This has been a challenging week in the life of this school psychologist intern and it's only Thursday morning! I have become very uncertain of my counseling abilities... or lack there of. On Monday I found out in the morning I was going to meet with a new kinder boy for individual counseling. I had actually met him the week before for a bit, but that was more for just a getting-to-know you moment. I had been under the impression that we were going to a direct behavior rating program with him so I was surprised to find out that I would be meeting with him one on one. I had heard that his behavior difficulties were surrounded around his hands - hitting kids, writting all over his desk, that sort of thing. So I got online and found a cute counseling lesson that was about Hurting Hands vs. Helping Hands. It was a group curriculum for and older group who were supposed to come up with a list of helping things and a list of hurting things and write them down. Well... I liked the idea, but my kid is coming to me for individual counseling and he is in kinder so he wasn't going to be able to write down a list of things. Now of course, I could write them for him, but I wanted him to be doing the action not me. So I decided to get online and print out a bunch of images - kids fighting, kids helping with the groceries, kids cleaning, kids sleeping in class that sort of thing. Then I got a piece of construction paper, crayons and a glue stick. I cut out all my little pictures and spread them all over our table. At some point in the morning my supervisor appeared and saw my little art picture but he didn't ask what I was up to and took off. So I crossed my fingers and said a prayer that my little dude would get the point of what I was trying to do and went and pulled him from class. The activity actually went over pretty well. I traced his hands on to the paper with a crayon and explained to him that there were helping things we could do with our hands or hurting things and that I wanted him to go look at every one of my pictures and decide where the picture would fall - helping or hurting. I drew a line between the traced hands and marked one with a smiley face and the other with a sad face and he set to work examining the pictures and explaining to me why it was a good thing or a bad thing to do. It probably took all of 5-7 minutes, which is probably about the right amount of time for a kinder and he was proud of his work. I felt pretty mixed about the activity. I think it has potential, but I am not sure I am satisfied with it or how I executed it.
Yesterday, I met with another kid that I didn't know I would be meeting with regularly. I felt like the meeting was a complete waste of time. The kid has issues with lying, tattling, being a general busy-body, and she apparently kinda freaks out when she gets angry. I looked online hoping to get inspired by something there, but really couldn't find anything that I could make work quickly, then I looked through the one counseling activity book that I have and tried to pull from it. Again, no luck. So I ended up coloring with her. We colored pictures of our families and talked about them. She mentioned a cousin who sometimes picks on her and so we talked about that and I asked her how she would handle certain conflict situations and she gave me pretty good answers back. I don't think it was a remotely theraputic meeting, but I guess there is always next week.
After my poor week of counseling I came home on a mission and got on-line and went shopping. $80 later I am getting 6 books (good deal huh?) So hopefully once they arrive I can arm myself up with some better counseling strategies and I can get rid of my pal Self Doubt, because she is a complete downer.
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