“There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding.” Erik Erikson (1902-1994)
Introduction
The mental health of every child is unique and each one of them has their own world of imagination. While most of us have gone through different mental states during our formative years, we still fail to recognize the same when it comes to our children. Moreover, people have the misconception of seeing counseling as some type of psychotherapy, and hence they try to avoid the topic. But there’s a strong need of counseling in schools, since the formative years of a child is really important in shaping up his future.
Today’s world is fast-moving, and our children are living in an era where human emotions are shared over the touch of a mobile phone. You might be ignoring, but your children are probably communicating through a medium where virtual reality wins over actual human emotion. In this article, we will discuss about the positive aspects of counseling and why it’s necessary to add it as a mandatory service in schools.
How do you differentiate counselling from psychotherapy
The primary motive behind counseling at school level is to address the emotional, social and behavioral needs of the students. And to create a seamless and friendly environment to help each one of them with different approaches. Always remember that school-based professionals provide counseling and not psychotherapy. It is always aimed at enhancing the adaptive functionality of a child’s mind. On a lighter note, school-based counseling basically aims at helping students function more effectively in the school and with the elder ones.
The following video will explain it better : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGDl1AIX-2Q
Counselling is for everyone
Counselling is often provided to those individuals who are considered healthy, but who need special attention to deal with a few particular situations. Many of the parents have a communication gap with their children, and for which the children find it difficult to deal with some of the simplest issues in life. For example, a school counselor must approach a child who is tearful because of a conflict with his classmate and he finds it difficult to address the same to his parents. Most of us become judgmental when it comes to our own child, but this may create a wrong perception about human behavior in his mind. Sometimes, the school authority avoids it, as they think teachers, wardens or a religious preacher can handle the situation. But little do they know that not many of them have the counseling abilities. A counselor is a person with whom the students can explore the strongest part of their confidence level.
A counselor must possess the following qualities,
- Should possess a strong sense of empathy
- Must be a good listener
- Who is careful about giving judgemental views
- Who has the ability to follow-up the students
- And who can give recommendations to the authority to deal with situations
Conclusion
A trained counselor may need to deal with many cases which revolve around issues like family, peer pressure, indiscipline and even psychological. And if not handled carefully, these issues can influence students to take wrong decisions. The relationship between a counselor and a student should be always confidential, so that the student can gain the confidence to open up. Schools need to invest in counselling as it surely improves welfare and performance of the students. It is a choice, need to be embraced by the school authority and the administrator.
