How do I talk to my child about therapy?
It can feel like a daunting task to talk to your child about therapy. Many parents report that planning the conversation rather than improvising helps to reduce stressful feelings. The following considerations may help you in creating such a plan:
1) Think about the setting. Choice of time and place is important. Consider a quiet, calm time of day and space, and preferably on a good day, or one that has been relatively low-stress.
2) Describe therapy in a way that maps onto your child’s experiences/knowledge base. For younger children, it may be more appropriate to talk to about therapy by relating it to experiences that are familiar. For example, if they already participate in speech therapy (which helps with communication), you may describe this as “feelings therapy”, “therapy that helps with feelings” or visiting the “feelings doctor”.
If you have older children, you can consider asking them what they know or think about therapy first, and then expanding on these ideas.
3) Consider framing the conversation from the context of strengths rather than problems. Rather than stating, “You need to go to therapy to work on your social anxiety”, it may be more helpful to talk about strengths. For example stating, “When you went to the birthday party last week, I saw you talking to Samantha and it looked like you had a good time. I know that it’s not always easy for you to talk to others and I’m not always sure how to help. I think that therapy can help us figure out what to do when it is hard to interact with others. What do you think?”
4) Remind your child that therapy is not just for them, but is for the benefit of the entire family. As in the example above, it is important that your child understand that therapy is not about “fixing them”, but about the family working toward a goal together.
5) Normalize therapy, using your own experiences as appropriate. Some parents have participated in therapy, and it would be great to share this with your child if you feel comfortable. If you have not attended therapy, or don’t feel comfortable sharing, you can still remind them that many people attend therapy and it is not abnormal. It is extremely helpful for your child to realize that attending therapy is okay (and brave) and that they should not feel isolated or stigmatized.
6) Invite your child to be a part of the process. You can ask your child to look at websites with you, to generate questions to ask the prospective therapist, or they may be able to describe some features that are important to them (e.g., therapist should be “nice” “fun”, etc.).
7) Consider supports which help make therapy less intimidating for your child. Your child may benefit from accommodations such as: looking at pictures of the therapy office, a social story with the therapist’s photo, a visual schedule with therapy activities for that day, or the choice of one fun activity to do in an upcoming session.
You don’t have to have all of the answers. After reviewing this list, if you still feel stumped, that’s okay! Asking your own therapist for assistance is always a good place to start, or you can send Dr. Shauna a message with the form below.
