Parent Goal 5: Help Child Problem-Solve

, Julia Doss², Sigita Plioplys³ and Jana E. Jones⁴

(1)

Department of Psychiatry, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

(2)

Department of Psychology, Minnesota Epilepsy Group, St. Paul, MN, USA

(3)

Department of Psychiatry, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

(4)

Department of Neurology, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI, USA

Keywords

Problem solveAdvocacyRequest helpPositive feedback

Problem-Solving Techniques

In addition to the techniques described below, section Helpful Hints for Parents of Chap. 15 presents important additional tips for how parents can also be coaches for the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) of comorbid anxiety and depression common in children and adolescents with PNES.

Conducive Ambience

It is important that the parents understand that they can help the child problem-solve only if they are calm and have ample time to discuss the problem. If either the parent or child is worried that the problem cannot be discussed calmly, suggest a child-parent session to understand the problem, and jointly explore appropriate problem-solving strategies. But make sure that both the child and parents feel comfortable discussing the problem in a family session. To help you achieve this goal, prior to the joint session, inform the parents of your goal for the session and parental responses that will create an environment and ambience that support your and their efforts to help the child problem-solve.

How to Help the Child Problem-Solve

Encourage the parents to empathize with the child about the problem and how difficult it can be to work through it. Suggest that the parents normalize and model problem-solving by sharing methods they use to deal with their own problems, such as: