Preparing your Child

What to tell them:

Please consider what you tell your child about these consultations. Specifically, we ask that you discuss the purpose with them beforehand. If not, and the topic of conversation is unexpected and unwelcome for them, they may become upset. This may then interfere with the information we are able to obtain, and your child’s willingness to work with us.

When talking to your child / teenager, the following points may assist

Our job as doctors is to help children who are finding aspects of day to day life difficult. This may be at home, school, with friends or elsewhere.	As doctors, we try to understand what is going on. This is usually not the child’s fault. Instead, it us usually just something the child finds genuinely hard, and may not be managing very well.
To know what is going on, we need to talk about the issues. In doing so, we ask questions that do not seek to blame or otherwise criticise children.	When we understand what is going on, we are usually able to use this information to help your child and help you as parents in your support for them.

Including them in the conversation:

At the consultation, we try to include the child as much as possible. Their contribution to understanding the issues, along with their ideas on what to do, are important.

It may be, however, that you wish to discuss private matters without your child present. For this to be successful, please plan for managing your child alone in the waiting area. If they are old enough, they may be able to manage themselves (e.g. drawing, reading, music, playing on their device). If not, please bring somebody who can mind them during this time.

For older children, we usually spend time talking to the child/teen alone.