How To Support Your Child In Online Counseling

Is online counseling good for my child? How can I better support my child during their therapy sessions? Who needs it?

Everyone needs therapy when they are faced with problems they can’t cope with alone, especially young children.  

Problems, when left unattended, can severely affect one’s mental, emotional, and other areas of personal development. This can lead to suffering both within one’s own mind and relationships with other people. Severely affected people simply fall under the effects of desperation and depression.

What Is Online Therapy?

Online counseling is a type of therapy you can seek for your child’s improvement. But, what is therapy? And how can it help your child?

As we’ve mentioned, people have problems that affect how they act, feel, and most importantly, learn. These can affect someone’s performance in terms of their work or studies. This has a massive impact on a person’s life if left untreated.

Obviously, the most concerning thing is that if it affects children at a young age. As a parent, it is your responsibility to identify problems when they pop up and deal with it immediately. Sadly, not all problems can be solved at home. That’s why there are professionals who are adept at helping young children through online counseling.

Through online counseling, young children can cope with their problems better, open up the communication lines, and ultimately, perform better at home and in school.

How Does It Work?

To begin the online counseling process, the counselor/therapist will first meet with you and your child to assess the situation, identify their strengths and areas of improvement, and how they can help. This is usually done through video communication programs like Zoom or Google Meet.

This may not be instantaneous, as the therapist will need to review your case before coming back to you with a clear laid-out plan. You can also provide your input to improve the overall plan and increase the chances of success.

What Happens During Therapy?

So what happens during these online counseling and therapy sessions?

Before we get to that, let us just stress this: the more sessions your child goes to, the better the improvement. Ok, so here’s what happens during online counseling:

There’s A Lot Of Talking Involved

A lot of what happens during online counseling involves talking. This helps the individual express their feelings in a healthy manner. Children who are allowed to put their feelings into words instead of actions can act their best.

Having someone who listens and relates to how they feel speeds up the learning process.

Engage In Activities That Calm The Mind And Body

Children are also expected to engage in certain activities that help them overcome their anxieties. Teaching mindfulness activities, meditation, and breathing exercises are examples of these activities. To do this, the online counselor does the actions while the child imitates what is happening onscreen.

You can also take part in these activities so that you can help your child understand what is happening and how to do certain actions involved in these activities.

Practice Focusing Skills

Children experience anxiety or stress when they don’t know how to focus their energies. Online counseling helps introduce new concepts to young children to help them find their focal point.

These can be in the form of games or activities that make them wait their turn, be patient, practice self-control, follow directions, listen, share, try again without getting frustrated, or deal with feelings associated with losing.

Learn Basic Problem-Solving Skills

A lot of online counseling is particularly targeted at teaching problem-solving skills. Individuals who undergo therapy do it because they have a problem. Over time, these problems are identified, discussed, and then solved through proper problem-solving activities or techniques.

What You Can Do To Help Support The Therapy Sessions

Contrary to popular belief, you can also be just as helpful towards your child’s progress during online counseling by behaving a certain way when problems arise. Here are some things you can do so as not to escalate the matter at hand and effectively deal with your child at home.

Stay Calm. Keep Your Cool.

There will be times when frustration will get the best of you. You need to be mindful of these instances. Shouting or yelling can exacerbate the situation leading to a loss of control. Keep your emotions in check gives your child a role model to emulate. They will learn how to act properly by watching how you deal with stress.

Give it time and your patience and ability to stay calm will eventually rub off on them. 

Don’t Give In To Your Child’s Demands

One of the reasons why there are a lot of spoiled rotten people today is the result of their parents giving up too easily when they made demands as a child. Who can blame their parents for just wanting them to stop yelling or causing a fuss? There are no manuals when it comes to children.

But you know better right? You have to establish yourself as the authority figure and mean what you say by not giving in. Your child has to understand that causing a ruckus will not result in them getting what they want.

Reward Positive Behavior With Praise

Reward your child with praise if they calm down. Do the same if they put in an effort to express themselves calmly. This verbal affirmation of their positive behavior will teach them that what they’re doing is a desired or expected action.

Help Him Solve Problems In A Constructive Manner

Problems can be solved in a constructive manner if your child takes a proactive stance in dealing with it. You can teach that by posing problems and helping them find solutions that are realistic and doable. Helping them in this manner gives them experience and enough lessons to deal with problems in the future.

Time Outs And Reward Systems

Children under eight years old can be corrected by giving them a time out. this may require telling them to sit or stand in a corner or face the wall. This can help calm an upset child as it changes their focus on what is immediately in front of them and not the object that caused stress in the first place.

For children older than eight, a time out may not be as effective. Instead, create a rewards system based on good deeds or positive behavior and assign points for those. If your child does enough good things, they can rack up the points to earn a reward aside from praise.

Identify What Triggers The Reaction

Children often show signs before they react in a negative manner. Therefore, it is also your responsibility to find what triggers these reactions and try your best to avoid them. This can help you avoid problems from starting in the first place.

Conclusion

Online counseling is crucial for children these days. With the current situation, children can develop a set of behavioral conditions due to being forced to stay at home with no outlet to release their pent up energy.

It also doesn’t help that most children have a mindset thinking the current pandemic is a vacation and school is out forever. Having to go through online classes is not one of most children’s favorite things especially if it hasn’t been discussed beforehand to set expectations.

Therein lies the problem and where online counseling can be helpful. Parents are vital at this point to provide the information therapists need to effectively treat children. What you need to do as a parent is to be doubly vigilant in looking for trouble signs and addressing issues as they crop up.

Related Questions

Will The Information In My Child’s Therapy Remain Confidential?

Yes. Therapists are mandated by law to keep all information gathered as confidential. The only exceptions are pieces of evidence of child abuse or neglect. In this case, intervention is needed. This also applies if they believe their client is in danger or is posing as a danger to people around them.

Will My Insurance Cover My Child’s Therapy?

Different providers offer different coverage. You can submit an application to your health insurance company to cover the fees associated with your child’s therapy. Most insurance providers will honor this but it’s always best to check before going further with therapy sessions.

Is It Good To Involve Parents In Counseling Students Online?

Yes. Parents are actually welcome to be part of the counseling process to provide their input to help these online therapists. This helps online therapists identify the individual’s needs, set realistic goals in the treatment, and streamline the process to ensure success.

Do you want more teaching tips and online counseling resources for classroom and home learning purposes?

All Digital School has a rich collection of online counseling resources and advice for you. We also have experts, teachers, and parents exchanging tips and information on our community boards. Do you want in?

You can also register via your Facebook or Google account. Click any of the buttons below.

Do you have online counseling resources and techniques that you’d like to share? We want to learn from you as well.

Let us know in the comments below!