By: SUZY TURNER
Suzy Turner has lived in Portugal for 22 years and works as a freelance writer. As well as putting pen to paper for The Resident’s fashion section, she contributes to the parenting, beauty and travel columns. She is also our Features Editor.
WORKING WITH youngsters on a regular basis, you would be forgiven for asking for a bit of help now and then. Whether it be regarding a specific problem or just a bit of advice on how to deal with a ‘difficult’ child, Andrea Clifford-Poston has come up with the ideal answer, in the form of her latest book, A Playworker’s Guide to Understanding Children’s Behaviour.
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“I wanted to write a handy reference book for whenever it was needed. These people often don’t realise how skilled they are. I want to enhance these skills and make them realise the impressive skills they already possess,” says Andrea.
The book, described as a ‘must-have resource for playworkers seeking to enhance their skills as a whole’, highlights how the way we think about children’s behaviour colours the way we react to it. It also offers playworkers, and anyone else working with children, a different way of understanding many ordinary childhood behaviours like lying, stealing and bullying.
Written in an easy-to-read manner, this guidebook is for anyone wanting to get to the root of problems that might arise in a child’s world – dealing with children who steal, for example. ‘A child may steal not because they want the object they have lifted, but because they lack some basic emotional fulfilment, which adults can supply to helping them to feel valued,’ says Andrea in her book.
The book handles all manner of issues likely to arise when regularly ‘working’ in an environment surrounded by children, from ‘betweenagers’ and why children have difficulty settling to eating disorders, the lazy child and bullying.
The chapters are entitled:
• Playworkers, children and behaviour
• Stress and worry
• Attention seeking
• Worrying behaviour
• Special needs
• The family and the outside world
Practical wisdom
Well known Psychoanalyst and writer, Adam Phillips, said: “This book is a wonderful compendium of practical wisdom about working with children in a particular setting. But like all most interesting writing about working with children, it will engage anyone who wants to know something new just about the experience of being, and being with, children.”
Andrea Clifford-Poston, M.Ed is a UKCP registered Educational Psychotherapist and has over 30 years experience of working with children, parents and professionals in schools, clinics, hospitals and the home. Andrea initially trained as a primary school teacher and taught in various London schools. She was the Teacher in Charge at the Child Development Centre at Charing Cross Hospital, and for many years a Visiting Lecturer to the Music Therapy Training Course at Roehampton University. She has contributed articles to a number of leading childcare magazines including Nursery World and The Times Parent Forum. She has also written papers for teachers and professionals.
For the past 13 years she has been in private practice as a Child and Family Mental Health Specialist. She acts as a consultant to and runs training courses for professionals working with children. “My job is to help parents and children to talk to each other,” she says.
Andrea has also penned Tweens: What to Expect from, and How to Survive, Your Child’s Pre-Teenage Years and When Harry Hit Sally: Understanding Your Child’s Behaviour.
Andrea has had a holiday home in the Algarve for nearly seven years, where she aims to visit every few months.
