HomeTherapyFamilies and children
Your child is struggling at school, and you are not sure anyone would tell you.
School refusal, difficult mornings, and a child doing all of it in a second language.
What we work on
- The mornings. The avoidance, the negotiation, the thing that repeats every weekday. It is where most of this is visible, and where it is easiest to change something.
- What the body is doing. The stomach ache before school is usually real. When a child anticipates something they cannot manage, the body answers before the words do, and a normal result from the doctor does not mean it was invented.
- What is the move and what is not. Children who change country often go quiet, fall behind or turn irritable for a while, and most of that settles. Working out whether yours is inside that or outside it is half the job.
- The adults. When a child avoids school every family does the same things: negotiate, concede a day, promise something. It helps that morning and makes the next one harder. That is a pattern, not a parenting failure, which is why the work is with you as much as with your child.
Two school systems, two languages, and nobody to compare notes with
At home you would have known what normal looked like. There would have been a friend with a child the same age, a teacher you could read, a rough sense of whether this was a phase. Here you have none of that calibration, so every worry is either dismissed as the move or escalated into something serious, with very little in between.
The school may not flag anything, and if it does, it will do so in a meeting held in Spanish about a child you know better than anyone else in the room. Plenty of parents leave that meeting more confused than they went in, and then wait, because waiting is what they understood they were being told to do.
The other thing worth saying early is that what happens at home is part of the mechanism, and not through anybody's fault. It is also the part that can be changed fastest, which is why families usually get more out of this than a child sent in alone.
What actually changes
Not an obedient child. A house where the same morning stops repeating.
- The mornings become something you have a plan for, instead of something improvised at twenty to eight.
- You can tell the difference between a child settling into a new country and a child struggling with something else.
- The two of you stop being the soft one and the hard one, because you are working from the same reading of what is happening.
- Your child stops carrying an explanation they invented themselves, which is almost always that they are stupid or lazy.
Who it is for
Parents, when mornings have become a negotiation, when a child does not want to go to school, or when a teenager has stopped talking — and you are raising them between two school systems, two languages and two sets of expectations.
- The mornings: what gets negotiated, what gets conceded, and what is different on the days it works.
- Physical symptoms — stomach aches, broken sleep, headaches — and what they track.
- What is the move, what is the language, and what is something else.
- The climate between the adults: one gives in, the other gets angry, and neither can say so.
Who it is not for
I am not trying to make your child calm all of the time, and I do not hand out a label because one would explain things faster. Nor is it a school report: if what you need is testing, I will say so.
When it makes sense to get in touch. When whether to make him go has been on the table for a month; when the school has raised something you did not fully catch; or when home and school between them have stopped being enough.
The first consultation is free. It is there for you to tell me what is going on and for me to see whether I can help, with no obligation to continue.Book the free consultation →
Frequently asked questions
Are family sessions online, or at my home in Granada?
Whichever suits you: by video call from wherever you are, or at your home if you live in Granada. The session is the same; only the place changes. If you are not sure which fits, we look at it in the first consultation.
Would the sessions be with our child or with us?
Both, in a proportion that depends on the age and on what is happening. With younger children a good deal of the work is with the parents; with teenagers there is more direct work, and clear rules from the start about what stays between us.
Which language would sessions with our child be in?
Whichever one they think in, which after a year here is not always the one you would guess. The parts with you — the interview and everything I explain back to you — are in English.
Do you think our child needs testing?
Sometimes that is the right next step, and it is work I do: always in person, at your home in Granada. But it is not the automatic first move, and a good deal gets sorted out by looking first at what happens at home and at school.
Do we need a school report or a diagnosis before we come?
No. Bring what you have, including the parts you did not understand, and we start from there.
Can both parents take part if one of us does not speak Spanish?
Yes, and it is worth it. Sessions can run entirely in English, and the two of you almost always notice different things, which is useful rather than inconvenient.
What is the first consultation like?
The first consultation is free and we do it by phone or by video call. It is there for us to meet, put some order on what is going on and see whether I can help. You do not need to arrive with an answer, or to be able to explain exactly what is wrong.