Social therapy for children and families
Creating new performances of the “family play”
We’ve all learned to play roles in our “family play,” and sometimes they don’t work. Are your children the hyperactive kids who drive their parents crazy? Are you the overwrought parent? Is your child the one who just won’t listen? Do your meltdowns (both parents and kids) have a negative impact on people in and outside the family?
We can help you.
Social therapy for children focuses on the growth and development of the whole family. In a variety of group settings, we help families take a serious look at their family drama, and use play, creativity and performance in life (the activities children love to do!) to help children and their parents learn new performances of their relationships at home and in school.
Most of childrens’ life experience is shaped and directed by the adults around them. When children have emotional, social or learning difficulties, parents — often exhausted and at their wits’ end — can become overly authoritarian or overly liberal, and children don’t feel that they have any power to change what’s happening. Frustrated with themselves and everyone around them, they “act out.”
Whether your child has been diagnosed with Aspergers or ADHD, or feels victimized by difficulties in school or life situations like divorce, the social therapist works with the whole family to help them create new choices in how to respond to these very real stresses. They can rewrite, rehearse, and perform a new family play, and learn to take responsibility for the choices they make. The social therapist helps children use their creativity and love of play to see that they have something positive to offer adults and other children. They experience themselves as the creators of their lives, which helps to reinitiate the growth and development that often has stopped — for everyone in the family — in the face of social and emotional difficulties.
