Counseling for
Children & Families
Play-Family Therapy
Play-Family Therapy is a method that offers significant healing for a wide range of childhood issues and problems. Play-Family Therapy can also be used preventively when parents perceive that the situation may decline without attention to a particular concern. After a four-segment evaluation, the child’s play therapy sessions may begin with twenty minutes of “Talk Time” therapy, which deals concretely with the issues of strengths and concerns. This method greatly improves the communication skills of parents and child by the end of the time together. During the ‘Talk Time” therapy, the therapist meets with the child and the accompanying parent. This time often includes cognitive and behavioral approaches. Afterwards, during the play therapy, the therapist and sometimes a parent meet in the playroom with the child. Through the play, the child’s conscious and unconscious communicates. This therapeutic play allows children to go inside and heal their hurts and pains in a way that the “Talk Time” alone does not allow. The therapist discusses the meaning of the play with the parents at meetings that are held about once a month without the child present. The parent meetings also address how the parents are handling the issues of concern about any of their children.
Child-Centered and Structured Play Therapy
Different kinds of play therapy meet the needs of different children. For example the majority of children may do child-centered play. The therapist is engaged with the child and certainly sets needed limits in the playroom. When therapists are trained in this modality children with all kinds of issues tend to go most directly to the healing power of play. Structured play therapy is often recommended for children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD, ADHD), or who are on the Autism Spectrum. All of the play complements the “Talk Time” where we address the resources and problems every week along with monthly parent education and feedback sessions.
Filial Play Therapy or Greenspan Floor Time
Filial Play Therapy & Greenspan Floor Time are methods that include the parent, the child, and the therapist in the playroom together. In Filial, there is a goal of teaching the parent how to do child-centered play therapy with his or her own child. Dottie adapts traditional Filial Therapy to meet the individual needs of each unique parent and child. Floor Time, a more structured approach can be quite effective when used with children who lack playing skills and other developmental delays including children on the Spectrum.
A child’s capacity to create coherent stories with a beginning, middle and end and to think in pictures is directly related to higher school performance. Younger children 3-6 who are unable to do this will usually begin to show problems by 2nd or 3rd grade. Though our methods can help these older children to organize their thinking mind, it is far better to use structured play therapy earlier.
Parent Education, Dialogue & Mindful Parenting
Parent education and feedback sessions are scheduled on a regular basis, generally monthly. The child does not attend these sessions. The discussions include a compassionate, mindful parenting approach.
“There are major consequences to living unmindfully and there are great rewards to making a commitment to parent with as much awareness as is possible. Mindful parenting is about “good-enough” parenting (Winnocot), not perfect parenting. And yes, children need it to be good enough…not less. At different stages of our children’s lives we will surely ride a rollercoaster of emotions but we can have options of what to do when we ‘lose it’. At the Family & Play Therapy Center our goal is to encourage parents to be willing to self-reflect and connect the dots of their child’s stuckness to their own history. The primary imprint of how we parent is how we were parented and this may have great strengths and it may have areas that need healing.”
--- excerpt from Dottie’s upcoming book, Weaving It All Together: Play-Family Therapy, Child Development, and Mindful Parenting.
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