Parents can learn to emotionally support their children with Filial Play Therapy

Parents can learn to emotionally support their children with Filial Play Therapy

In Filial Play Therapy, parents conduct weekly, special, 1:1 playtimes with their children.  In addition, the Play Therapist supports the parent(s) in learning to generalise therapy skills and principles into everyday life: many problems can be helped and family life is improved.  Where needed, parenting skills are refined and improved.

“Through this process, the parent-child relationship is transformed into a softened, emotionally engaged, and collaborative one.”

Evidenced-based research has shown that trained Play Therapists can effectively transfer the skills to parents that are appropriate for their child, in such a way that they can potentially be as effective or even more effective than Play Therapy with a therapist.  Click here for a summary report that shows how effective parents can be when they learn Filial Therapy.

See this article by Barry Ginsberg, a well-known Clinical Psychologist in the US.  In this article, Ginsberg describes Filial Therapy and it’s inception and states that he cannot think of a better way to intervene clinically when children are referred for therapy.