Like adults, children can suffer from a wide array of mental health challenges. They can experience anxiety, depression, and panic attacks that make everyday life difficult for them to endure.
Their mental health conditions can also cause them to act out and become hostile or violent toward their friends and family members. You can get your child the treatment he or she needs for such behaviors with professional pediatric therapy.
Curbing Violent and Hostile Behaviors
Pediatric therapy can be key to helping you curb violent and hostile behaviors your child exhibits toward family members, friends, classmates, teachers, and others. Perhaps you have tried to discipline your son or daughter with grounding or removal of privileges and found that these disciplinary measures fail to address the mental health symptoms your child experiences.
Professional pediatric therapy can provide the intervention your son or daughter needs to curb violent and hostile behavior. After a few sessions, your child may become more docile and less prone to outbursts. You may see meaningful changes in his or her actions and ability to tolerate people and situations that once led to outbursts.
Identifying Triggers
The changes in your child's behavior may stem from him or her being able to identify triggers that caused emotional and violent outbursts. For example, your son or daughter might be unable to tolerate other children making fun of or teasing him or her. Likewise, your child may find it difficult to tolerate a teacher or parent trying to implement discipline.
Pediatric therapy, however, teaches your son or daughter to identify triggers and cope with them more effectively. He or she may learn coping mechanisms like squeezing a toy to relieve stress or using paced breathing to work through anger. These coping mechanisms can help your child overcome triggers and integrate better into the classroom and family.
Voicing Emotions
Finally, pediatric therapy provides your son or daughter with the opportunity to voice emotions in a safe place. The therapist can provide validity and empathy to whatever your son or daughter voices in sessions. Your child may feel safe speaking about challenges that he or she refuses to speak about at home or school.
Pediatric therapy can benefit your son or daughter in a number of ways. It can help curb violent or hostile behavior your child exhibits at home or school. It also teaches your child to identify and cope with triggers and voice emotions in a safe environment.
Share26 July 2022
I suffered depression for much of my life, and I lived with it for years before seeking help. I visited a psychiatrist and received an antidepressant prescription along with a referral to a counselor. I filled my prescription, but I put off making an appointment with the counselor. The medication began to help, so I decided that I didn't need to see a counselor after all -- or so I thought at the time. After a couple of months of medication, a close friend of mine died of an illness. I then learned that even though the medication helped my depression, I still had not learned the coping skills I needed to deal with traumatic life experiences. That even motivated me to seek counseling, and it helped me immensely. I created this blog to remind others that medication can help when suffering with depression, but counseling is also extremely important.