| Kukai (Kobe Daishi as a boy) —Image courtesy of ARAS |
Child Psychotherapy and Counseling
My approach to working with children in psychotherapy or child counseling consists of talking and playing with the child. Play is the natural language of children. While adults are mostly able to use words and concepts to discuss their concerns, children have much less of an ability to verbalize what is bothering them. Instead, they play out their concerns. In play therapy, a child is given access to a variety of selected toys, games, and art materials that lend themselves to being used in any number of ways that can help express feelings, thoughts, and situations. The child makes use of these and the trained child therapist uses the play as a way of communicating understanding of emotion, acceptance of the child as a whole person, and offers alternate forms of response to troubling situations.
For example, consider the situation of a four year old child who was hurt in a terrible auto accident. He had been doing well prior to the accident but was traumatized by it and began behaving very aggressively toward his peers and uncooperatively at home. He was bothered by terrifying dreams of giant insects coming after him. Each week in his therapy session he would enact scenes where he would crash toy cars together, the people would be scared and hurt, ambulances would arrive and take them to the hospital, and doctors would care for the wounded. He would draw pictures of his frightening dreams. Eventually, after several months of this work, he stopped the repetitive play in the office. By that point, he was no longer acting aggressively at school and was more cooperative at home. It appeared that the trauma had been worked through and the boy was able to resume his normal course of development.
Child therapy is a confidential relationship, just like therapy with adults. However, since children’s development is so much related to understanding and responding effectively to their behavior at home and school, when I work with children I will meet with their parents regularly and discuss their child's progess with them. I usually will have phone contact with the child’s teacher, as well. I should also mention that while I generally see children by themselves I sometimes make a clinical decision that it would be most helpful to see a child at least part of the time with his or her parent or parents. Again, this is decided on an individualized basis and in consultation with parents.
I work with children who have many different kinds of problems including overly aggressive behavior, excessively withdrawn behavior, anxiety problems, sleep disturbance, night terrors, obsessions, compulsions, problems with learning, attention deficit problems, excessively impulsive behavior, problems in peer relations, enuresis (bedwetting), encopresis (soiling), problems with self-esteem, and problems with self-concept. I have also worked with children who are coping with various forms of stress including divorce, extreme conflict between parents, sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, exposure to violence of various sorts, death of a parent, chronic illness of a parent, and loss of a loved one.
Contact me for an initial consultation regarding child therapy and counseling.