of parents, like most counselling and many other endeavours, is likely to be heavily influenced by what happens in the early stages. If parents come to you and feel welcomed, respected, and understood, they are more likely to open up with the vital information that will enable you to help their children change challenging or harmful behaviours. If in addition, you are able to conve... »

Counsellor Tips: Principles of Good Parenting

Have you ever wrestled with a problem, walked away from it for a period, and then ended up having an epiphany while you were officially “off duty” from the problem? Laurence Steinberg, an internationally renowned expert on psychological development during adolescence, talks about having such an experience leading to the development of his book on parenting. He says that he was reading ... »

Play Therapy Activities to Develop Social Skills

Social skills include the ways in which the child relates to others in order to make friends, get their needs met, be assertive, employ boundaries and cooperate. In order to develop social skills effectively, it is important that the child understands and experiences different behaviors and their consequences. To achieve this in play therapy, a therapist may use the following activities: »

Book Review: Acceptance and Mindfulness Treatments for Children and Adolescents

Greco, L.A., and Hayes, S.C. (2008). Acceptance and Mindfulness Treatments for Children and Adolescents. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications. »

What Causes School Bullying?

Bullying behaviour is a complex issue and research in the area does not identify the supremacy of any one cause of bullying. Below is a summary overview of key factors that are considered to contribute in various ways, to the likelihood of bullying behaviours. The information below is not a complete list of all factors. They do represent major categories of focus with examples of predominant facto... »

Play Therapy Activities to Engage Children

In play therapy, children are encouraged to express, through play, all the things they may have difficulty saying or contextualising into words. As a consequence of this primary focus, play therapy has expanded to include most of the expressive art forms including drawing, painting, sculpturing, music, dance, drama, movement, poetry, and storytelling. So while the mainstay of play therapy is still... »

Developing Social Skills with Play Therapy

Social skills include the ways in which the child relates to others in order to make friends, get their needs met, be assertive, employ boundaries and cooperate. In order to develop social skills effectively, it is important that the child understands and experiences different behaviours and their consequences. To achieve this in play therapy, a therapist may use the following activities: »

Teaching Children to Deal with Emotions

For children to deal effectively with the experience of strong feelings, they must first know how to identify their feelings. It is important to talk to children about their feelings and help them see the link between their feelings and their behaviour. This will help them gain an understanding of how their feelings can affect the choices they make, thus improving their level of self control. Belo... »

Children and Emotional Development

A child’s earliest experiences with emotion most often occurs in the family setting. Consequently, the family plays an important role in the development of emotional understanding, particularly interactions between parents and children. For example, children who possess secure attachments with their parents show greater emotional understanding than those children who do not possess secure at... »

Counselling Dilemma: Supporting an Anxious Child

Charlotte is 11. She has been brought along to counselling by her mother, Fran. According to Fran, Charlotte has always been a “quiet and shy” girl. Fran remarks that she is not surprised by this as she too was a reserved and anxious child. In recent weeks however, Fran has noticed that Charlotte has become increasingly withdrawn. Charlotte becomes particularly upset before school and ... »

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