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In the play therapy profession, the focus is typically on the children and providing play therapy sessions only with the child to facilitate healing.

Makes sense when you think about it because parents bring their child to you for help overcoming their mental health challenges.

But is it really the most effective way to conceptualize the problem and healing the problem?

How much focus do you allow to identify family relationship patterns sustaining the problem?

How are you gathering information to fully understand the problem?

How are you using that information to strategize the best approach to play therapy with anxious children?

Whenever I ponder clinical issues in my work with clients and prepare for trainings, I always like to go to the research to see what the research says when it comes to children’s mental health and treatment.

So that’s what I did.  

I perused the research literature on children’s mental health and parental involvement in treatment.

Yep! I went down another research literature rabbit hole and came out with gold!

I found an interesting article examining the role of parents in the development of anxiety in their children and the effectiveness of parental involvement in treatment.

There was some really interesting data about the role of parents in the development of their children’s anxiety as well as what type of treatment involving parents was effective (and not effective).

Intrigued?  Want to know more?

Join me on my podcast episode this week! I’ll review the data identified about what types of family patterns/parental behaviors were examined to give you insights into what to explore with parents and children when working with anxious children.

I’ll also review the data outlining what types of treatment approaches involving parents were effective and what wasn’t effective so you can use a play therapy approach that gets results.

Citation for article:  Wei, C., and Kendall, P. C. (2014). Parental involvement: Contribution to childhood anxiety and its treatment. Clinical Child and Family Psychological Review, 17, 319-339. doi.10.1007/s10567-014-0170-6

And - if you find the information useful - spread the love and share the podcast with your colleagues!

Leave a comment because I’d love to get your feedback.

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I work with individuals and agencies to develop successful strategies and meet the treatment needs of your child and adolescent clients and their families using play therapy & expressive arts.

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