85 questions for a child psychologist. Early age (from birth to three years) (Group of authors, 2009)

Worse than death

It would seem that what could be more difficult to experience than the death of a loved one? According to some studies, getting over a breakup is even more difficult.

Death is final; It’s almost impossible to agree with the breakup - it seems that everything can still be fixed. Therefore, children whose parents have divorced need help especially often (and, as a rule, it would not hurt the parents themselves).

Similar problems can arise not only in a situation of divorce, but also in cases of the end of first love or the end of a friendship.

Psychologist Peter Dmitrievsky

Teenager at an appointment with a psychologist

By chance, I found myself in a situation where I needed to briefly explain what, in my opinion, is the specificity of a psychologist’s work with teenagers. The following considerations emerged.

There are two inconsolable people in the office.

A parent and teenager come to a psychologist for reassurance on a number of issues that the psychologist cannot give them. This is scary and bitter, and it is important for the psychologist to find the appropriate words to be honest but maintain the therapeutic alliance. This is not always possible, because the inconsolable person becomes angry. What kind of inconsolability do I mean?

1. The parent hopes that it simply seemed to him that his ability to influence the teenager had sharply decreased. In fact, he didn't think so. With each passing hour, the technical and intellectual capabilities of a teenager to cause harm (including irreparable harm) to themselves and others increase. Instead of receiving consolation, a parent can count on the support of a specialist in improving the skills of coping with fear, powerlessness and guilt.

1A. A parent can accept the fact that his ability to influence a teenager is declining, but he can hope that the psychologist is a person who can find the key to any teenager. It is not true. A psychologist who specializes in working with teenagers really knows different ways to help build a trusting relationship with a client. However, most of the power in the office belongs to the teenager. The teenager decides to what extent to allow the psychologist into his world and to what extent to attach significance to the words and actions of the psychologist. It may not be allowed at all, and nothing can be done about it. Again the parent is left inconsolable and may become very angry. It is important for a psychologist to be able to withstand this.

2. Even if the psychologist managed to convince the teenager that he (the psychologist) is not his mother’s mouthpiece or an extension of his father’s hand and an alliance arises between the psychologist and the teenager, the specialist will have to thoroughly break the teenager’s hopes. The teenager believes that the world and his parents owe him a lot and is determined to continue to demand this from the world and from his parents. Seeing an ally in the psychologist, he will try to infect him with the idea of justice and/or evoke pity. The first bummer: there is no justice in this world and there never will be. The second bummer: the psychologist has neither the desire nor the authority to stand up for this child in front of parents and teachers. Of course, the parent needs to be told about what psychological and physical violence will lead to and generally sometimes educate, but the psychologist will not be involved in the teenager’s life globally. The psychologist’s task is to consolidate certain facts in the teenager’s mind: “You were born in this country, at this time, with such a mother and with such a father. Experience shows that when you do action "A", the world or your parents hurt you. And when you do action “B”, the world or your parents give you tasty treats. I sympathize with you in many ways, but what we will be doing here is awareness, responsibility and adaptation, and not the fight for justice.”

It is clear that all this needs to be said in different words, but no matter what words you say, the teenager will not say “thank you” for it.

What to please?

With all the hard work of breaking hopes and enduring parental and adolescent disappointment in psychological help as such or in you personally, what can a psychologist do to please a parent and adolescent? Not much, but it can do something.

1. We can suggest that the parent try to rely not on the hope of finding a better working method of control, but on the hope for the teenager’s self-regulation . Maybe the teenager himself wants to feel good and not feel bad? This idea is unusual for many parents, but over time it begins to seem reasonable. This is a shaky, but still a support.

2. We can tell that the parent has something to respect himself for. Usually, those parents who go to a psychologist have already done a lot of good for their child and taught their child many important things. We can notice and formulate this.

3. A teenager, in addition to fear and pain, has a lot of strength. Many teenagers do not notice this, but from the outside it is clearly visible.

Recommendations for colleagues on establishing an alliance with a parent and a teenager.

Contact with parent. One simple trick made my job a lot easier. Even at the stage of recording by phone, I began to warn parents that at the first session (and maybe at the second) I would devote more time and effort to establishing a relationship with the child. Therefore, they say, you may begin to feel that your opinion and your experiences are not important to me. Keep in mind that I will definitely keep your requests and tasks in mind. In such moments, be patient, as soon as mutual understanding with the teenager is established, I will level out this imbalance. This arrangement allowed me to “mess around” with the teenager without fear of the parent feeling turned off or judged. In addition, such an agreement helps the parent come to the consultation stronger, more adult, and observant. Indirectly, this prepares him for the fact that he will have to cope with many of his difficulties without the help of a teenager.

