Introducing.....

I have begun this blog with the hopes that it will be a great tool to refer back to for myself and others.  I hope that it can be utilized by different people, whether you be a mental health clinician looking for ideas for your clients, or you feel you may be in a crisis with a child or within your family and could use some tools, or you're just interested in helping children and would like some more information.

As a current Mental Health Counseling graduate student at Florida State University, I have a great deal of experiences working with children and families, and I enjoy it so much.  Many times they are in some state of crisis, whether it's aggressive outbursts that have gotten out of control, or a parent was recently incarcerated, or a child wrote a suicidal note while in school, or there was some child abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, or neglect).  I have seen all of these and more at some point in my life experiences and clinical counseling experiences.  I have learned about many tools and therapeutic interventions that have become extremely helpful, and I continue to learn more that I want to share with others.

When I came to FSU in 2008 as an undergrad, I had no idea what I wanted to do, except that I wanted to work with children, and I really liked the idea of working in hospitals.  I thought that maybe pediatric physical therapy would be fun... Perhaps the career is fun, but the chemistry, biology, and anatomy classes to get to the career were not my cup of tea.  I switched my major to Family and Child Sciences and quickly fell in love with it.  I thought I would be a Child Life Specialist, but after some discussions with those in the field, I didn't think it was for me.

It was when I looked back on my life experiences that I realized I lived to help calm people in crisis.  I was always that person that my friends came to, I could always empathize, I could always be the calm one listening while people cried or got angry or wanted to vent.  It became my dream to be a counselor to children in hospitals who may be battling cancer or chronic illnesses or some other type of crisis.  Now as I approach my graduation date, I am looking into making that dream a reality.

I've been told time and time again that it takes a special person to do that kind of work, that some people just don't have the right personality, or enough patience, or enough emotional stamina to work with children in crisis.  I hope that the tools that I share on here, whether they are trainings you can go through, apps you can use, websites with useful information, or videos to gain a better understanding, that everything is helpful in a least a small way.  Mother Teresa said, "Do small things with great love."  I hope that these small things will bring you a little sense into my world of great love for children and families and my desire to help them.

AD