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.
