Work with Children & Young Persons
This includes children from an age of reasonable understanding - about 7 yrs old for normal development - through to 18.
Children and young people present with a wide range of difficulties which reflect the many developmental stages they go through.
In younger age groups one may be dealing with anxieties, nightmares or embryonic phobias.
There are also developmental and adjustment problems such as eating fads or peculiar dietary preferences and aversions which, handled wrongly, have the potential to develop into full blown disorders.
There are transitions at school between different levels and between establishments, with all the developing pressures of peer groups and exams. Parent insecurities, ambitions or anxieties for their children may also emerge in the frenzy of competitive party-giving and other proxy competitive strivings - where purposes are not at all transparent and where it is not entirely clear who is trying to win what for whom. The fallout can distort perceptions and expectations and become quite damaging for a child.
Though they are often thought of as relatively unformed beings, children too may become considerably depressed or exhibit extremely difficult behaviours with no apparent cause - or experience other crises. These may result from real or imagined stresses, harassment or hyper-sensitivity to situations or expectations at home or school or in other facets of their developing world.
Some of these pressures can be particularly difficult as a young person encounters the complexities at the interface of different cultures, whether or not this is a first or second generation experience for them. In a multi-cultural society, many differences can be imagined, misinterpreted or go unrealised. Learning to assert these constructively can be a useful skill for a young person to acquire.
Sometimes children meet untimely tragedies such as violent family
split-ups or the death or incapacity of a parent, sibling or
schoolmate. But even much lesser events may have impacts that it can be difficult for a parent to comprehend.
The feelings may be complex and difficult for a young person to articulate. Sometimes they find matters too personal, upsetting or embarrassing to address directly with parents. Sometimes a child feels or is so very different from the parents that they seem unable to understand or be understood. Sometimes, too, there are personality differences with a neurological basis, where very close attention needs to be paid to communication patterns.
It can be very helpful to have support from a neutral party with calm and experience who can enquire sensitively and respond with sympathy and imagination to the young person’s individuality - but who also helps them develop the skill to explore their difficulties, express their own cause and adjust resourcefully to their realities.
The pressures of an image-ridden, media-driven and work-pressured age and the shifting nature of many familial circumstances may also disturb feelings of security or self-confidence in the child. There may be more profoundly disturbing fall-out which can emerge at any age.
In the very mobile career circumstances or frequent absence of some parents, children may also find it difficult to find a pattern of adjustment which both balances their needs for individual identity and stable attachment but also avoids the pain of unexpected rupture.
Serial partnerships and complex family arrangements can also generate disturbing internal conflicts for children which can become serious mental health problems.
Sometimes, with the best will in the world, there are clashes of personality or parents unwittingly give children unhelpful messages about themselves. Whilst being able to offer guidance and to mediate with adults where appropriate, the aim is to help the young person into a place from which they can address and resolve their own difficulties.
copyright keith bibby august 2007 >> Return
