Discussion Board DUE Sunday 7/18 at 9PM EST

Week 7 Classmate Responses

Classmate 2:

CHAPTER 19: Counseling Children with Special Concerns

Briefly outline your treatment for working with a 10-year-old male whose parents have just divorced. What symptoms of trauma would you expect to see and what kinds of counseling interventions would you plan?

Working with a child affected by divorce means recognizing the dissolution of a child’s physical, physiological, and emotional network. This requires addressing the family as a system and bolstering existing foundations while rebuilding others. As a counselor, in this setting I would begin by encouraging the family to seek counseling in order to assist with creating a new support systems to help the child cope with the new reality they will face. The text offers a wonder model I feel would provide a useful framework for treatment:

Acknowledging the reality of the marriage breakup – Development of awareness helps to move a child toward healing

Disengaging from parental conflict and distress and resuming customary pursuits – Children must distance themselves from the conflict and focus on activities and extracurricular puruits

Assist in the acceptance loss – Work to help the client grieve and accept the breakup

the permanence of divorce – Accepting the finality of divorce can be a difficult task however it’s important to help a child move forward positively

Achieving realistic hope regarding relationships – A parents divorce does not mean the child’s relationship’s are destined for failure; help client develop optimistic point of view of the future

A child experiencing divorce may project feelings of anger and resentment toward one or both parents, harbor guilt regarding what they feed is their role in the breakup, or they may even become enmeshed in the relationship as caregiver in offering support. Declining academic performance of acting out may also be a symptom of divorce. It is vital to work with children to help them identify their feelings and to process the associated emotions. Play therapy, Gestalt drawing techniques, and REBT all potentially useful techniques to help a child dealing with divorce develop the skill necessary to cope with the situation.

Describe four goals you might include in your treatment plan for a child in an alcoholic family. What kinds of counseling techniques would you probably include?

Counseling children coping with chemical dependency requires as significant level of compassion, and understanding. According to the text, this group is at a much higher risk of abuse and neglect, and thus require an increased awareness when conducting counseling. For key goals for children who are whose caregivers suffer from chemical dependency:

Convey knowledge of factual data regarding chemical dependency to offer a realistic view of what’s occurring

Remove any notions that the child is culpable for the dissolution of the relationship

Development a strong locus of control regarding what occurs in their lives

Assist children to build the skills to handle negative outcomes due to abuse

I believe play therapy techniques, Gestalt, as well as REBT would be effective in this situation. For instance, the client might talk to the individual suffering from chemical dependency who is not present in the room, rather speaking to them in an empty chair. Perhaps, the therapist might engage in Gestalt play therapist and ask children to draw how they feel. This would be followed by requesting the child to draw how they would like to be. REBT is another option which might be employed to correct children’s belief that they are responsible for the breakup.

Chapter 20 Counseling with Children with Disabilities

Tommy is a 9-year-old child from a single parent home. He has been diagnosed with an emotional disturbance and has symptoms of hyperactivity, anxiety, sadness, and is destructive with his acting-out behavior. Describe your plan for treatment.

Based on the Tommy's symptoms he may suffering from at least two major types of disorders. The first being an anxiety disorder, the second being a conduct disorder. The first task is develop the counseling relationship with Tommy and his mother. Both most be aware of the boundaries of the counselor client relationship, as well as the specific rules governing disclosure of information. My primary goal is focusing on the source of Tommy's anger and acting-out behaviors the impact in the present as well as the future.

A treatment plan would combine REBT, CBT, and play therapy techniques to help Tommy recognize his emotions and to help him take control of his behavior. This includes developing strategies and plans to deal with situations that may arise at home or at school. Counseling sessions will be scheduled for every other week initially, and if there is no improvement I'd seek advisement to determine a new course of action or find out if medication may be a viable part of Tommy's treatment.

List the categories and descriptions of exceptionalities. Have you worked with any children in these categories? Share what you can about your experience.

IDEA recognized a total of 14 seperate area of exceptionalities. The categories and their descriptions follow:

Autism: maturation disability affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction.

Deaf-blindness: disability impacting auditory and sight, affecting scommunication which leads to developmental and educational problems.

Deafness: diminished auditory capacity which afffects the childs ability to decode sounds, with or without external augmentation causing the child signficant academic issues

Developmental delay: a late development (physical, cognitive, communication, social, emotiona, or behavioral).

Emotional disturbance: Condition manifesting over a prolonged span time highlighted by poor educational performance: a. An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors. b. An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers. c. Inappropriate behavior or feelings under normal circumstances. d. A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression. e. A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.

Hearing impaired: an diminished in hearing, either complete or vacillating impacting educational performance but not considered under the definition of deafness.

Intellectual disability: significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing simultaneously with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

Multiple disabilities: simultaneous impairments such as intellectual disability-blindness, the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be addressed in a special education program solely for one of the impairments.

Orthopedic impairment: severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The category includes impairments caused by congenital anomaly, by disease (e.g., polio, bone tuberculosis), and from other causes (e.g., cerebral palsy, amputations).

Other health impairment: means having limited strength, vitality, or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited alertness to the educational environment. The condition may be due to chronic or acute health problems; examples of such health problems are asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, heart conditions, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia, Tourette syndrome.

Specific learning disability: disorder in one or more of the psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language that causes difficulties in listening, thinking, speaking, reading, writing, spelling, or doing mathematical calculations.

Speech or language impairment: communication disorder such as stuttering, impaired articulation, or voice impairment.

Traumatic brain injury: an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force that results in total or partial functional and/or psychosocial impairment.

Visual impairment including blindness: impairment in vision that even with correction adversely affects educational performance.

My experience working with children with exceptional disabilities has been limited. During my Air Force career I voluteered at school and had the priviledge of assisting in a special needs class. The majority had some form of learning disability. I spent about an hour assisting in a basic math lesson. The teacher and the aid seemed to possess an imeasurable reserved of patience, kindness, and compassion for the children. They treated each one with dignity and respect while simultaneously holding them accountable to make every attempt to to their best. Thier resolve and compassion left and indelible impression that I shall not forget. I can only hope I can offer a similar level of professionalism in dealing with children with exceptionalities.

Reference

Henderson, Donna A., and Charles L. Thompson Counseling Children. Cengage Learning US, 2015. [VitalSource Bookshelf].