All Children develop in all areas following a particular milestone step by step. These areas are : physical, communication, cognitive, socio –emotional and moral development. The rate of development is not common in all children, they all have individuality. We find some children who are developmentally delayed and face different type of problems in there development period. These are: attention related problems, speech difficulties, behavior problems, exam phobia, social phobia, trauma, memory related problems, problems related to academics etc.
wEvolve has started an unit called Child Therapy Unit ( CTU) . The general objective of the service is to provide counseling and therapy to parents and their children aged 3 to 12 years. The specific objectives of the unit are to:
1.Assess children with behavior problem, delayed development and other difficulties.
2.Provide therapeutic support to children through a number of special activities.
3. Help parents to support their children positively/properly/developmentally appropriate ways through parent counseling.
4. Facilitate training for different school teachers on child development/ child rights,/brain gym and on other developmentally appropriate activities.
CTU is running a range of special activities for assessing children and provide therapeutic support. These are:
- Play therapy: Play therapy is a method of therapy that uses play to uncover and deal with psychological issues. Play therapy utilizes plays , children natural medium of expression, to help them express their feelings more easily through toys instead of words.
Examples of play therapy
The therapist offer the child doll house and some dolls, asking them to act out some problems they have at home or they also encourage the child to use hand puppets to recreate something they found stressful or frightening. Play therapy is appropriate for children aged 3 to 12 years to better express themselves and resolves their problems.
- Brain Gym: Brain gym is use to connect both brain hemispheres (right and left). The aim of the brain gym is to :
improve the brain functions.
– balance the effects of daily stress and tension.
–help one reach an optimal state to help them stay in shape to think, learn and concentrate at any time.
Brain gym is a lifelong educational movement based program which uses simple movements to integrate the whole brain senses on body, preparing the person with the physical skills they need to live and learn more effectively.
- Dance and movement: Dance and movement therapy is a well-known activity for balancing and coordinating the different organs of the body and stimulating the brain. Therapist are utilizing a number of different dance movement/ activities.
Dance/ movement therapy is the psychotherapeutic use of movement and dance to promote social, cognitive and physical wellbeing. Dance and movement therapy emphasis the importance of non-verbal communication and bodily movement as our first forms of communication. Dance and movement therapy benefits many mental health disorders including anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder and autism.
- Art Therapy: Art therapy is a tool, therapist used to help children express, interpret and resolves their emotion and thoughts. Children’s work with an therapist to explore their emotions understand feelings that are causing them stress. Art therapy also help children find solution to those issues. Art therapy helps children to use creativity and self-expression to support their mental health. It also helps children to develop their self-awareness, cope with stress , boost self-esteem and work on social skills.
There are many activities which called art therapy like:
1. Origami( making toys with paper)
2. Making figures with leaf’s
3. Making figures with clay
4. Making Collage
5. Free hand drawing and coloring
6. Free hand drawing and interpretation of it
7. Finger puppets and so on.
- Story Analysis: Storytelling and analysis of story is another form of therapy. In this therapy therapist do certain things:
- Reading a story
- Giving opportunity to the child to read story
- Analyzing the pictures of the story
- Interpreting the content of the story
- Making stories following a rule
- Completing a story based on half of it
Story analysis helps children to develop:
- Concentration
- Perception
- Empathy
- Listening
- Reading skills.
It also helps to reduce or remove restlessness and stress
- Picture Analysis: Therapist use another technique with children named picture analysis. Picture analysis helps children to observe a picture carefully and analyze the objects and contents of the picture. It helps children to develop:
–patients
-visual perception
-analytical ability
-different perspectives and
Reduce or remove restlessness.
- Role Play: Therapist helps children to act out different roles based on the need of the child. It helps children to express their feelings/ emotions and understand others perspective. It helps therapist to understand the child’s feeling, needs, nature of the problem and the level of the child’s communication skills.
- Speech Therapy: Speech therapy help people who have difficulty specking to communicate better and to break down the barriers that result from speech impediments. The goals of speech therapy includes:
-includes improving pronunciation,
– strengthening the muscles used in speech, and
-learning to speak correctly.
Child Therapy Unit is playing a unique role to help children and their parents for minimizing or removing children’s emotional, social, academic, communication problems, phobias, trauma etc. and help children to maintain their mental health. This unit also gives importance for developing children’s both academic and emotional intelligence.
Farida Akhtar
Psychologist/Counselor
