Services - Children
Parents, extended families, health visitors, GPs, nursery nurses, teachers or sometimes children themselves, say that the child may benefit from someone to help them with certain worries, behaviours or thoughts that they have. A Clinical Psychologist can use different approaches to help your child to resolve and change difficulties, at times this may involve direct talking, but depending on your child's age and the child's own preferences, the Clinical Psychologist may also incorporate play, drawing, stories and sometimes standardised assessments (these may include IQ assessments and/or questionnaires).
In order for your child to get the most out of an assessment or intervention session with the Clinical Psychologist it is important to make it as easy as possible for your child to feel they can talk openly. At first, it is likely that the sessions are carried out with an adult present, someone that the child trusts. At times, it may be appropriate for your child to be seen on their own, but only if she/he feels happy to do so. Initially, to help your child to engage in sessions, we would advise that they are told something about the session beforehand. In order to help youwith this explanation, we have put together some ideas for you to download and share with your child. By giving your child some ideas about what to expect from sessions, we have found that the child feels more included and is therefore more likely to be on-board with the work we will undertake together.
In addition to the work that goes on during the session, there may also be some home activities or things to try out between sessions. These can include:
- Recording the number of times certain behaviours occur
- Recording what was happening immediately before a certain behaviour and what happened immediately afterwards
- Completing set activities or tasks jointly with your child. The advantage of doing the above tasks in addition to the sessions, is that it adds a wealth of information to the assessment and speeds up the process of the intervention and the turning round of the behaviour. So as the expert on your own child, we may rely on you (the parent) to carry out some activities in tandem with the sessions.
There are numerous areas that a Clinical Psychologist can help a child with, these include:
- low mood
- soiling, wetting and retaining
- sleep problems, e.g. settling difficulties and early rising
- issues associated with eating
- tantrums and challenging behaviours
- sticking to rules
- queries about the child's cognitive abilities/IQ
- worries and fears
- anger
- school related problems: such as, not integrating or being bullied
- difficulties with social communication
- over activity
- attention difficulties
- relationship difficulties
- sudden changes in behaviour
- attachment/separation difficulties, such as clinginess
- coping with parental separation
- sibling rivalry
- bereavement
- post-trauma responses
- causing harm to themselves (e.g. head banging or biting)
- adjusting to difficult or unexpected changes in life circumstances
- developmental concerns
Sessions respect client confidentiality. In terms of our commitment to you as the parent, the Clinical Psychologist will endeavour to always share her impressions and ideas with you. We would also feel happy for you to ask us directly if you have any questions or queries about any stage of the process.
Should you wish to have further information or if you are not sure about whether or not a Clinical Psychologist might be able to help with your situation, please contact us directly.