Think Beyond Counseling for Your Teen

While you or someone else may think a particular teen needs counseling, it doesn’t mean it will be helpful.

It also doesn’t mean the teen will attend and if they do, it doesn’t mean they will engage.

Counseling is one of those things that simply works best when attended on a voluntary basis by someone who self-identifies a need as well as a desire.

Absent those conditions, sending a teen to counseling can be a lot like arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Looks good, does nothing.

Rather than the teen going to counseling, it can be far more fruitful if the parents go together. They can discuss concerns and look at ways they can help manage and support their teen.

Beyond that if structural supports can be put around the teen, that too may prove helpful.

Structural supports include the parents maintaining good communication as well as maintaining expectations and limits.

Those structural supports can also include good relationships by teachers, coaches, religious leaders and other folks in that teens orbit and community.

In addition to those good relationships, other structural supports include attendance at extracurricular activities, a volunteer activity and if age, a part time job.

Supports such as the above can provide a positive wrap-around community to help the teen remain safer while hopefully maturation occurs over time.

So, whether or not your teen goes to counseling, there is much more to consider and facilitate for a teen who may be at risk.

Think beyond counseling.

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I am Gary Direnfeld and I am a social worker. Check out all my services and then call me if you need help with a personal issue, mental health concern, child behavior or relationship, divorce or separation issue or even help growing your practice. I am available in person and by video conferencing.

Gary Direnfeld, MSW, RSW

gary@yoursocialworker.com
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Gary Direnfeld is a social worker. Courts in Ontario, Canada, consider him an expert in social work, marital and family therapy, child development, parent-child relations and custody and access matters. Gary is the host of the TV reality show, Newlywed, Nearly Dead, former parenting columnist for the Hamilton Spectator and author of Marriage Rescue: Overcoming the ten deadly sins in failing relationships. Gary maintains a private practice in Georgina Ontario, providing a range of services for people in distress. He speaks at conferences and workshops throughout North America. He consults to mental health professionals as well as to mediators and collaborative law professionals about good practice as well as building their practice.