Therapy is one of the most effective-yet-feared avenues for the welfare of a child. Discovering that your kid needs professional help can be an uncomfortable spot to be in. However, mental health issues are part and parcel of life and should be dealt with the same tact as other health conditions. Let’s understand how kids’ therapy can work wonders for your child in the long run. Need for Kids Therapy It is essential to understand that untreated emotional and behavioral anomalies will affect your child’s future health and well-being detrimentally. Fixing these mental health issues will provide them with the liberty to lead an everyday life at school and on the playground amongst friends. Moreover, the techniques involved in therapy also help inculcate a healthy foundation of skills that your child can build upon for the rest of their life. It makes the child well-equipped with the right mindset to manage, overcome, and get rid of the symptoms. Eventually, they will become rounded individuals and functional members of society. Types of Therapies for Children and Teens The type of therapy offered to individuals is decided upon after consideration of a lot of aspects, including their age. Here is a…
When your child is acting out, it can be hard to know how to handle the situation. Sometimes, these behaviors become patterns that are difficult to change. So what should you do if your child is dealing with a behavioral condition that is affecting their interactions with family and friends? Investing in counseling support can be a great way to shift the behavior and help the child learn to manage their decisions more effectively. This professional support can be a turning point that has a life-long impact on the child. Behavioral therapies focus on the environmental factors that are contributing to the child’s reactions. Often, some unknowing reinforcements or rewards contribute to the frequency or intensity of the child’s behavior. The good news is that an experienced therapist can help with identifying the patterns. Then the parents can work with the child using behavioral therapy to change the environment, which affects the child’s behavior. Foundations of Behavioral Therapy The term “behavioral therapy” applies to a variety of treatments and strategies used by therapists. These therapies vary quite a bit from one practitioner to the next. But all of these therapies focus on incremental changes that help to shift a behavioral…
Parents Should Limit Their Smartphone Use In today’s digital world, parents across the country are aware of the impact digital devices have on their children. However, hardly anyone recognizes how harmful parents being on their smartphone may be to their children and their development. After all, young children are very perceptive of what their parents are doing. They often crave the attention of their parents. Children learn and develop important social and cognitive skills from interactions with their parents. However, these interactions are often disrupted. Not by digital device use from children, but from digital device use by parents. That’s right. Smartphone-addicted parents may be harming their child’s development. Even though today’s parents spend more time with their children than before, they don’t give them the attention they need. While they may be physically present, but they aren’t emotionally present. Parent-child communication is crucial to a child’s development. Without it, they can’t effectively develop the social, cognitive, and behavioral skills needed to be a happy and successful adult. This isn’t to say that using digital devices is 100% safe for children, but to argue that parents’ screen use is an underappreciated problem. Today, Lifeworks Counseling Center is here to shed…
When raising a child, it is easy to identify their physical needs: food with nutritional value, proper fitting clothing for all types of weather, proper sleeping arrangements, and physical exercise. While a child’s physical health is incredibly important, their mental health is just as crucial. However, identifying and addressing their emotional and mental needs is not quite as obvious or well known as their physical needs. Proper care of a child’s mental health and their physical health often play hand in hand, but unfortunately, children’s mental health struggles are often trivialized or not treated with the proper care to prevent long-standing consequences. Childhood Mental Health by the Numbers The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found that 20% of youth ages 13-18 live with a mental health condition. While this number isn’t extraordinarily high all things considered, it is still alarming. Even worse is that about 70% of these children do not receive the appropriate interventions with the gap between a child’s onset symptoms and intervention being 8-10 years. Failure to recognize these issues can lead to future problems in a child’s life, entrenching their mental health problems deep in their mind. Sadly, suicide is the 3rd leading cause of…
We live in a world that is very digitally active and dependent. It is pretty much inevitable that our kids will be spending time online, predominantly on social media websites and apps. You want to protect your children, but it is impossible to protect them completely, nor is it always the best route to take. It is important to find a balance between sheltering your child and guiding them in the right direction, to teaching them to make the right decisions on their own. With the popularity of social media, one of the biggest problems in today’s society, particularly in America, is cyberbullying. It is real, and it can be vicious. When teens have the protection and shielding of a screen, their conscience seems to weaken. In many circumstances, where a child wouldn’t be necessarily cruel in person, the “impersonal” aspect of saying something to someone online makes them more likely to engage in harsh and cruel language and statements. It can be extremely difficult as a parent to know how to deal with cyberbullying. While many parents opt for cutting out social media altogether, frankly, teens will find a way to access it anyways. Unfortunately, banning them from the…
