Advice for parents of children in therapy

I always give advice for parents of children in therapy as a psychotherapist (PACFA), hypnotherapist (AHA) and family therapist, who sees children and teenagers.

So, your child needs therapy. It’s absolutely no different for them than learning their A,B,C or 1,2,3. Never stigmatise the therapy or the child.

We all need help sometimes, including children; and even though you are the parent, you may not have the skills or objectivity to help them. As health professionals we spend our careers learning and practising those skills.

Get professional help. Don’t delay. When your child or teenager is in trouble and you don’t get the help they need, it sends them the message that you don’t care about them.

Sometimes they don’t know they need help. In this case you have to enlist the other people responsible for their care to work together to convince them to receive help – always with extreme diplomacy.

Why do children need therapy?

It’s a million-dollar question because it has so many answers.

Perhaps they have physical problems that are affecting their moods, emotion, behaviour and ability to get through their days positively. As a clinical naturopath (ANPA) I may ask for changes in daily routine and diet or prescribe herbs or supplements.

Maybe there have been family problems that have deeply upset them and caused them to become withdrawn, angry, dysfunctional or resentful and they are acting out. They might not even disclose this to you.

There could be socialising problems, bullying or they are having a bad time at school. They are having difficulty mixing or playing with other children.

You could have or are making mistakes with your parenting that have led to the child having anxiety, depression post-traumatic stress disorder or the onset of mental illness.

The most sinister reason is they may have become seduced into alcohol, drug, or gambling addiction. Children are targeted by drug dealers, alcohol sellers and online gambling companies. These companies and people are ruthless and they really don’t care what happens to young people if they get money from them today.

What help is available?

The kind of help you can access depends on your resources, education and life philosophy.

The fastest care that is generally available is private healthcare. If you have the financial resources you can choose this option to start solving the problems immediately.

You may have private healthcare insurance that helps towards the cost. Remember, however, private healthcare companies are generally trying to make a profit so they can be restrictive with rebates.

You may need to depend on the state-provided care. This is different from country to country as all government healthcare systems are different. In some places you can get immediate care and in others you must wait years for appointments.

You may have access to some charities or philanthropic organisations which, when approached, offer to cover healthcare costs. Be careful, however, with religious organisations, as they may not be providing science-based care, but religious indoctrination, which could make your offspring worse.

What kind of help does your child need?

This depends on the problem and its severity.

If a therapist thinks there is medical problem that is out of their qualification skill sets, they will refer the child for that part of the treatment.

Psychiatrists and family doctors tend to prescribe medications and are dealing with serious mental illness such as child-onset schizophrenia. This does not always go well as medication should be the very last choice for treatment, not the first. For some children those medications are a disaster and have no real research behind them.

Child psychologists tend to be looking for pathology depending on their training. They may use cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) but a child is generally motivated by their emotions, not their thoughts and experiences, so results can be mixed.

As counsellors and psychotherapists, we tend to steer away from early pathologisation as it tends to have the child actually acting out the pathology and feeling stigmatised. They can then go on to wear that label for the rest of their lives.

Solutions-focused therapy with children

The brain is still developing and growing to the early 20s in women and 25 for men. This leaves us a lot of scope to reconfigure neural pathways, thoughts and behaviour.

This takes education, repetition and discipline. Just like you maximise your leg muscles by working out regularly, you can also change the brain by new and regular exposure to information and training.

Neither you, nor I are the same people we were when we were 14. We’ve developed and changed.

In therapy I help children and teenagers learn and change the way they think, act, behave, and to have control over their emotions. I always use hypnosis to help accelerate this process.

The parent’s attitude to therapy

Because young people live in the world, I also see the family and carer. To see the young person in isolation is not changing that support network.

Parents and carers often sabotage the young person’s therapy because it doesn’t meet the former’s needs and ideas. This is not acceptable.

As parents or carers, I give you very clear instructions for what I want you to do to support the young person and you need to do all of that when I ask.

Don’t ever come back to me saying you didn’t have the time or couldn’t be bothered. That’s therapy sabotage and you are then the problem.

As therapists we’ve studied for thousands of hours about what helps the young person change. When we ask you as the parents and carers to change, it’s for very good scientific, therapeutic, considered reasons to help the young person fast.

How long will therapy last?

That depends on what happens with the young person and what needs to change and whether there’s a lot of work to be done or if the issue is simple.

Certainly, the young person needs to stay in therapy until they and the therapist agree there has been good progress, not until the parents get bored with bringing them to therapy.

Just coming to see me and hoping for the best is not engaging in therapy. It’s just wishful thinking. Some parents expect this but it’s passive, absent parenting not active parenting.

I will also give instructions on what I want the young person to be doing, and to the parents on what I want you to be doing to support that regular intervention. I want every session to count for the young person.

Therapy can go fast when everyone’s on board, and we’re working as a team. We’re all working towards the same well-defined goals to help the young person achieve their goals and wellbeing.

Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH is one of Australia’s highest qualified therapists who sees children and teenagers. In-clinic visits or by Zoom from anywhere in the world. Call 0403 398 808.