Features Of The Work Of A Psychologist With Children

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

For many years I have been working with adults, and the request to work with their children is one of the most frequent. At the same time, it is extremely rare that the children themselves are brought to my office. How many times has it happened in my practice - you work with mom for a while, and it turns out that her relationship with her son or daughter has gradually improved. Repeatedly I also heard the question: "You worked with me, my child's behavior became smoother, it became generally easier, maybe I will bring him (or her - if we are talking about my daughter) so that you can work with her too?" And for what? To make it even better? But the changes that have already taken place need to be given time to take root, so in addition to work to make it "very good" is often definitely not worth it, because this is exactly the case when the best can be the enemy of the good.

Nevertheless, occasionally I take up work with children. Or I hear how one of my acquaintances takes the child to appointments with a psychologist or a psychotherapist, and I also hear different statements from them on this score. Well, for example, such as "I've already come five times, but something still doesn't help," or "the psychologist said that my husband and I need to come to the appointment, but why, my daughter's bedwetting, not ours!", or “I don’t understand why we pay money, they just play there, and that’s all, they don’t do anything else”. This is only a part of the statements, I think that my practicing colleagues can remember a dozen more of these - that for some reason the result is not immediately visible, that we do not really understand what we pay money for, that it is not clear, why work with parents is needed …

Therefore, I will very briefly and fairly briefly dwell on the main features of working with children.

1. One of the axioms of working with children is the following - the younger the child, the more shown is the work with parents, especially with the mother. Since up to about three years old the child is in a situation of merging with the mother, the mother provides for him a situation of psychological and physical security. But if the mother is in a state of extreme fatigue, or depression, or if the mother's childhood trauma intensifies, then it is quite difficult for the mother to ensure this very safety for the child. And as soon as we start working to support the mother, the child's symptoms begin to go away, about which there was a request for a job. I have heard many times from mothers, in different situations of working with them: "While I go to your meetings, the child suddenly stops peeing at night, as soon as I stop meeting, the bed is wet again." I must say that after some time and a certain amount of work, the baby's dry bed all night turns out to be a pleasant "side" bonus from our meetings.

2. Working with parents is also an important part of working with children's problems. The marital subsystem, the way relationships are built in it, can quite strongly influence both the psychological and bodily state of the child (especially if we remember that while the child is small, he knows how to express his emotional state only through the body or behavior). But if the parents believe that there are no problems between them, or this does not affect in any way what happens to their son or daughter, then the work of a psychologist with a child can be very delayed - simply because there is no work with the so-called "root" problem … The child's problems can be caused by the emotional difficulties of the parents themselves, and this is all the more true, the younger the child. If parents refuse to meet with a psychologist, this does not mean at all that the work will be useless; the psychologist will most likely work to help the child develop more adequate psychological support in such a family situation, and this, as a rule, takes a long time.

3. The child is included in the family system, and the family system, like any system, strives for balance (homeostasis) - and if one element of the system changes, then this entails changes in the entire system. And the family system, like any system, has a quite understandable desire to preserve its original state, so that everything remains "as it was." Roughly speaking - let the child remain as obedient, docile, but, for example, stop being sick or afraid. That is, let everything remain as before, but only so that there is no illness or fear (or some other symptom). But this usually does not happen, and any changes in the child's behavior or condition will force the family system to rebuild. And this is not always a painless and joyful process. How many times have I caught myself feeling annoyed - when you already see that the work has started, and that positive changes have begun, but the parents suddenly suddenly decided to stop therapy, often without even explaining the reasons. And more often than not, such an abrupt termination of work is just evidence that changes have begun to affect the family system, but unconsciously people are not yet ready for these changes. Perhaps this is a topic for a separate article, so I will just outline this point. And this is where the parents can say that “the psychologist did not help, so we are finishing”, although in order for the qualitative changes to begin, more meetings were needed.

4. If you observe the work of a psychologist with a child, it may seem to an outside observer that really little is happening. They sit side by side on the carpet and play. Or paint. Or sometimes they run after each other around the office - also in the game. Just not a job, but a dream! But a psychologist can see a lot through such methods. For example, it is very important to understand whether the child likes to play, what kind of toys he likes to play - soft fluffy animals or plastic monsters, the content and nature of the game is important. Through this, you can see what actually happens to the child - to see the level of his emotional development, how the child builds relationships with others, at what stage his self-awareness is, and much more that is not always possible to identify with the usual tests that are used for diagnostics, and the use of which is just more understandable for parents.

5. The protective properties of the child's psyche are arranged in such a way that, in order to cope, for example, with some kind of traumatic situation, the child needs to talk about it many times and play this situation many, many times, now in a safe space for him. And, by the way, for this space of interaction between the psychologist and the child to become safe, a certain amount of time can also take. All children are different, and if one or two meetings are enough for one child, then another needs at least five to get comfortable and finally start to open up. And again, for the parents it may look like they are “just playing” with the child and nothing happens, although in fact it is through this process of play with the support of a psychologist that the healing process takes place. It would seem - after all, you can play about it at home? But parents may not always be stable in such games, and this is understandable - after all, we are talking about their child, about their close, beloved, such a defenseless little man. The psychologist is just trained to be able to support the child, not to rush to save him, while not falling apart from horror (as can happen with parents) from what the baby had to endure, but just to be there, to withstand different " strange "games or drawings, while realizing that the child found the way to solve his problem in this way.

I hope my article will be able to clarify some important points of the work of a psychologist with children of different ages.

And may you and your children be happy.