Therapy for Children, Johannesburg
I provide therapy and counselling for children. I tailor my interventions to clients' specific needs and offer brief, short-term and long-term psychotherapy. I find it rewarding to work with a wide variety of difficulties. Some of these include:
The type of therapy I use for children would depend on their age and maturity as well as their presenting problem. I generally work with a parent-child psychotherapy model for child under the age of five years old. This involves working together with the child and their parents (or caregivers) in the room. Older children (approximately from five to twelve years old) are often better suited to individual play therapy (see description below). For older children (adolescents or teenagers) I provide individual "talk" therapy.
Often another important aspect of intervening with and helping children is parent guidance. I normally integrate parent feedback and guidance into parent-child psychotherapy and play therapy. However, parent guidance can also be a stand alone intervention that can be very effective with certain difficulties. When working with children I generally spend at least one session first with the only caregivers to get a better understanding of the presenting problem and the child's developmental history. This assists me in recommending the most suitable intervention for the child. It also provides me with a good basis for working with the child.
- Relationship difficulties (with peers, teachers and/or parents)
- Anger problems
- Behavioural problems (for example disobedience, lying and stealing)
- Anxiety, panic attacks, fears, phobias, obsessions and compulsions
- Trauma
- Depression
- Bereavement and Loss
- Disability and illness
- Adjustment difficulties
- Life stage difficulties
- Gender identity
- Difficulties with bladder and bowel control (enuresis and encopresis)
- Bullying
- Self-esteem and self-confidence
- Neurodiversity (ADHD and autism)
The type of therapy I use for children would depend on their age and maturity as well as their presenting problem. I generally work with a parent-child psychotherapy model for child under the age of five years old. This involves working together with the child and their parents (or caregivers) in the room. Older children (approximately from five to twelve years old) are often better suited to individual play therapy (see description below). For older children (adolescents or teenagers) I provide individual "talk" therapy.
Often another important aspect of intervening with and helping children is parent guidance. I normally integrate parent feedback and guidance into parent-child psychotherapy and play therapy. However, parent guidance can also be a stand alone intervention that can be very effective with certain difficulties. When working with children I generally spend at least one session first with the only caregivers to get a better understanding of the presenting problem and the child's developmental history. This assists me in recommending the most suitable intervention for the child. It also provides me with a good basis for working with the child.
What is Play Therapy?
Children experience life very differently from adults. They often do not have the ability to fully process difficult experiences independently. They also lack the language and expressive abilities that adolescents and adults have. So just as adolescents and adults have "talk therapy", children have play therapy. In play therapy the therapist helps the child to express themselves through play (which comes a lot easier than talk) and assists them in processing their emotional difficulties in this child-friendly way.