The debate of nature vs. nurture has been ongoing for quite some time. The case of nature vs. nurture concerns that of the level of influence that genetics have a child’s personality and their behaviors in comparison to the level of influence that parenting has on a child’s personality and their behaviors. It is largely argued that both are recognizably responsible in the contribution of a child’s development and both should be considered. However, with nature and nurture both considered, your child therapist in Carrolton will insist that the only one in which we as humans have control over when raising a child is the nurturing factor. Parenting has a vital influence on the development of your child and their behavior, and it is important to understand how your parenting style is affecting your child’s behavior. Keep reading to learn about the styles of parenting and how they may be affecting your child. Styles of parenting can typically be categorized into 4 different types, which include the following: Authoritarian Parenting This type of parenting is categorized as a dominating style of parenting that has an adherence to rules and a large control factor by the parents over the child. This…
Divorce can be extremely hard on children. As a parent, having to tell your children that you are getting a divorce will likely be one of the most difficult things you will do. It is important to remember that even if the divorce doesn’t seem like it would come as a surprise – for example, if you are already separated or have been arguing a lot – your child is likely clinging onto hope and the shock can still be just as severe as if the child had no clue this was in the cards. How you talk to your children about the divorce is of immense importance. Experts state that almost all children remember this conversation vividly for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, because of the shock and trauma a child feels during the moment they are told, many go on to experience pain when the conversation is recalled, and this pain is said to never dull in some children. Because this moment can be so traumatic for a child, it is very important to ensure that you take all measures to have the conversation in the best way you can. Present the situation from equal standpoints As…
Summer is coming to an end and it is time to start getting your children ready for the new school year. Going from summer break with all the fun, games, and playtime to the daily school routine can be a difficult transition for kids. While you may be getting the back-to-school shopping list ready for supplies, clothes, etc., you should also be taking a few other steps to prepare your child for the new school year. Whether your child is starting at a new school or even just going into a new grade, it can be stressful and a bit overwhelming, especially for certain children. Follow these back-to-school tips that can help you in preparing your child for the new school year. Get back on a schedule While summer days, usually mean late nights and lazy mornings, the difference in schedule is usually the first and most difficult adjustment for your child when the new school year starts. Avoid the rough mornings and bed-time debates at night by starting your child back on a schedule about one to two weeks before school starts. It doesn’t need to be a cold-turkey transition, but try starting by first implementing a bedtime and…
It is often difficult for us to see ourselves from an outside perspective. It is for this reason that sometimes we don’t realize how experiences from our childhood are affecting our adult relationships, and more often than not, affecting them negatively. The most common ways that childhood impacts our adult relationships is via the relationship that we had with our parents growing up. Whether it is trauma that we experience as a child or how our parents showed affection or didn’t, there is no denying that the correlation exists in regards to our adult relationships. To be more specific, how our caregivers act towards us as children carries over into the attachment style that we display in our adult relationships. Generally, people who have grown up in stable homes with happy and healthy childhood relationships with their caregivers develop secure-attachment styles. If your caregivers were emotionally available to you and responsive to your needs as a child then you will likely carry these healthy traits onwards into your adult relationships. Your attachment style will likely be balanced and you will not display clingy tendencies nor push others away. However, not everyone grows up in a healthy and happy home. So,…
Over the past ten years or so, there has been a significant increase in children and young teens having suicidal thoughts. Doctors are seeing more and more of these children and young teenagers in emergency rooms showing up for anxiety attacks, depressive episodes, and suicidal thoughts, feelings, and attempts. This is even more common during the school year as the kids are feeling the pressure of school as well as suffering from issues related to social anxiety, bullying, peer pressure, and more. There was a study recently published by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that from 2008 to 2015 children ages 5 years old to 17 years old are being admitted to children’s hospitals for reasons relating to suicide, either suicidal thoughts, feelings, or attempts. It was found by researchers at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt that girls are more often attempting suicide than boys are. It was also found that the suicide numbers were higher during the school year and lower during the summer months. Depression in children should never be taken lightly or dismissed One of the issues that kids face is that many parents don’t take depression and anxiety in their children seriously. They…
