What is Child Counseling? What are the benefits of child counseling?

Child counseling is therapeutic support that is offered to children who find it difficult to express and explore their emotions. A therapist offers a secure environment for the child to talk about their feelings and understand the reasons behind these emotions.

The therapist uses a different therapeutic approach during sessions to help the client feel comfortable, depending on the child's age, the situation, and their problem. Therapeutic approaches such as Play therapy, art therapy, CBT, etc helps the child to express and understand their own emotions and also helps them to understand and rectify their faulty behavior.

Some reasons parents Opt for child counseling are:

1. Drastic behavioral changes 

2. Post-traumatic experiences- the death of a close person or pet, a major accident

3. When they are victims of bullying

4. Aggressiveness in their behavior

5. Parents going through a divorce 

6. Moving to a new environment 

7. Difficulty in the transition of child to adolescent

What are the benefits of Child Counseling? 

       Counseling helps children understand feelings and helps them express and manage them in a healthy manner. It guides children to build up their self-confidence, navigate through difficult situations in their lives, improve their social skills and ease the transition between different stages of life. 

        

1. Be compassionate towards themselves and others: Children are taught what compassion is and how to be compassionate towards the world as well as themselves.

2. Adapting to changes: Counseling helps children adapt to changes in their environment as well as their body and minds through careful management of emotions.

3. Managing emotions: Young people often do not know how to express their emotions, especially negative emotions like despair and anger. Instead of turning towards unhealthy coping mechanisms, counseling helps children and adolescents build healthy coping mechanisms.

4. Improving communication: Therapy encourages children to be more vocal about their needs and wants (materialistically as well as emotionally), leading to improving their communication skills.

5. Boosting self-esteem: Counseling also helps children and adolescents improve and build their self-esteem and be confident in their skin. 

       

While not each child needs counseling, children who find it difficult to express their feelings or children who are not able to mix with their peers might benefit from counseling a lot.