Students vs counsellors vs parents

In my experience being a school counsellor.. when students are referred to a counsellor, they are firstly very much unaware  of the term counselling and a counsellor to them is someone who wants to fix them and visiting a counsellor is like a punishment...

I have had clients who missed school just because they were afraid of me .ie. a school counsellor.. not because counselling is a scary process but because of the misunderstanding and misconceptions they have towards a school counsellor...

When a counsellor calls a child in for counselling .. he is teased by his peers... i have heard students saying " counsellor teacher has come to take you to a punishment room" and " you are mad and hence counsellor mam has come to scold you". But what they dont know is that school counsellors are not at all scary people who give punishments..rather they are here to help you..guide you..

Even parents, sometimes misunderstand the counselling process.. in my previous blog i had given an example of a parent who was against this counselling process...the reason being that they were unaware or had incomplete knowledge about the role a school counsellor plays..

The movie "Tare Zameen Par" has beautifully shown the role of a teacher and a counsellor. I sometimes use this example with the parents to give a basic idea of what counselling process is. As filmi it sounds but this actually works..

I read this post somewhere a few months ago that indian parents expect their child to be a combination of Tom cruise, Aishwariya Rai, Lata mangeshkar, Einstein, Picaso... but what they dont realize is that their child is a superstar in himself.. he is  unique  on his own... not necessarily he would have all the qualities of these personalities. . But his personality is special in its own way... parents pressurize kids to a level where the child forgets to who he actually is... and this ultimately results in the child feeling inferior and dissatisfied with himself and his life...

When such kids come in for counselling they are almost lost and broken. They lack self esteem..self confidence. .. and are confused because of which their performance goes down.. parents put them in a number of classes like drawing, art-craft, dance, phonetics ets... but not once the parents ask the child about his interest... the child feels asif he has no say in his decisions of life...

Sometimes parental session becomes very important before starting the sessions with the child. Knowing about the parents, home environment, members, expectations helps formulate a base for the counselling process. The counsellor gets the basic idea about the childs background.

As a school counsellor i not only address  issues like anger management or stress management but also issues like vocabulary building, building up self-esteem, encouraging positive self-talk, identification of appropriate feelings and emotions...

Play therapy is a  very useful method that i have come across.. not only do students enioy them but so do i... they include paper pencil activities.. colours... craft...clay..sand and many more. 
i prefer play therapy because the child attention is caught by these activities and its fun as well. The child doesnt feel as if the counselling process is something  scary rather they want to do more and more activities ...

So my next blog will surely be aboutnplay therapy... finally.. so keep reading... 😊