Is your child struggling in school? with friends? with anxiety? with depression? Is he or she cutting or havIng thoughts of hurting themself? Is she or he a perfectionist? Does he or she seem unhappy or bored and not excited to wake up in the morning?
If you are dealing with any of these situations, I can help.
I have worked with thousands of K-6 children and teens in multiple school systems in Northern and Southern California from 1997 to 2012. I participated in IEP and 504 plan meetings with parents, teachers and school staff. I understand how schools work, how they can do to help children and the problems that students (and teachers) have.
I worked with students with ADHD, ADD and high functioning Autism (ASD), ran multiple groups with boys, girls and ADHD/Autistic students. I sat in most of the classrooms so that the students became familiar with me and it was easier for them to ask to see the “counselor.” Using board games and simple card games was effective at helping the students relax and talk about what was upsetting them.
One of the most effective techniques that creates change for children is the use of Sand Tray in which students create a scene with miniature soldiers, animals, parents and siblings in houses, zoos, a battlefield, etc., whatever is in the child’s mind is played out in the sand tray. Anger and anxiety, fear and shame are worked out in the sand tray until the negative thoughts and feelings change from battles and anger into happier scenes like zoos and beaches. In the process, the child “works through” their anger, anxieties, fear and shame and feel happier and more comfortable in their world.
To combat bullying, I created a simple yet effective intervention for students who came to me complaining about how they felt when they were bullied. The intervention, which uses humor and a few words, is based on experiments at Harvard and Yale which demonstrated that if you can put a smile on your face, you cannot feel “mad, sad, angry or hurt” which are the expected results of bullying. If the bullied “victim” does not react with “mad, sad, angry or hurt” feelings, the teasing fails and the victim “wins.” The college experiments used a pencil in the student’s mouth to “force” a smile – I use a happy thought for children that makes the child smile by suggesting words to say to the bully like: “Is that all you got? (with a big smile or giggle). This unexpected reaction, “punctuated” with a smile from the (no-longer a) victim, causes the bully to become frustrated and go elsewhere to find a victim. My intervention worked so well that after explaining how to react to a bully, a 1stgrader came back to me to tell me he didn’t need to see me anymore because “I got this!”
I use games and sand tray in my office today with children and teens with positive results.
Another important approach to helping children (and parents) is to help families create a family system for chores, rules and consequences. Introducing household chores and enforcing them with consequences suggested by the children relieves the parent of having to “discipline” (i.e., get angry at or use physical force on) the child and teaches the child that they are an important part of the family. This is especially true when the child creates their own consequences, a significant part of the process.
Surprisingly, it turns out that children want to participate in creating their consequences and believe that they should have chores to help out the family – a realization that often stuns parents. Children and teens also want their parents to give them consequences because it demonstrates that the parents “love” them enough to do the hard work of parenting. This unexpected understanding makes it easier to implement the new system. If the process is difficult, I can help.
