adoloscent and youth counselling

Adolescent counselling is counselling aimed at young people to help them make sense of their feelings, behaviors and thoughts and entails the use of unique techniques that draw out the expressive nature of a young person like art therapy or more traditional approaches like talking therapy. This form of counselling is important in helping guiding kids transitioning into adulthood and to understand themselves better.

The adolescence stage is the period when a child transitions from being a child to becoming an adult and usually takes place between the ages of 10 and 19. During this period, the young adult starts experiencing a great deal of mental and physical changes. Physically, adolescents start seeing changes in their bodies, a process referred to as puberty, and is a time that leaves them confused as the changes in hormones start affecting their moods and thoughts. Often, when these changes start setting in, adolescents become extremely sensitive and start experiencing mood swings and fluctuations in their confidence levels. If not properly guided or counselled, adolescents could take to their own devices and start making their own judgements, which are often clouded. As a result, they could end up following the wrong path and becoming prey to negative things that could ruin their lives like drugs, peer pressure and such. It is for this reason that adolescents should consider counselling to address their feelings and thoughts allowing them to grow into healthy, sound-minded adults.

The Importance of Adolescent Counselling

Any parent can attest to the fact that the adolescence stage of any child can be extremely difficult and confusing. With fluctuations in mood, your youngster could be happy one minute and mad the next. Often, during this stage, most kids feel as though their parents are pressuring them and just want space. That is why most kids tend to withdraw when they reach their adolescence and don’t want much to do with their parents. During this period, they also become more aware of their bodies and their sexuality. As a result, they tend to want to make new friends and experiment with new things. It is a confusing time so parents need to monitor and supervise to ensure teenagers do not end up making wrong life decisions.

One-on-One Counselling: One-on-One adolescent counselling involves having the adolescent attend counselling sessions. Often, this form of counselling is advised in the event a parent has concerns about their child and/or about transitioning into adolescents or who has been influenced negatively by different factors during this very fragile stage. Adolescent counselling runs for as long as it takes to achieve therapy goals or until the patient or adolescent fully recovers. As such, it is advisable that a child’s family not try to hasten the process as it is important for the child to get helpful counselling and advice. Providing teens with the opportunity to take part in their own counseling allows them to further develop skills which promote independence. Therapy for dolescents and teens can help teens improve their overall functioning at home, school, within the family, and with peers/social environment ...