Counselling Support for Children in COVID times and challenges

Children are the most vulnerable of the society, that too especially during significant shifts, changes and transitions.

The prolonging COVID situation has significantly altered our way of life. Though now we are calling it the new normal, it has turned our world and way of life upside down in many ways. Though children are fairly resilient and are learning to cope, we can’t deny that this has affected them in many ways.

Online classes, loss of interactions with their classmates and friends around, being stuck at home are all very visible changes and challenges in the child’s life. Having said that, parents are also stressed about and coping with their own set of changes with respect to work from home, their own fears, insecurities, conflicts etc. And when these are not explained clearly and understood by the children there could be a tendency for the children to blame themselves and feeling guilty regarding these sweeping changes. The child might deem his/her own needs as unimportant. It is common to see couple conflicts increase and escalate in these difficult times. The child might blame themselves for parents’ conflicts.

Children can definitely benefit significantly through counselling and therapy when parental interventions are not adequately helping the child cope effectively. Children do face challenges to access counselling over video calls or online counselling. Some times lack of privacy at home doesn’t provide adequate safety for many children to ask for and access counselling services effectively.

There is still the tendency to look at mental health as secondary to other health needs. This results in seeing support and interventions far later than earlier. This doesn’t help and could aggravate the child’s situation.

Schools are also constrained with resources and managing major changes in the way they operate, that the access to school counselling services for children has become a greater challenge.

Inner Dawn counselor Kala Balasubramanian’s views featured in “The New Indian Express” on the 24-Aug-2020.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/bengaluru/2020/aug/24/distance-dilemmas-2187304.html