COUNSELING PRACTICES FOR CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS

Asli Tayli
Mugla University

Abstract

Alcoholism has negative effects on all of the family members; especially on children. Children of alcoholic parents are generally victims of child physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. They are subjected to poor parenting, dysfunctional, unpredictable, and unstable family conditions. Because of these circumstances, children of alcoholic families are at risk of developing the same difficulties such as, depression, anxiety, suicide, poor academic performance, school dropouts, delinquency, interpersonal relations and some physical problems which are very common among these children. The main purpose of this article is to familiarize the reader about counseling practices used in schools for children of alcoholics. Some authors suggest some slightly useful counseling techniques to help these children. Since the school counselors know their situation and experiences, they should encourage these children to express their feelings and to trust their counselors emotionally. At the same time, school counselors may utilize cognitive behavior techniques, assertiveness works, gestalt-awareness activities, relaxation techniques, bibliotherapy, and finally play therapy methods while doing counseling with these populations.

Keywords

Children of alcoholics (COA), personality of COA’s, intervention techniques for COA.