When is it time to see a counselor?
As a parent, your heart’s desire is for your child to be happy, to get along at home and at school, and grow up to be a honorable, well-adjusted adult.
But sometimes, children have a tough time. They may be struggling with their emotions, interacting with others or in their ability to focus.
When you have some concerns with your child’s mood or behavior, it is time to see a qualified professional. Someone specializing with children, families, and behavior issues. Someone who can observe your child and assess whether this is ‘normal development stages’ or something that some counseling could help.
Child counseling often helps with these issues:
- Repeatedly getting angry and having melt-downs
- Showing disrespect toward others
- Hitting, biting, throwing things
- Blaming others for their behavior
- Consciously disobeying, acting out and aggravating others
- Crying spells
- Difficulty with sleep
- Getting along
- Managing emotions with multiple households and parents
At IE Counseling Center, we have licensed counselors with specialized training with family counseling and children’s behavioral health.
We help children and families learn how to be happier and get along better in several ways:
1. Children ages two to seven years old
Identifying behavioral or emotional issues in children early can turn things around and set the child on a much happier life course. Sometimes it is just assisting the child to learn to express their emotions instead of acting out. Other times, it helps to work with the whole family – or parts of the family – as the interactions are the problem.
Our child therapists at IE Counselors are child and family behavior experts who start with a complete assessment of your unique child and family. Parents love this because for the first time, another person is witnessing their struggle and is ready to provide solutions.
For the very young children, our therapists use a framework of parent and child coaching that can have a powerful impact on the happiness of your family. This well-respected therapy is called Parent Child Interactive Therapy (PCIT). Studies shows that as a result of PCIT, parents and children get along better, the child’s behavior problems lessen, and the parents feel more confident after learning effective parenting techniques. The good news is that often, things turn around pretty quickly. You can read more about PCIT here.
2. Older Children, T’weens, and Teens:
As children get older, the problems might seem bigger. They appear to need the parents less. In fact, one of the developmental stages that usually occurs at ages 13 and then 18, is for the child to reject the parents’ values in order to decide which ones to adopt as their own.
But this is also the time that both the child (or t’ween or teen) can feel the most out of control. And the family can feel the most disconnected. Counseling here may be mostly with the young person to help them learn the skills to communicate, connect, and succeed in life. Parent coaching sessions or family sessions are scheduled as needed.
To help your child, consider counseling at the Inland Empire Counseling Center.
3. Family Counseling
Sometimes there is no real behavior or emotional problem going on, and yet the family just isn’t thriving. Perhaps there is a blended family issue. Or additional family members have moved into the home and expectations are unclear. Or possibly, one parent is just not connecting with one of the children. Often, an unbiased third party can help each family member be heard and learn to live in more harmony and with respect.
We want to hear your story and help.
