Counselling Children A Practical Introduction

Working with Children Is Not a Formula

I picked up Ann Dewey's Counselling Children A Practical Introduction years ago when I was just starting out in child therapy work and feeling completely underprepared. Most textbooks assume you already know the basics of general counselling and are just looking to specialise. This one does something different. It walks through the whole process from the very first contact with a family right through to ending sessions, using a mix of psychodynamic thinking and practical, hands-on advice that actually translates into what you do on the floor with a six-year-old who refuses to make eye contact. The core approach Dewey outlines centres around building a safe, predictable space where children can express themselves without feeling interrogated or performance-driven. She emphasises the importance of the therapeutic relationship over any single technique. You're not there to fix the child. You're there to be a consistent, emotionally available presence who can help them process whatever they're carrying. The book breaks this down into developmental stages, which matters enormously because a four-year-old operates in an entirely different psychological world than a fourteen-year-old, and treating them the same way is one of the quickest paths to a stalled or damaging session.

What Counselling Children A Practical Introduction Actually Covers

The book is structured around practical chapters that address real scenarios rather than abstract theory. You get guidance on initial assessments, how to handle parents who are anxious, resistant, or occasionally hostile, and how to create a therapy room setup that invites engagement without being overwhelming. There's substantial material on play as the primary language of children, but Dewey is careful to note that play isn't just a tool you pull out when a child won't talk. Play is the communication. Interpreting it requires a different skill set than interpreting adult verbal expression. One section I keep coming back to deals with trauma work with children. Dewey doesn't shy away from the fact that this is delicate territory. She stresses pacing, containment, and the absolute necessity of supervision. I learned that lesson the hard way with a nine-year-old who had experienced severe neglect. We were doing fairly standard play therapy, things were going okay, and then one day he started reenacting something deeply disturbing. I felt completely unprepared in that moment. The book had flagged this possibility but reading about it in advance and actually sitting in the room when it happened are two different things. My workaround was to immediately ground the session, use the sand tray to externalise the intensity, and then spend the rest of the time helping him regulate rather than exploring the content. I also contacted my supervisor within hours. Dewey's emphasis on supervision in the book is not bureaucratic window dressing. It's the thing that keeps you from doing more harm than good.

The Developmental Framework Matters More Than You Think

Dewey organises much of her guidance around developmental psychology, which sounds obvious but most practitioners I've worked with gloss over it. Children at different stages have fundamentally different capacities for insight, emotional regulation, and verbal processing. A young child cannot reflect on their feelings the way an adolescent can. They need concrete activities, symbolic play, and physical expression to access what's underneath. Trying to talk a five-year-old through their emotions is usually a waste of time and can actually make them feel misunderstood and defensive. The book provides age-specific guidance for pre-schoolers, school-age children, and adolescents. The techniques shift considerably across these groups. With younger children, the focus is almost entirely on non-verbal channels. With adolescents, you're working much more directly with narrative and reflection, though even then the relational component remains central. One counter-intuitive point Dewey makes that beginners consistently miss is that being quiet with a child is often far more therapeutically valuable than being actively engaging. Adults tend to fill silence because discomfort with quiet is uncomfortable for them. Children, however, often need that silence to process, to organise their thoughts, and to decide whether they actually trust you enough to share something real. Sitting quietly and letting a child lead the pace of disclosure is harder than it sounds but it's also one of the most effective things you can do.

Working with Parents and the System Around the Child

Another area where this book is genuinely useful is its treatment of the family system. You cannot counsel a child in isolation. The parents, caregivers, school environment, and any other adults in the child's life all exert massive influence. Dewey dedicates significant space to how to work collaboratively with parents, how to manage boundaries when parents have unrealistic expectations, and how to handle situations where the parents are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. I once had a mother who attended every session with her eight-year-old son and would gently but persistently redirect him during play if she disagreed with what he was expressing. It took three sessions before I addressed it directly. Dewey's framework for these conversations gave me a script that was firm without being adversarial. The key move she recommends is validating the parent's intention while clearly explaining why the child needs undivided therapeutic space. Most parents respond well to this if you deliver it matter-of-factly rather than confrontationally. They're usually on your side even when they don't know it yet.

Limitations and Where the Book Falls Short

No book is perfect and this one has some gaps worth acknowledging. The psychodynamic orientation is dominant throughout, which works beautifully for many children and many practitioners but will not be the right fit for everyone. If you're coming from a CBT background or working in a setting that requires short-term, solution-focused interventions, some of Dewey's longer-term relational approach will feel slow and sometimes impractical. She does address different modalities but her own perspective is clearly rooted in psychodynamic and play therapy traditions. Another limitation is that the examples, while realistic, tend to lean toward middle-class, Western family structures. Children in foster care, children experiencing acute poverty, or children in culturally different contexts may need significant adaptation of the techniques described. I've found myself constantly modifying Dewey's recommendations for children in my practice who come from backgrounds very different from the ones she describes. That doesn't make the book less valuable. It makes it a foundation rather than a complete manual. Pairing it with contemporary research on trauma-informed care and cultural competency in child therapy fills many of those gaps. The section on recording and documentation is also somewhat dated in its approach. Modern clinical settings often require more rigorous documentation standards than what the book suggests, and digital record-keeping changes the dynamic considerably. It's something to be aware of if you're using this as a practical guide in a current professional setting.

Who Should Read This and How to Use It

This book is strongest as a foundational text for trainees and early-career practitioners in child counselling and psychotherapy. It gives you a coherent framework to build on rather than a collection of isolated techniques. Experienced therapists will also find value in it, particularly in the chapters on supervision and professional development, which are thoughtful and understated in a way that many field guides aren't. If you're reading it for practical application, I'd recommend keeping it next to your supervision notes and working through the case examples alongside your own casework. The material sticks better when you're actively processing how it applies to the children you're working with rather than reading it cover to cover in one sitting. Dewey's writing style is clear and direct without being dry, which helps. She trusts the reader to think rather than over-explaining every point. As for where to get a copy, it's available through most academic and general booksellers. The publisher is SAGE Publications and depending on your region you may find it through local university presses or online retailers. There are multiple editions so check the publication date if you want the most current material, though the core framework has remained consistent across revisions.

The bottom line is that child counselling is one of the most demanding areas of therapeutic practice and there's no shortcut around genuine reflection, supervision, and honest self-examination. This book won't give you that, but it will give you a reliable map for navigating some of the terrain. That's more than most introductions manage to do.