Parenting

Counselling Parents: The Early Stages

January 31, 2018

The counselling of parents, like most counselling and many other endeavours, is likely to be heavily influenced by what happens in the early stages. If parents come to you and feel welcomed, respected, and understood, they are more likely to open up with the vital information that will enable you to help their children change challenging or harmful behaviours. If in addition, you are able to conve... »

Strategies for Helping Families to Enhance Resilience

July 19, 2017

If you are supporting a family in transition, you may perceive huge differences between them and the characteristics (named in our previous article) as belonging to resilient families. If so, you may be wondering: “So how do I help move my struggling family down the continuum towards greater functionality?” In this article we address three principal areas of focus, which reinforce one another: Sup... »

Challenges of Families with a Parent Working Away from Home Base

June 5, 2014

For modern Australian families there is another dimension of challenge that sits just outside the framework of what used to be considered “normal”. Much has been said about the mining boom and the advantages that it has brought to this country’s economy in what are generally troubled economic times globally. Similarly, few Australians would argue about the necessity for Defence Force personnel to ... »

Family Issues When There is Disability, Illness, or Serious Injury

May 21, 2014

Have you ever experienced anyone in your family becoming seriously ill or disabled? Chances are that it was a difficult time for you. When a family member is stricken with a physical injury, illness or disability, the ramifications of that change go far beyond the physical, often causing deep-level re-alignment of membership roles, responsibilities, and expectations as the family deals with the pr... »

Helping Families Enhance Resilience: Encouraging effective parenting

April 23, 2013

This is the second article of a 3-part series titled Helping Families Enhance Resilience. The series explores how you (as a person providing social support) can help families deal with transition by developing effective resilience skills. The series we will address three principal areas of focus, which reinforce one another: Supporting a positive self-concept; Encouraging effective parenting and; ... »

Behaviour Modification with Children

October 15, 2009

Steve and Jan have come to counselling regarding their 5 year old daughter, Kim who screams when she doesn't get her own way. She is starting school next year and her parents are concerned with how she is going to fit in and what will happen if she doesn't get her own way. »

An Insight into the Solution

October 15, 2009

This case history details a significant time in the life of the Smith-Curtis* family. This family did not come to counselling voluntarily, but were referred by the Department of Families after substantiated allegations of abuse and neglect of their two children. The counselling agency, (a non-government service provider), is experienced in working with involuntary clients who make up two thirds of... »

A Cycle of Dysfunctional Parenting and Unsatisfactory Child Development

October 15, 2009

Beatrice is a 40-year-old married mother of four children; she married young and over time she and her husband separated on three occasions. Her husband previously subjected her to both psychological and physical abuse. As a child she lost her mother to suicide leaving her to be raised by her father. Unable to raise his daughters and work at the same time, Beatrice was passed around to various ext... »