Want to help your child to overcome sleeplessness, bedwetting, anxiety, nail-biting, or improve self-discipline and study for exams?
Consider hypnosis for children. It is an incredible tool for parents and educators alike. By helping your child learn how to enter a deep relaxation state, you give him or her access to the resources of the unconscious mind.
Hypnotic skills improve with age, but younger children may need more preparation than older ones. This article will learn what hypnosis is, its benefits, and how to find the best treatment.
What is Hypnosis?
Hypnosis is an altered state of mind in which the patient becomes more receptive to certain suggestions. It’s something that anyone can experience simply by focusing their attention on an image, sound, or repetitive action and letting go.
This treatment also referred to as hypnotherapy, has been scientifically proven to help make positive, lasting behavior changes and better general health. However, the hypnotized person may not be aware of therapeutic activities around them, so they will just go about with their suggestions during the session.
Forms of Hypnosis
Some forms of hypnosis include self-hypnosis, guided imagery hypnosis, clinical hypnosis, and stage hypnosis. It involves listening to pre- sessions while directed by the text.
Hypnosis Sessions for Kids
Children can be hypnotized as early as age 3, according to psychiatrist Loring Campbell and hypnotherapist Margaret Singer in their book “Hypnosis: A Brief History.” They also say that the most effective period for hypnotizing children is the ages of five through ten years old.
Most children attend an average of four to eight therapies with a child hypnotist and usually total around two hundred minutes of hypnosis therapy being administered and will learn self-hypnosis from those therapies.
Hypnosis sessions are a combination of many things, including suggestion, distraction, and relaxation. The first session feels so good that two-thirds of children who try an easy stage hypnosis session will agree to three additional treatments with a trained professional hypnotist.
Benefits of Hypnosis for Children
Hypnosis for children is a fantastic and highly effective method for helping young children copes with a range of issues that can be troubling them. These issues include but not limited to:
· nail biting
· hair pulling
· thumb sucking
· Anxiety
· Pain
· Fear
· Asthma
· Stress
· Phobias
· Headaches, etc.
The ability to use the mind to change the body and its activities can offer an alternative to pharmaceutical medications which are often not as beneficial and natural for our health in comparison.
Children are more open and sensitive to hypnosis than adults. They are more willing to listen, follow directions, gain confidence in themselves and develop self-awareness.
Treat Mental Health Problems
Children and adolescents are just as susceptible to stress, fear, and anxiety as adults. Their stress and anxiety might come from an issue at school, friends, or home environments.
Hypnotherapy is a very effective way of helping children to overcome mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and stress, get over phobias, or stop them from binge eating as well as assisting with bedwetting (see also how to stop skin-picking).
This form of therapy will help your child sleep better, and it also helps them to appreciate positive behaviors more.
Use Hypnosis for Pain
This can be one of the most frustrating parts of parenting; seeing your child in pain. If it is acute pain, you may need to seek medical intervention, but hypnotherapy can be a great solution if this is long-term pain caused by trauma.
Hypnotherapy is a non-invasive treatment that utilizes the power of suggestion to help reduce stress and manage pain. It involves essentially “putting” the child into a light sleep (known as hypnosis).
The child can still hear suggestions, but his/her conscious mind has been removed from the decision-making process and therefore is no longer able to over-rule the suggestions put forward. As this happens, any pain or sensation of discomfort is reduced or removed entirely.
Clinical Hypnosis for behavioral problems
Children have a lot of behavioral problems, which are primarily due to their immaturity. A child often picks up bad habits like nail-biting, hair-pulling aka trichotillomania, thumb sucking, excessive eating, etc., as they are still developing psychologically.
One can easily take the help of hypnotherapy for managing bad behavior in kids and adolescents as a solution without fearing any hazardous side effects that may come from other medications or therapies.
Finding a Qualified Hypnotherapist
Finding a qualified hypnotherapist can be difficult, especially when looking for one with expertise in treating children under 18.
The hypnotic techniques employed by each of these professionals are different, their methods may vary, and you might need to see a few before finding the right one for your child.
Find a Certified and Experienced Hypnotherapist
If you are looking for a good hypnotherapist for children, then you should make sure that he or she is certified. This is because a professionally trained and experienced hypnotherapist can understand the mental capacity of children better than others.
He or she will be able to use various tool/s, technique/s, and imagery, to effectively treat your children’s problems.
Also, make sure that your child’s hypnotherapist is registered with one of the professional bodies. These bodies will have strict guidelines to follow at all times to safeguard both the clients and the reputation of hypnotherapy. Seeing an unregistered therapist can be risky because they aren’t vetted or trained by the relevant authorities.
Self-hypnosis for a Child
Maybe you have been hypnotized by a therapist before, but self-hypnosis is even better. During this process, you will learn how to relax your mind and body to achieve a nice level of concentration.
It involves a systematic process that allows the individual to lead themselves into a hypnotic state. This is achieved by mixing imagination with audio and suggestion until the individual enters the desired state.
Self-hypnosis for a child can be very beneficial. It can be used to remove fears, help children concentrate, relax, and fall asleep better at night.
Self-Hypnosis Products
There a variety of self-hypnosis products for children available on the market today. They include CDs, MP3s, and videos to watch.
Clinical hypnosis for children and adults is a proven technique when it comes to quitting addictions such as biting of nails or any other mental issues such as fear, anxiety, etc.
A child can now download hypnosis MP3s onto their iPod and listen to them on their way to school or when at home.
How to Prepare Your Child for Hypnosis
It is important to make your child feel comfortable before the session, no matter what age they are. The more relaxed and comfortable your child is, the better results of hypnosis you will have. Here are ways to prepare a child for hypnosis;
Choose a Treatment Center That Has a Calm Environment
It is always better if the session is done in a quiet, calm and environment free from noise and chaos. The more we can mimic these situations, the easier it will be for our child to relax.
Wear Comfortable Clothing
It’s also recommended that your child gets into comfortable clothing that makes him or her feel relaxed. Let them wear whatever clothing they feel most comfortable in, whether it be a t-shirt and shorts, a pair of sweats, or a warm-up suit.
Can Hypnotherapy Help Children With Anxiety?
When a child is suffering from anxiety, you want to do everything you can to help them as a parent. As a hypnotherapist, I see this all too often – children unable to cope in school, cope on the sports field, sleep at night…The list goes on and on.
Can hypnotherapy help with anxiety? You may be surprised to find out that the answer is yes. Hypnotherapy is an effective treatment for all kinds of anxiety problems such as fear of flying, eating in public, sleeping, and others.
Can 12-year-olds Be Hypnotize?
A 12-year-old can be hypnotized just as well as an adult. The stories and relaxation techniques used to put your 12-year-old child into a state of hypnotic trance are perfectly tailored for speaking to a younger mind.
Hypnosis for 12 old children will help them focus on tasks they won’t normally do or are not comfortable doing. This is anything from bathing, brushing their teeth, getting ready for school, and even eating their vegetables.
Is Hypnosis Safe for Children?
Yes, but it should be performed by only professionals who have received training and are certified.
For many years, parents have been concerned about their kids getting hypnotherapy or the use of imagery and other hypnotic tools to control their behavior. The thing is, hypnosis has been in use for more than two hundred years and has also been around since the beginning of time.
It is safe for both children and adults. Parents should not be worried about their kids undergoing hypnotherapy. In fact, children become more susceptible to permanent and lasting change through hypnosis because they are naturally more fully relaxed compared to adults who’ve built-in resistance and blockage due to life’s experiences.