You may be worried that your child has a problem that causes them to be sad, disruptive, rebellious, unable to cope or inattentive. You may be concerned about your child’s development, eating or sleeping patterns and how they are getting along with family, friends and at school.

Some parents and carers often delay seeking help because they worry that they will be blamed for their child’s behaviour. Feeling responsible for a child’s distress or problems is a natural part of caring. The fact that you are ready to start addressing the difficulty is a significant part of helping your child.

Working with Tracey may either be at a general level, for example, reducing anxiety and raising self-esteem, or a more specific level such as working on a change in behaviour and improving relations with family and friends.

Children and teenagers will benefit most from seeing Tracey when they have problems they can’t cope with alone.  Children may need help is when problems affect how well they do at school or at home, how they feel or how they act.

If things don’t get better on their own, children may need support so things can improve.

With Tracey, children learn by doing.  Tracey will help your child to believe in themselves and find their strengths.  Working with Tracey builds and encourages helpful thinking patterns in children, and healthy behavioural habits.

As they work alongside Tracey your child will be encouraged to:

1. Talk – talking is a healthy way to express feelings. When children put feelings into words instead of actions, they can act their best.  When children recognise that someone is listening and knows how they feel, they are more ready to learn.
2. Do – Tracey uses activities such as drawing or playing to help teach children about their feelings and is a way of introducing coping skills that will help your child.
3. Practice – a time where children can practice their new skills. They might play games where they have to wait their turn, use self-control, follow directions, listen, share, try again or deal with losing.  All of these are fantastic coping skills for children to develop.

In a nutshell, working alongside Tracey can help and support your child to heal from difficult past experiences.  From living with anxiety to dealing with a bereavement, and everything in between, there are a wide range of reasons why your child might benefit from working alongside Tracey.

It can be difficult for children to open up, which is why Tracey uses specialist techniques.  Together, Tracey and your child will focus on their world, through activities which are meaningful to them.  This means using everything from drama and dance to creative writing and puppets, to name but a few.  All techniques designed to help children feel at ease about opening up.

With a skilful mixture of these techniques, Tracey can help children to make sense of what they are experiencing, feel less distressed, become more self-aware, heal and develop resilience.

In short, yes.

Tracey will help your child understand muddled feelings and upsetting events that they haven’t had the chance to sort out properly. Rather than having to explain what is troubling them, children use play to communicate at their own level and at their own pace, without feeling interrogated or threatened.

Play is vital to every child’s social, emotional, cognitive, physical, creative and language development.  It helps make learning concrete for all children and young people including those for whom verbal communication may be difficult.

Play helps children in a variety of ways.  Working with Tracey, your child will receive emotional support and can learn to understand more about their own feelings and thoughts.  Sometimes they may re-enact or play out traumatic or difficult life experiences in order to make sense of their past and cope better with their future.  Children will also learn to manage relationships and conflicts in more appropriate ways.