The correspondence about pushy counsellors (a tiny minority I hope) has 
inspired me to write about this issue.
My students in our training courses get tired, I am sure, of hearing my 
mantra:  it`s not just what you know, it`s how you say or teach it.
And the second part of that is....Listen first before you speak.
Listening skills, empathy, the art of counselling can be learned but they 
have to be there in the first place, in the heart and the head of the 
student counsellor.
I have often thought that many training courses for the caring professions 
such as ours do not have an adequate selection process. Exams, 
questionnaires, registration forms may give some idea of a student`s ability 
and qualifications, but the only way to guage if they have that ability to 
counsel is for the tutors to sit on the sidelines and watch a group of 
potential students work together.  This then filters out the potential 
bullies, those who are working out their anger about their own birth and b/f 
experiences, those who always have an answer but don`t stop and listen 
before giving it. And those tutors have to be unbiassed, not influenced by 
the fact that the course will lose money if one or two students are not 
accepted - or that a department will not get a b/f counsellor if the 
supervisor asks a candidate to leave the programme after watching her work.

Wendy Blumfield
NCT Trained Tutor Prenatal Teacher/BFC
Israel Childbirth Education Centre 

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