Communication

Building Relationships with Step Children

One of the most common reasons for not-so-good step-family relationships is lack of communication. It is important to include the children in family processes such as formulating rules and new rituals. This is a great start! The next thing to do is to encourage communication. Talking is the best way to strengthen relationships, understand emotions […]

Counselling Microskills: Focusing

Focusing enables a counsellor to direct client’s conversational flow into certain areas. It is a microskill that is relevant to all stages of a counselling interview. This skill however should be used sparingly. Example: After noticing that a client has mentioned very little about his family, the counsellor, (believing the family is relevant) directs the […]

Encouragers, Paraphrasing and Summarising

A counsellor can encourage a client to continue to talk, open up more freely and explore issues in greater depth by providing accurate responses through encouraging, paraphrasing and summarising. Responding in this way informs the client that the counsellor has accurately heard what they have been saying. Encouragers, paraphrases and summaries are basic to helping […]

Counselling Microskills: Questioning

Questions during the counselling session can help to open up new areas for discussion. They can assist to pinpoint an issue and they can assist to clarify information that at first may seem ambiguous to the counsellor. Questions that invite clients to think or recall information can aid in a client’s journey of self-exploration. Counsellors […]

Stages of Child Development

As children travel through the journey of life they are faced with many different developmental challenges. Early in life, babies learn to pay attention and be part of a relationship. As they grow they learn to use their imagination and think logically. Greenspan and Salmon (1995) developed a road map outlining the emotional milestones children […]

Negotiation Skills Training in Counselling

Negotiation is defined by the Macquarie Dictionary (1998) as ‘to confer (with another) with a view to agreement’. There are no formal rules governing how these negotiations are to be conducted, although there are culturally accepted styles or approaches for doing so. What negotiation and conflict have in common? The obvious common denominator in negotiation […]

Fostering the Development of Children’s Self-Esteem

Self esteem is… a person’s overall assessment of her or his personal adequacy or worth. (Weiten, 1998) feelings of self-worth stemming from the individual’s positive or negative beliefs about being valuable and capable. www.dphilpotlaw.com/html/glossary.html feeling good about yourself. It means liking yourself and being content with, and even proud of, who you are.(Hartley-Brewer, 2004) a […]

Communication and Childhood Anxiety

Childhood worries and anxiety are a common challenge for many parents. In this post, we will be considering a cognitive-behavioural approach to working with children and their worries. A cognitive-behavioural approach works most effectively with children who are able to think in a structured sequence and understand cause and effect. This makes it more appropriate […]

Common Communication Challenges for Parents

This post provides an overview of working with parents on common challenges of parenting. In particular, this chapter considers how to work with parents whose children are displaying aggressive behaviour or suffering from anxiety. To work on these issues it is crucial that parents have developed a parent-child relationship based on solid communication and trust. […]

Communicating with Children and Discipline

Disciplining children effectively, not only requires a great deal of persistence but also the ability to communicate clearly and succinctly with children. When working with parents on the issue of disciplining their children, it is important to ensure that all disciplinary strategies are age-appropriate. Bad behaviour comes with penalties Carroll & Reid (2005) suggest that […]

Communicating Effectively with Children

Developing, fostering and maintaining an open, trusting and committed child-parent relationship is the foundation of effective parenting. This kind of relationship is established through regular honest and respectful communication. First, consider the mechanisms that parents may employ to establish an open channel of communication between themselves and their children. By combining appropriate language with useful […]