Family Counseling

Parenting has always been a daunting task, but with the advent of social media platforms and hyper-connectivity changing the social landscape, parental guidelines are getting even blurrier. It has become imperative for parents to be vigilant regarding the challenges the younger generation faces each day online. Knowing the amount of time your child spends on social media According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, kids ages eight to eighteen spend, on average, a whopping seven and a half hours on a screen for entertainment each day, four and a half hours of which are spent watching TV. Over the course of a year, that adds up to 114 full days watching a screen for fun. In effect, this means that children spend almost half of their waking hours each year engaged in online activities. Networks like TikTok, X, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook are designed not only to grab your attention but also to maintain your continued interest. In these first few months of 2024, the American government has been up-in-arms with TikTok over its controversial new TikTok-Lite promotional incentive that seeks to reward its users with gift packs for spending more time on the site. That means people will be paid to spend more time online, with potentially catastrophic consequences for their mental health. Children spending even more time on leading social media platforms like TikTok means the problems caused by excessive use of the internet are only exacerbated. How social media platforms can endanger children’s well-being In this day and age, the long-held moral stance of simply forbidding kids from socially immoral places to keep them safe is no longer enough to keep them safe or protected. Con artists, criminals, and every form of predator are now just a click away each time your child [...]

Adults often acknowledge that people are all different. And by people, we mean other adults. Children are too often the recipients of standardized approaches that do not recognize that they are individuals, with diverse ways of seeing and reacting to the world around them. Child counseling can help shed light. The reasons each person has for requiring counseling are different. Having made that point, it is important to also notice there are experiences after which many children do benefit from counseling. If your child has experienced any of the following or is currently experiencing them, then it is prudent to consider whether the effects, fallout, and required healing would be assisted through the facilitation of a trained professional. Child counseling after bullying. Bullying affects everyone involved; the people who are the victims of bullies, the bullies themselves, and those who witness the bullying. Bullying sometimes even occurs in a child’s school friendship group and isn’t picked up in many metrics that measure poor outcomes. Bullying is a common experience for those who also abuse substances, struggle with mental health, or even consider suicide, experience depression and anxiety, have increased feelings of sadness and loneliness, experience a change in their sleep or their eating patterns, and more. Those who are bullied are likely to experience a drop in their schoolwork and participation, and in time are increasingly likely to miss or drop out of school. As with some other childhood ills, experts find that some of these issues may continue into adulthood. This makes taking steps to address it and helping your child process their experience all the more important. Child counseling after divorce. The break-up of a marriage is certainly difficult for the parents; however, it can easily be just as hard on the children of the family. There [...]