More about parents. With the caveat that I would speak in pseudoscientific language (so as not to look like a complete idiot), I sometimes made two bold statements. That in a person of adolescence, the areas of the brain responsible for empathy and the areas of the brain responsible for gratitude . And that expecting sympathy and gratitude from a teenager is as naive as expecting a six-month-old child not to pee in his pants. That these areas of the brain are formed only by the age of 30. In fact, I don’t know anything about such areas of the brain, but such postulation often helped to establish contact in a parent-child couple.

Contact with a teenager. Many teenagers were relaxed by my phrase like: “I personally don’t really care how you live your life.” For teenagers, care and control/humiliation are firmly “stuck together.” If they see that someone doesn't care much, there is a potential gap for respect and interest for them. Zinker writes about something similar, saying that a therapist is not a parent to a client, but rather a grandfather. With a teenager I am even further away than my grandfather. But here it is important from what place in your soul you pronounce this phrase about “it doesn’t matter.” It is important to speak from the part that has already seen something cute in this teenager.

A similar situation with the silent teenager. They “brought” him (what do you think I could do?) and he is silent because it’s his mother who has the problems, not him. It seems to me that it is important, after informing the teenager what can be done here and how he could benefit from our work, to wait for some kind of initiative from him, and not to get caught in the usual for our culture dancing around the young man in the hope of captivating him and have a beneficial effect. “I won’t approach you until you invite me somewhere. Here you have this hour and these conditions: this office and this man opposite . You are free to use this hour and this context as you see fit. You can walk, lie down, read, ask any questions.” I could invite each of us to mind our own business (see the previous point: the psychologist has something important and/or interesting to do at this hour without you). It happened that the client was silent or reading his book for almost an hour and only towards the end of the session did he open his mouth at all. It is important to remember here that, while minding my own business, I am still “at work,” that is, I am present here for him. Sometimes I would gently check from time to time to see if any topic or question had come to his mind. But in some cases this treatment was excessive.

(I don’t currently work with teenagers, but I can recommend competent colleagues who specialize in this type of work).

Recommendations for educational psychologists “Consultation with parents is always a dialogue”

Maria Lutsenko

Recommendations for educational psychologists “Consultation with parents is always a dialogue”

Consultation with a parent is always a dialogue.

This stage of a psychologist’s work is the most responsible and labor-intensive. It is at this stage that the “strength”

psychologist qualification.
A meeting with each new parent is always unpredictable , and requires from the psychologist not only the ability “on the fly”

the information just received from , but also maximum flexibility in the conversation with the parent , which can turn into a psychotherapeutic session.
A consulting psychologist must give the impression of being the most competent and cultured person, having a fairly respectable appearance and speaking a fairly rich literary language. He must also be balanced, friendly and relatively open in communication. At the same time, the psychologist must have the skills to regulate social distance: excessive familiarity or, conversely, restraint can make an unfavorable impression. Finally, the psychologist must simply love children.

significant assistance to the psychologist in the counseling . It is best if this is an appropriate form of conclusion. In this case, any deviations from the “standard”

returning data will not prevent you from returning to the main thread of the conversation at the right time.

If you, as a psychologist, have chosen the tactics of conventional counseling , then your position in this dialogue should be active and decisive. You can flexibly change your position, but you always be in control of the situation.

If you are a novice psychologist and do not master psychotechnical techniques, it is better to learn to calmly deal with failures that are natural for any, even an experienced specialist: all failures are “inputs”

into the unresolved psychological problems of your client, and also, possibly, your own unresolved problems, which over time need to be worked out by becoming
a “client”
.

Clients - parents

Despite the uniqueness of each consultation , all parents can be divided into conditional groups.

1. “Competent”
parents .
This is the most constructively minded part of parents who have an adequate understanding of the work of a psychologist. They are committed to positive contact with a psychologist and are ready to constructively discuss the characteristics of their child. You can be sure that such parents will take advantage of the psychologist’s recommendations . As a rule, the children of such parents are well adapted and prepared for school.

2. "Competent Skeptics"

These parents are interested in psychology, perhaps even using some popular psychological knowledge and diagnostic methods. This category can also include parents who consider themselves knowledgeable in pedagogical practice . At the same time, they may experience “temptation”

check your professional competence.

the kitchen a little

data interpretation: this will allow doubters to be convinced that they are facing a good professional.
You can also delicately express your attitude towards the use of certain tests and show that a simplified interpretation of the results is not always valid. Let's say, the “Drawing of a Person”
: often
“psychologists on the street”
have a one-sided idea of the diagnostic capabilities of this method.

Tell parents what methods and why you use when deciding on certain characteristics of the child. Show parents an example of the analysis process: putting forward a hypothesis based on data using one method, you test it using other methods. Usually it is enough to give only one example of the progress of the analysis to satisfy the interest of the parents .

When interpreting a child's personality traits, don't be afraid to admit that parents know their child much better. However, you have the advantage of experience of comparison with many other children, as well as knowledge of the meaning of this or that feature of the child’s products.

