Counseling Adolescents and Children

Pledge, D. S. (2004)

Chapter 1 - Review

• What must a counselor to prepare to offer developmentally appropriate interventions for child or adolescent clients (CAC)?

Developmental Foundations of Counseling With Children and Adolescents

• Review theoretical perspectives on physical, cognitive, social, moral, and emotional development.

• Identify developmentally appropriate interventions

• Recognize the “danger” of pushing them beyond their current level of functioning.

Cont.

• When it comes to counselor presence, how does a counselor best connect with CAC’s?

Counselor presence

• Use empathic abilities to understand their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences

• Children and adolescents are acutely aware if the therapist is not fully present during the session.

• Be in touch with your “inner child.”• Connect with childlike qualities within oneself to truly

establish rapport.• Use developmentally appropriate play• Be respectful and understanding• Understand complicated levels of development, family

influence, and pathology.

Developmentally appropriate interventions

• Learn to distinguish between what is normal development and what is not

• Developmental guidelines – physical, emotional, social, intellectual/cognitive, moral, identity.

• Physical – environmental and genetic

Social development

• Psychosocial stages – Erik Erikson (1964)• Peer relationships• Emotional maturity/development –

attachment• Attachment styles

Cognitive development

• Piaget (1963) – sensori motor, pre-operational, concrete operational, formal operational

• Kegan (1982) – incorporative, impulsive, imperial, interpersonal, institutional, and inter-individual stages.

• Gardner (1983) – seven areas of intelligence: logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal.

Cognitive development cont.

• Attention – our ability to intervene will be limited by the client’s current level of development and directly linked to attention, memory, and motivation.

• Learning styles – kinesthetic or active manipulation style; auditory; visual

• After determining a general learning style and possible knowledge deficits, interventions can be tailored to the developmental level and indvidual differences of each particular client.

Cognitive development cont.

• Identity development• Self-observation skills• Sexual identity formation – high suicide rates;

isolation; lack of support• Moral development – Kohlberg (1981);

Gilligan (1982)

Goals of the therapeutic process of Adlerian therapies

• Strengthen client’s social interest• Diminish client’s feelings of weakness, inability, and

inferiority• Recognize client’s strengths and resources, develop courage• Alter client’s lifestyle, change faulty assumptions and beliefs,

replace big distortions with relatively smaller distortions• Change mistaken goals• Help client become more cooperative and contributing in

social relationships, adopting an attitude of social equality.