Blog
Blog
Problems
Today I was talking with a group of mums, all of whom have children with problems – as well as children who dont have anything in particular wrong with them. One of the mums was explaining how she felt when her child was first diagnosed as being on the autistic...
Bereavement
I was musing about Bereavement. This affects almost everyone from pretty early on. Small children remark on the dead bees on the pavement, pets die, flowers die – other people know people and things which die. But it is something most of us in a European culture are...
Ethics
This is something I’m struggling with a lot. Our rules say that we have to treat children as being entitled to have their confidence kept – although there are exemptions and we warn children and young people that everything is confidential unless its something that...
What a difference a word makes
I was talking to a friend who is doing a Counselling Course. They had been working in groups and she remarked that the phrase ‘Are you OK with continuing with this?’ was a really helpful thing to say to a client who was seeming quite tearful and overwhelmed. And then...
Therapy
I am seeing a couple of small children just now for therapy – both are lovely children and both have had traumas. One was bitten by a dog, the other was not hurt when a tree bough fell around him. In the aftermath, both have developed symptoms that make their lives...
Chloe’s mum
I went to the waiting room to fetch my new clients, Chloe and her mum, but instead saw a teenager and what seemed to be her younger sister. There was no one else there so I asked ‘Mrs Ingle?’ and the teenager got up with the about-nine-year-old. Either the two girls...
How much can be enough?
Just had a meeting with a legal eagle – a barrister and the solicitor who has asked me to write the report. Martin was bereaved of his sister in a fairly awful accident which he witnessed. She was expected to survive but four days after the accident suddenly died....
Which came first?
One of the hardest things about working with children is determining how much of the problem lies in what particular arena. So many of the children have very real and multiple difficulties. So the child whose father left when he was a toddler, might also be struggling...
C.J. grows up
One of my lovely boys came this morning. He has Tourettes and had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder though he appears to be largely growing out of the latter. I have been seeing him for several years at about two monthly intervals both to help with coping with...
so what happened?
So what happened to the boys? These boys arrived with ghastly memories of vicious unpleasantness at home, a horrendous journey to an unknown destination, bereavement issues, no english and no family or friends. Their shared language was Arabic, but the three boys...