Challenging Aspects of a Child Psychologist

Though educational goals are certainly a factor when it comes to being a child psychologist, the most challenging aspects of a child psychologist career come with the details of the actual act of being a child psychologist.

You might think that due to the difference between psychologists, therapists and psychiatrists, the psychologist would be the one that has the easiest time. Their main job is to test for personality and mood disorders. However, they also perform various tasks like psychotherapy and may even work in the school system. The task of working in the school system as a child psychologist also involves following the laws of the educational system as well as the medical laws of that state. That's quite a lot of details to have to deal with. Below are some other issues that child psychologists must face, whether they are testing for psychological disorders or engaged in psychotherapy.

Don't talk to strangers. How often do parents stress that children are not to talk to strangers? When a child goes to a psychologist, the rules change. Not only is the child supposed to talk to a stranger, but is supposed to discuss his or her most intimate feelings and issues. A child psychologist must be prepared for some form of resistance and be able to make the child feel comfortable.

Cultural differences. There are a lot of social cultural differences that a child psychologist must be made aware of. Some cultures are very private and even avoid things like eye contact, finding it disrespectful and rude. The child psychologist must be able to work with and around these differences, no matter what their own upbringing is.

Resistant or secretive parents. There is no psychotherapy in the world that is going to help a child who is not allowed to talk out of fear of their parents. Likewise, if the parent is resistant to the therapy itself or does not believe in psychology, the child will have a hard time trusting the psychologist. A child psychologist should be able to work closely with parents to establish a relationship of trust so that the same trust can be passed down to the child.

Identifying the truth. Some children have issues that cause them to seek attention in some way. Most of these children find that they get more negative attention than positive. They may seek out comfort by being dishonest about events in their lives. The child psychologist is obligated by law to report any possibility of abuse, but must also learn to distinguish fact from fiction in therapy sessions. In some cases, even if the child is lying, the psychologist must treat the accusations as truth until they know for sure that the issues are not real. One thing to keep in mind is that these issues may be real in the mind of the child and must be treated as such in order to get to the underlying problem.

Horrifying abuse. A child psychologist must be able to keep their emotions in check. They cannot sufficiently provide therapy to a child if they are too emotionally involved. In some cases, the abuse the child suffers may be so horrifying that even the psychologist is shocked. In those cases, the psychologist needs to be able to validate the child's feelings and help them to come up with coping skills to deal with the issue. An emotionally bound psychologist may have difficulty doing this.

Child resistance. Imagine being a child from a low income rural background. This child is taken to see a psychologist, who may be dressed in a suit and tie, something the child may never have encountered. The child may see no commonality and may even feel as if they are somehow unworthy of treatment when compared to the child psychologist. This is when the psychologist needs to approach the child in a friendly and casual manner in order to put the child at ease.

Children who need therapy less than the parents. As a mental health worker, all too many times it was obvious that the children weren't the problem. The parents were. As a child psychologist, there comes a time when the psychologist must simply accept this fact. It's at this point when the psychologist needs to encourage the child to focus on his or her self and accept that the parents are responsible for their own behavior. This is when the child should be encouraged through extensive therapy to develop positive coping skills and do his or her best to avoid provoking the parents while still keeping their own mentality intact.

In short, the challenges of a child psychologist include being a confidante that is able to accept all types of races and cultures while still being able to guide the child onto a path of appropriate behavior and positive coping skills.

References:

http://www.apa.org/careers/resources/guides/careers.aspx