March 2012

Only-Child Research: the therapist as only-child

Over the last ten years, of my own only-child adult research, I have also encouraged other people with theirs. Here is a piece of research Carla Preston is undertaking for her Psychotherapy MA. It is particularly specific to people in the profession of counselling and psychotherapy, so I hope anyone in that position will feel able to take part in this useful research so that we can continue to expand the knowledge of the only child experience. Bernice Research Question Being Everything:  An exploration into the relational impact on the therapy when a therapist is an only-child.   Carla Preston I am a Humanistic counsellor studying for my Masters in Integrative Psychotherapy and I am in the process of starting to write my thesis about the experience of therapists who are only-children.  My interest stems from my own work in therapy and discussion about my relating patterns which might be a result of my upbringing as an only child. As a child I felt and still as an [...]

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Sharing or Taking?

I am continuing to look at that thorny subject of sharing and I was particularly pleased to receive thoughts from various people after my article on ‘Do only children know how to share?’ I have incorporated these ideas  with some of my own to take the discussion further. In my experience it is often true that as Kei says: ‘while only children are less inclined towards “sharing”, we are much more sensitive and opposed to “taking.”’ As an only-child I would not have dreamed of taking my parent things without asking – I would expect that is true of most children. However when my own children were growing up I found it surprising how often they took each other’s things – and often mine now I think about it! When I remarried (another only child) his biggest difficulty was the way he saw my children helping themselves to his cd’s, [...]

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One Child or Fifteen (and counting..)?

When ever there are article’s about only children in the newspapers or programmes about people who have many children; like the recent programme  ‘Fifteen Kids and Counting’ on  Channel 4, it givs rise to a great deal of media coverage e.g. news papers such as the Guardian and Telegraph. I then often get phone calls from journalists writing an article or I am asked to give an opinion on local radio somewhere in the country.  What I find interesting is some of the parallels that arise in the choice of having only one child compared to choosing to have many children. One of the most common questions I am asked on local radio is why do some people choose to have only one child? Well there are, of course, a number of reasons but for many there was no actual choice. This may be because of fertility issues, death of a [...]

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