Helping Kids with Worry, Anxiety and Stress Archives

Working with Parents and Caregivers When Children Are Our Primary Clients: Why do it, what does the literature tell us and why is it hard?

by Kaleisha | Apr 26, 2024 | Helping Kids Get Along With Others, Helping Kids with Frustration and Tricky Behaviour, Helping Kids with Worry, Anxiety and Stress, Professional

As mental health professionals working with children and young people, our primary focus is of course on the mental and emotional well-being of the young humans we have the privilege of supporting. However, anyone who has worked in child/adolescent mental health for...

The Emotional and Mental Health Challenges of Parenthood

by Kaleisha | Feb 15, 2024 | Helping Kids with Worry, Anxiety and Stress, Professional

Those of us who work in child and youth mental health meet *parents* (for brevity I’ll use ‘parents’ throughout this article, but I’m referring of course to all primary caregivers, biological parents or not) every week who are struggling with parenting related...

Using Cognitive Defusion and Acceptance Techniques with Children

by Kaleisha | Jan 23, 2023 | Helping Kids with Worry, Anxiety and Stress, Professional

Children (like adults) often report thoughts, images and beliefs (internal experiences) which they find distressing (for example: “I’m horrible”; “people think I’m boring”; picturing themselves doing badly on a test). There are multiple strategies and approaches for...

Collaborative Homework Adherence Principles

by Kaleisha | Dec 14, 2022 | Helping Kids Get Along With Others, Helping Kids with Frustration and Tricky Behaviour, Helping Kids with Worry, Anxiety and Stress, Professional

Therapy homework (or home practice) has long been a part of mental health treatment for children and families. It has been understood a variety of ways but can be defined as ‘tasks assigned to clients to promote skill acquisition between treatment sessions’ (Dozois,...

Behavioural Activation for Children: Rationale, Research and Effective Implementation (spoiler: it works but it’s hard!)

by Kaleisha | Nov 3, 2022 | Helping Kids with Worry, Anxiety and Stress, Professional

What is Behavioural Activation? Behavioural activation (BA) is a psychological treatment (or treatment component) which aims to help people understand the positive impact of particular activities on their mood, and to increase the frequency with which they engage in...

The Initial Clinical Interview with Children: The Joys and Challenges of Meeting Families for the First Time

by Kaleisha | May 31, 2022 | Helping Kids Get Along With Others, Helping Kids with Frustration and Tricky Behaviour, Helping Kids with Worry, Anxiety and Stress, Professional

One of the joys and privileges for mental health professionals working with children is meeting a new person/family for the first time and having them share their “story” with us. However, there are also significant challenges for us in this first meeting (or...