What are the issues that a child can be hypnotized for?

Most common issue that their parents bring their child in for is education related issues like study anxiety, poor memory, lack of concentration, and fear of exams, etc.

Other issues include bed wetting, stammering, allergies, fears and phobias, performance improvement, and aggression. A child can be brought for hypnotherapy for almost all of the issues than an adult comes in for.

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But before you get your child to a therapy session, you need to understand how a child starts having/creating problems. If you are bringing any kid under 12, in large number of cases you can assume that the reason for the problem with the child is either you, its teachers, peers or other environmental factors. I’m talking about mental and emotional issues here.

For instance, a child may start misbehaving in school or rebel against the teachers when its parents are fighting at home, especially in front of the child. Similarly, a bullying teacher, or even a authoritarian in some cases, at school may severely undermine a child’s performance and even maybe its socializing abilities too.

Some parents bring their child to me and complain about the child in front of it. In therapy, discussing the problem of the child – to an extent, especially if the child is old enough to defend itself – is okay. But doing the same thing at home can create some serious self-esteem issues in the child. Children learn faster by passive listening. Passive listening is when they are not actively participating in a conversation but instead overhear parents and other adults converse while the child is within hearing range. Humans are great passive learners; children even more so. They pick up language faster that way and any talk about them and their abilities can affect their self image and thereby cause issues in their development.

This is not to say only parents or teachers create issues or that a child is not responsible for it. Any child well above eight can take up certain responsibility for their problem but certainly not to the extent adults expect them to. Similarly there are other factors that create issues in a child. Health can affect mind and emotional growth. The economic status of the family can create stress issues in the family and thereby upon the child. There are so many factors.

The reason I’m stressing upon the responsibility of parents is because it is the parents that are concerned about the child and they are the ones that can change the environment in which a child is growing. Hypnotherapy may take care of self-limiting beliefs, fears, anxieties and other mental/emotional issues in the child. But the sustenance of healthy development thereafter is the responsibility of the parent. And there have also been cases where parents place unrealistic expectations on a child and push them over the edge. Such problems cannot be addressed from the child’s end. They need the parents to make behavioral and other changes in themselves in order to heal the child.