Help for children aged 5 to 10 whose worries are affecting their school and/or home life
Relate West Surrey’s Children’s counselling offers 5 to 10 year olds a safe, confidential space in which to express their feelings.
What it is
Children’s counselling helps 5 to 10 year olds who are suffering from anxiety, or who are not wanting to go to school, having friendship problems, have poor self-esteem or self-image, having meltdowns, or finding it difficult to express their feelings.
How it helps
Using creative play and/or art therapy, our highly trained and experienced counsellors show children how to express their feelings. Parents/carers can be invited to participate, if appropriate.
Early help has been shown to prevent problems from escalating and gives children confidence to express their feelings in a safe and non-judgemental space.
What to expect
We see children for between 30 and 45 minutes for an initial appointment with their parents/carers to find out if we can help. Then we book regular weekly counselling sessions of up to 45 minutes.
Relate West Surrey in partnership with The Surrey Wellbeing Partnership
Children’s counselling case study
A 7-year-old boy who was referred due to deteriorating behaviour at school as well as at home.
He is currently on the waiting list for assessment for neurodiversity. During the initial assessment, his parents raised concerns about meltdowns triggered by not being able to wait or lose, leading to violence and screaming.
Goal for therapy: was a space to explore who he is, and acceptance of himself. And how to cope when he loses.
He struggled to engage verbally with therapy initially and needed his mum in the room for the whole first session. We were able to build a therapeutic relationship through ball play. Each week, he had less time with a parent in the room, by starting with the door open. There was a lot of work around boundaries within the play. One intervention was to mentalise how it is to play with him if he hit the ball too hard, or made the game too tricky for me.
Parents reported halfway through the 10-week offering of counselling that behaviour improved. As the sessions progressed, he was able to express more of his feelings. He was able to relax and explore the room as the therapeutic relationship developed, which led to more creative expression in the sand tray and with modelling as the weeks went on. Through the play, he was able to work on mastery to help him with his self-esteem.
Please note names have been changed for reasons of confidentiality.
