1. First, no one can help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. If your child does not want therapy, it will not work. A desire for change is a prerequisite for development.

2. Get to know your therapist.

3. What are the feelings and experiences about parenting for the therapist, both from being children and being parents (or not being parents) themselves?

4. Does the therapist over or under-identify with the child and adolescent clients?

5. Does the therapist have feelings of sympathy toward abused clients? Might this be related to their own issues?

6. Are there rigid expectations for the behaviour of children and adolescents?

7. Is there failure to apply appropriate developmental standards?

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8. Inviting a child to discuss adult issues of sexuality may be inviting a developmental path that the child would not have considered before the intervention; the adult introducing sexuality may be projecting onto the child and possibly getting a thrill out of it.

 

There may be inappropriate boundaries with clients (e.g., feelings of sexual attraction, spending excess time with child or adolescent clients outside of sessions, displacing or discounting the effectiveness of a child’s parents). 

 

1. Are there frequent thoughts about the client outside of the session?

2. Is the counsellor attempting to solve the client’s problems, provide advice, or “parent them”? 

3. Be mindful of excessive physical touching or hugging by a counsellor.