Why children need counselling
Bereavement and Loss: Many children are unfortunately young when somebody close to them dies. They may be inconsolable when a pet dies. Sometimes when parents split up, or a favourite teacher or friend moves away, the loss that children feel is sometimes as strong as if the person has died. Of course, these things will upset any child but children are remarkably resilient and usually recover in the natural course of time with the support of their friends, family and school. Counselling only becomes necessary when children find it particularly difficult to recover from these upsets and it stops them from returning to anything like their normal life.
Trauma: Some children may have experienced more traumatic circumstances of death, violence, abuse, or neglect. It is when these events seem to affect the child in school that education professionals make referrals to Counselling in Schools.
What About Me? Children may be struggling with having to care for sick or disabled parents or brothers and sisters. They may be the youngest in a large family and have to fight for any attention in their home. They may feel they don’t really fit in at school, or are being bullied. They may be bullying somebody else but don’t know how to stop. Some children may feel angry and feel that the whole world is having a go at them and they need to fight back. They may feel that nobody is listening to them and have no real sense of their place in the world. Their self-esteem may be very low and they may become very withdrawn or begin to dabble with behaviours that harm themselves.
These are only some of the reasons why some children need the help of their counsellors. Many of the schools we work with are used to asking our help at an early stage in order to prevent things from becoming worse.