Counselling Students’ Perceptions Toward Integrating Spirituality into Counselling Among Children

Abstract

Clients in counselling today tend to address spiritual issues more than before partly due to the challenges posed by modernisation and materials development. The current scenario shows that research on spirituality has not only increased in quantity and quality, but even its scope has expanded to include areas on adolescents and children. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the perceptions of the undergraduates majoring in counselling toward the integration of spirituality into counselling among children by means of qualitative study. For the purpose of this paper, spirituality is defined as ‘the motivational and emotional source of an individual’s quest for a personally-defined relationship with people and the non-human environment; for some, it includes a connectedness with a higher being leading to enhanced feelings of well-being, inner peace, and life satisfaction’ (Wong, INTI J 2:624, 2006). Spirituality is differentiated from religion as everyone can have his/her sense of spirituality, including an atheist. However, not everyone adheres to religious beliefs. Four undergraduates from a professional counselling programme of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, a medium-size public university on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, participated in this study through in-depth interviews. Among the emerging themes were the following: Spirituality is a significant component in counselling among children, even prior to their puberty; counselling young children can be challenging when a counsellor needs to make extra efforts to explore their stories and feelings, compared to working with adult clients; and the autonomy of the child as a client must be respected even though parental consent is essential in the counselling process. One of the conclusions reached was that counsellors today need to be adequately prepared to handle the spiritual issues of their clients, especially those of children.