Children and Bereavement
If a child has a loved one, such as a friend or family member who’s going to die, they can benefit from special support and counselling. A child’s stress and anxiety level is often at its highest before bereavement because of fear and the unknown. Pre-bereavement counselling gives a child a chance to think and talk about their feelings, share their worries and de-stress.
During bereavement, it can help a child to talk about the person who’s died, whether it was a grandparent, parent, brother, sister or friend with the counsellor.
Direct, honest and open communication is more helpful than trying to protect your child by hiding the truth. If you exclude them from family ceremonies and services after someone has died it could make them, feel excluded.
This can also help your child be open about their own feelings and avoid confusion about what has happened. It may be helpful to talk as a family, and take family therapy perhaps with your child, about how to include them in any events that celebrate or say goodbye to the person who has died.
It’s important for them to have someone with whom they can talk about that person and share their emotions. This could be through photos, games, memory boxes or stories.
Over time, children may start to talk more about their loss at different times and in different ways. Young children may start talking about death or including it in their play, but this is normal and is a way for them to make sense of what has happened.
Helping children with anger management
Anger is a normal and useful emotion. It can tell children when things are not fair or right. But anger can become a problem if a child’s angry behaviour becomes out of control or aggressive.
Team up with your child to help them deal with their anger. This way, you let your child know that the anger is the problem, not them. With counselling for younger children, this can be fun and creative. Give anger a name and try drawing it – for example, anger can be a volcano that eventually explodes.
Being able to spot the signs of anger early can help your child make more positive decisions about how to handle it.
Work together to try to find out what triggers the anger. Talk about helpful strategies for managing anger. You could encourage your child to:
- count to 10
- walk away from the situation
- breathe slowly and deeply
- clench and unclench their fists to ease tension
- talk to a trusted person
- go to a private place to calm down
- take counselling sessions
Depression and anxiety in young children
Many children have fears and worries, and may feel sad and hopeless from time to time. Strong fears may appear at different times during development. Although fears and worries are typical in children, persistent or extreme forms of fear and sadness could be due to anxiety or depression.
When a child does not outgrow the fears and worries that are typical in young children, or when there are so many fears and worries that they interfere with school, home, or play activities, the child may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Examples of different types of anxiety disorders include
- Being very afraid when away from parents (separation anxiety)
- Having extreme fear about a specific thing or situation, such as dogs, insects, or going to the doctor (phobias)
- Being very afraid of school and other places where there are people (social anxiety)
- Being very worried about the future and about bad things happening (general anxiety)
- Having repeated episodes of sudden, unexpected, intense fear that come with symptoms like heart pounding, having trouble breathing, or feeling dizzy, shaky, or sweaty (panic disorder)
Occasionally being sad or feeling hopeless is a part of every child’s life. However, some children feel sad or uninterested in things that they used to enjoy, or feel helpless or hopeless in situations they are able to change. When children feel persistent sadness and hopelessness, they may be diagnosed with depression.
The first step to treatment is to talk with a healthcare provider such as your child’s primary care provider, or a mental health specialist, about getting an evaluation, then provide with counselling for children as well as parents in helping them manage such situations.
Talking to your children about feelings and emotions
Talking about feelings sounds simple, but can actually be quite difficult. We often assume this skill will develop naturally; however, many children need a lot of practice to grow comfortable talking about how they feel, especially in the moment. Below are some ways to begin helping your child use emotional language.
Using specific words to describe your own anger, sadness or happiness can better help children understand feelings. While you may be worried this will teach your children to be afraid or concerned, using emotional language actually makes it okay to talk about feelings and leads to more positive coping mechanism.
Children are more likely to use feeling language in-the-moment if prompted to practice as often as possible. Instead of asking general questions, try asking specific feelings-oriented questions.
Some of our feelings are about adult issues, such as difficulty paying the bills. This is not as appropriate to talk with children about, but you can tailor our statement to be more kid-friendly. This can be accustomed in our new life taking family therapy session or occasional one on one counselling with our therapists at Veda Rehabilitation centre.
Teen Aggression and arguments
As parents give their teenagers more opportunities to make independent decisions, teens believe that they should have more control over their lives. Both teenagers and parents need to know that it is developmentally appropriate and healthy to question what is being asked of them, as long as they are not doing it in a rude or offensive manner. Talking back often stems from a teen’s desire to get out of doing something they don’t want to do or to challenge their parents’ authority.
It can be difficult to get through to your teenager who argues about everything without escalating their arguments. They may be more frustrated if you claim that you do understand or that you’re only doing what’s best for them in the long run.
Responding by reasserting your authority may make them feel powerless, which will lead to continued arguments. Instead, bring up how you feel when they backtalk and ask what they want out of the conversation. Being passive-aggressive or avoidant does not help either of you understand what the other person wants or resolve the conflict at hand. Often, teens resort to expressing anger when they are unsure of how to communicate their needs.
Be willing to have conversations, not arguments.
Respect the decisions that they do make and allow them to take responsibility for the potential consequences.
Problem-solve together.
Provide safe space to talk like counselling sessions or therapies
Learn more about your relationship with teenager through counselling which will address all hidden concerns of both.
Managing your expectations with children
Parents and teachers play such a key role in a child’s development and their life experience. Children’s’ top reason for playing sports is to have fun. As teachers and parents, we must do our part and prioritize the enjoyment to be had in sports. Its what children want and need. Parents can help guide their children in sports, but children need to make the choices and set the expectations based on their wants and needs.
Parents are in a great position to help deflate this performance pressure by helping their children understand that the process of learning, and having fun is the most important thing to focus on. When children embody these types of expectations, taking them into their nervous systems, they relax, become calm, remain focused, and do their best
- Match the commitment level of your child.
- Be genuinely happy for them.
- Provide balance in their lives.
- Understand their goals.
- Help them accept and learn from their losses in life.
- Help them see after the win and loss
- Take counselling
Making your child feel valued and validated
Validating your child’s feelings means acknowledging how your child is feeling in the moment — whether it’s happy, sad, angry, or some other big emotion — without judgment, expectation, or comment on what they “should” be feeling instead. Validating is not fixing, correcting, teaching a lesson, or providing advice.
For parents and caregivers, validating your child’s feelings is less about getting the “objective facts” about what caused them to feel this way, and more about helping kids feel seen, heard, and understood.
Validating your child’s feelings involves understanding the situation from their viewpoint and empathizing with them about what they experienced
Emotional validation teaches the kids that feeling and expressing their emotions is OK. Parents who validate their kids’ emotions model that it’s natural to feel hurt, scared, or sad sometimes.
The benefits of emotional validation can also help build emotional intelligence in children. Understanding one’s own emotions promotes healthy psychological development by teaching a child to pay attention to their emotional states, when emotional validation is coupled with compassionate guidance and conversations with parents teachers and counsellor or therapists, children can also learn healthy coping strategies for dealing with their emotions and expressing how they feel.
Through coping skills, children can build self-esteem and an emotionally balanced experience of reality, as well as the coping skills they need to deal with difficult things later in life. Coping skills can be learned and developed through counselling and therapies at our centre VEDA Rehabilitation and Wellness centre by our expert psychologists and therapists.