My Approach to Play Therapy & my Work with Teens
Kids and teenagers can greatly benefit from a safe space to be themselves. I take a relational approach to my work to facilitate building trust with an adult. By helping young children feel safe, and helping them to participate in the therapeutic relationship, a foundation for co-regulation is created.
Co-regulation is a supportive and interactive process between a caregiver/parent/safe adult and child that helps to strengthen a child’s ability to cope and engage with the world.
What can you expect?
Ages 5-11:
Intake process - I invite both caregiver and child during the intake process so that I can observe and assess the parent-child relationship, ask questions about the child’s development, and observe the child’s behavior.
Note: If you need to share more private information with me without the child present, I am open to a phone call before or after the intake session.
Treatment - In my work with young children, I use play therapy and relational therapy interventions to help children express themselves. It is often child-centered and child led. In a world where children are ordered to follow rules and often not in control of their environment, this approach facilitates opportunities for them to take some control and express their emotions and worldview, in their own language, play.
With younger children, I often encourage meeting with the family as needed in order to support the child’s treatment goals.
What can you expect?
Ages 12-18:
Intake process - I usually will invite the caregiver and teen during the intake process so that I can observe and assess the parent-teen relationship, ask questions about the teen’s development, and observe the teen’s behavior. At this point of the pre-teen/teen’s development, they start to value privacy and independence. For this reason, I then meet with the caregiver and teen individually so that I can start to build the therapeutic relationship and allow both parties to share safely and confidentially with me.
Treatment - In my work with teenagers, I use a relational approach with elements of CBT (cognitive-behavioral), interpersonal, and psychodynamic theories in order to help teenagers understand and verbalize their emotional experience and worldview.
Resources I often send to my parent and family clients:
Synergetic Play Therapy Institute (SPTI)
https://synergeticplaytherapy.com/what-synergetic-play-therapy/
SPTI hosted podcast - Lessons from the Playroom
https://synergeticplaytherapy.com/lessons-from-the-playroom/
Good Inside Podcast
Principles for Relationships with Children
I am not all knowing
Therefore, I will not even attempt to be.
I need to be loved.
Therefore, I will be open to loving children.
I want to be more accepting of the child in me.
Therefore, I will with wonder and awe allow children to illuminate my world.
I know so little about the complex intricacies of childhood.
Therefore, I will allow children to teach me.
I learn best from and am impacted most by my personal struggles.
I sometimes need a refuge.
Therefore, I will provide a refuge for children.
I like it when I am fully accepted as the person I am.
Therefore, I will strive to experience and appreciate the person of the child.
I make mistakes. They are a declaration of the way I am — human and fallible.
Therefore, I will be tolerant of the humanness of children.
I react with emotional internalization and expression to my world of reality.
Therefore, I will relinquish the grasp I have on reality and try to enter the world as experienced by the child.
It feels good to be an authority, to provide answers.
Therefore, I will need to work hard to protect children from me.
I am more fully me when I feel safe.
Therefore, I will be consistent in my interactions with children.
I am the only person who can live my life.
Therefore, I will not attempt to rule a child’s life.
I have learned most of what I know from experiencing.
Therefore, I will allow children to experience.
The hope I experience and the will to live come from within me.
Therefore, I will recognize and affirm the child’s will and selfhood.
I cannot make children’s hurts and fears and frustrations and disappointments go away.
Therefore, I will soften the blow.
I experience fear when I am vulnerable.
Therefore, I will with kindness, gentleness, and tenderness touch the inner world of the vulnerable child.
- From Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship (2012) by Garry L. Landreth, Ed.D., LPC, RPT-S
