Counseling for Children and teens
Sometimes it simply comes out of nowhere, but there might come a time when it seems that communicating and relating to your child is different somehow. Maybe they don’t respond to you the same way. Maybe they are pulling away. Whatever the anomaly is, the strain of not knowing what your child needs to get through this new chapter can affect you as well.
What could be going on?
Early development, while exhausting in many ways, is also simple in others. Babies really only know you as the parent and get everything they need from you. As they gain new awareness and understanding, though, their experience of the world changes along with what they understand that they can potentially get out of it. With this new perspective, going to Mom and Dad might not feel like the universal safety net that it did before. Getting to the bottom of what initiated this change is where I come in.
It is important to take a moment to note, though, that this does not suggest that parents lose their value. Quite the opposite is true. As long as your child is developing, you are never anything less than essential to their life. What I offer is a new environment where the consequences of exploring new perspectives and understandings are much less dire. This is to say that my job is to build a trusting relationship with your child without familial feelings hanging in the balance. If they bring some intense emotions into my office, they get to walk away at the end of the hour instead of having to live in the same house.
But what can counseling offer?
Obviously you know your children better than anyone. There is not a counselor you’ll encounter who could reasonably claim otherwise. What I can offer, though, is a professional setting where I am neither a family member or a peer. At a time in your child’s life when it seems like they might be looking to their friend group instead of to you, it makes sense that you have concerns about what goes on in that friend group away from your supervision. I am the third option. My school and training has prepared me for forming a functional relationship with your child or teen so that they can process learn to process their own feelings. Unlike in a peer group, where friends often attempt to adjust their views to be more similar, I apply zero pressure in how an individual thinks or feels. I simply provide a space for this to naturally materialize.
Part of what comes out of this process is how to internally work through experiences. This leads, in turn, to a new ability to communicate thoughts and feelings to you. One of the issues that comes into play for noticing growing feelings is that having the exact language to get those feelings across often lags. This presents intertwined issues that make it difficult to even get to what initiated the onset of these strong feelings. It is entirely possible that the complexity of not having a single issue to point to is partially to blame for the behavioral change you have noticed.