When should a mother seek professional help

Parenting is a very difficult job with tremendous responsibility made more so by the fact that the outcome will impact you greatly – more than any other job you have ever done. This is further burdened by the second fact that you have received little or no formal training in it. The mistakes are yours as are the bouquets!

There are no clear guidelines about the right way to parent. Usually, we either do what our parents did, or we do the exact opposite, depending on how we remember the parenting we received. However, at this point it may be useful to learn the first lesson – that parenting is not a one-way street!

Donald Winnicott, a famous child expert, once said that there is no such thing as an individual child. There are only children and parents.  Understanding children's behavior is accomplished by viewing parents and children as a team. When a child is not functioning well, there is often some imbalance in the team's functioning. The emotional atmosphere that exists between parents and children can lead either to constructive, healthy living or a life course fraught with missteps and obstacles.

Growing up

It is common for children to experience occasional problems as they grow and mature. Toilet training, mealtimes, bedtimes and homework are some of the earliest and the commonest areas of disagreements faced by most families. Clashes with parents and friends surface as the child struggles to find a personal identity and to develop appropriate practices of relating to others. Problems with the school and teachers could emerge as academic and behavioral demands increase. As new situations, demands and expectations are encountered, it is common for the child to experience emotional ups and downs. The reactions are characterized by feelings of sadness, fear and anger, but tend to be short-lived, and usually do not significantly interfere with the child's life. Occasionally a child's response to life's pressures may become severe, and the parents' attempts to help their child may be unsuccessful. At times such as these, professional assistance may be warranted.

Children's reactions to stressful life circumstances range from mild and short-lived to severe and long-lasting. When a child's problems do not resolve within a reasonable time-frame psychological intervention is recommended. Therapy offers children the opportunity to identify, discuss and understand problems and to develop necessary coping skills. Therapy also provides the opportunity to address parental concerns, educate parents regarding their child's unique needs, and assist them in meeting these needs in an appropriate, effective fashion. Finally, it is important to recognize that without appropriate and timely treatment a child's problems may become severe and lead to more serious, long-lasting difficulties.

Some tips

What are the essential components of positive parenting?

Active Listening: This kind of listening presupposes an ongoing interest in your child’s point of view, understand their thinking and, most importantly, their objections to accepting what you are proposing.

Regulating your own emotions: Active listening is virtually impossible unless you are able to constructively regulate your own emotions. This is no small feat. Parents and children are often exceptionally skillful at arousing intolerable emotions in one another. These emotions interfere with the capacity to listen actively.

Emotions are contagious! You and your child reciprocally exchange or "catch" emotions, especially negative ones (i.e. frustration; anger; sadness), from each other. Once this happens, the job of emotional regulation becomes complex. In this situation, you, the parent would have the mighty task of regulating and balancing your own reactions and in the process understanding the tremendous impact the emotion (that you are also experiencing) has on the mind of your young child.

Consulting your Child: Once you have listened to your child and mastered the difficult job of regulating emotions, you are ready to consult with your child about what would help.

Consulting children seems like the most logical way to approach parent-child difficulties. However, it is often overlooked or attempted unsuccessfully because of the failure to master the prerequisite steps above.  Thus, it is not so much the words that are used as it is the manner with which the message is delivered. Consulting is a way of gathering information and joining with a child. Asking children what they would like is not the equivalent of doing what the child asks. Maintaining the difference between talking and doing is extremely important in undertaking the task of consulting with your child to together work towards removing obstacles.

For this to work effectively, you need to work through your own obstacles at effective emotional control.

Seeking help

Most parents can and should attempt to help their child cope with problems before consulting a psychologist. However, as with all areas of life, there are some situations where outside help is warranted. The average parent is not reluctant to consult a physician for their child's medical needs. In fact, parents who do not obtain appropriate medical care for their children are considered negligent. The informed parent also recognizes when their child may need or benefit from psychological treatment and understands that such intervention is not in any way a sign of parental failure.

How does a mother know when it is time to seek professional assistance for her child?

There are a number of factors in determining the appropriateness of treatment. For a start, you would need to evaluate if the observed behavior is disrupting daily functioning, seems to overwhelm the child or interferes with the achievement of age-appropriate developmental milestones. For example, changing school or joining a new school can be an emotionally overwhelming experience that children react to in a variety of ways. If a child's reaction includes uncharacteristic clinging behavior, fear of sleeping alone or heightened anxiety when separating from a parent, it indicates that normal functioning has become disrupted, and referral for psychological treatment is indicated.

Children may also benefit from psychological treatment when the problems they face are complicated and beyond the range of normal daily experience. For example, children who suffer from serious or life-threatening medical problems often derive benefit from the assistance provided by a knowledgeable psychologist. The psychologist focuses on helping these children develop coping skills to deal with their unique situation and advises parents regarding how best to support their child.

Coping with personal reactions to seeking professional help

Parents react in varied ways when faced with the idea that their child needs psychological treatment. Some mothers tend to feel guilty and blame themselves for their child's problem. Others may experience confusion or uncertainty regarding their child's need for treatment. A teacher, for instance, may describe the child as evidencing emotional or behavior problems in the classroom, while the child appears to behave normally at home. Mothers who receive this type of feedback often have difficulty reconciling their own perception of their child with those of the teacher.