Counselling Children in a Community Setting
In the world of counselling, using effective techniques and skills in understanding the behaviour of a person is critical. This will serve as the path that will break through the natural barriers of the human mind. Like adults, children have issues that have to be confronted in order to behave accordingly. The only difference is that they act on these issues on a different than adults do. Hence, a different approach is need.
Unlike adults, children lack the proper vocabulary to explain their feelings making it harder for counsellors to understand their thoughts. Velsor (2004) in her article ‘Revisiting Basic Counselling Skills with Children’ talks about the essential approaches that may be helpful when dealing with children during counselling Her article hopes to improve the study ‘Adapting Basic Skills to Counsel Children’ by Erden and Lampe had done to create an appropriate approach in dealing with children.
Velsor offers two new approaches into the world of counselling children. The first is to enhancement of microskills, a term used for communication skills units by counsellors, when working with children. This allows any client, adult or child, to present their issues during sessions. For children, the use of microskills involves the counsellor to adapt to the children’s varying capabilities. Apart from encouraging verbal communication of children, this allows them to bring out their issues through the manner of playing.
In this article, several examples are used to explain the different microskills used as well as the different manners children may use to act on their issues. Velasor explains her second approach by introducing and explaining the common stages and themes that occur during counsel with children. Acquintance with these stages enables the counsellor to properly understand how to go about the counselling period. List of References: Velsor, P. V. (2004). Revisiting Basic Couselling Skills with Children. Journal of Counseling and Development, 82 ( 3), 313-318.