You can organize a dialogue with parents something like this : “You certainly know your child better than I do; however, this feature of the drawing often occurs in children who have such and such problems. This may be an accident, but it is worth discussing.” Thus, you not only receive additional information on your request, but you can also protect yourself from your own straightforward conclusions, which, as a rule, cause a natural defensive reaction in parents .

3. "Incompetent Skeptics"

This category of parents causes maximum discomfort for the consultant . Often these are people who do not distinguish psychology from psychiatry and see the psychologist as either a “chatterbox”

, or
“thirstful to put a mark
.
Such parents appear only when you examine all children at the request of the administration. They come with their own preconceived notions and often do not want to hear what the psychologist tells them. It is this category of parents who have particularly strong psychological defenses.
When working with such parents, it is advisable , firstly, to show your sincere interest in the child’s success. It is recommended to start the consultation with the child's successes , and then carefully move on to the problems. It is necessary to explain why these particular abilities are important in terms of “school maturity”

and show that the identified problems can be corrected.
Give parents the freedom to choose whether to listen to your recommendations or not . Show that you sincerely believe that the parents have done everything possible for the child.
Emotionally “join in”

to
the parent . However, if you failed to make this skeptic your ally, remember that you did your best. It has been noticed that it is precisely parents with psychological problems whose children also have problems.
4. “Formal representatives”

Usually these are grandmothers or other relatives who simply “came for a piece of paper”

. Be sure that they have their own unshakable ideas about their child and in the future they will blame bad heredity, environment and teachers for failures.

This is the type of parents who prefer to focus on traditional upbringing, believing that what should come out of the child will come out of him. Such relatives are also unlikely to listen to you carefully. However, show your social “reliability”

: Work through this pointless
consultation according to the full plan and do not forget to praise the baby and his parents . Tell them that you believe in their teaching competence and experience.
It must be said that sometimes a “formal representative”

It is quite possible to turn into an interested person.

5. “ Parents of the “bad”

child" (
"Victims of Circumstances"
)

This is a rare category of parents who initially consider the child a “loser”

They seem to say:
“Well, I knew that he was worse than others!”
.
Such parents may attribute the child's failures to special circumstances, which are often the result of rationalization of a traumatic event associated with the birth or development of the child.
It is these parents , despite even objectively low results, who need to be helped to believe in their child. Show that it is emotional participation that will help the baby in his development. Find all its advantages and untapped possibilities. It can even be shown that the basis of some of his failures is a certain limited deficiency that can be dealt with purposefully. It must be said that it is this category of parents that most often needs psychotherapy. By the way, in this case, the well-known psychotherapeutic question can work perfectly: “What is good/bad about the fact that your child is exactly the way he is?”

6. “Abandoning”
parents .
Sometimes it’s not just marginalized parents . At consultations , it is much more common to meet completely respectable parents who, on the one hand, know about their child’s problems, and on the other, hope that “everything will work out without them”

.
They may make significant efforts to provide their child with competent help from specialists, but they themselves prefer to avoid targeted work with their baby. In this case, it is especially important to emphasize the importance of meaningful contacts between the child and his parents . An emphasis on material support can sometimes be an indicator of a “withdrawal reaction”
from problems associated with the child.

7. "Symbiotic Parents "

Such parents are always aware of the emotional and cognitive problems of their baby. They work hard with him, sometimes even leaving work, protecting him from various, from their point of view, unwanted contacts. They try, as it were, to fashion their ideal out of their child. A child grows up in a “greenhouse”

social conditions, yearning for childhood games with peers.
Sometimes such children become real despots for their mothers. They usually complain about “uncontrollability”
or
“unluckiness
,” the reasons for which turn out to be a real life problem for them.

One can admire the self-sacrifice of such parents , but one should always remember that in such cases the child becomes a victim of the projection of parental problems . Deprived of the right to an autonomous emotional life, such children quickly lose interest in learning and often give the impression of “not playing enough”

Of course, the listed categories of parents are not exhaustive and you may have your own ideas about this.

consultation formula works for almost all parents :

SUPPORT – ANALYSIS – DIALOGUE – RECOMMENDATIONS – SUPPORT

This means that it is unacceptable to talk only about the child’s shortcomings, and it is unacceptable to start with the shortcomings. This means that you cannot simply hand over the child's test results to the parent This means that the diagnostic picture must be supplemented with specific recommendations for the development of certain abilities. Diagnosis without treatment is meaningless. This means that in the end the parent should remain optimistic, even despite receiving information about the child’s predicted problems at school.

The main emphasis in the consultation should be on the ratio of preserved and/or advanced development zones and problem areas. Based on the general profile of the child’s development, you build your consultation and recommendations , select appropriate corrective and/or developmental exercises.

The information received by parents during psychological consultation will help to understand his strengths and weaknesses, possible difficulties that need to be paid special attention to. The main principle in the independent work of parents with their child is the principle of relying on more developed functions for the development of insufficiently formed ones.