Play Therapy and Behaviour Support working holistically and therapeutically supporting children and families with emotional needs
Specialist behaviour support where traditional parenting strategies don't work to help you and your family. Parents working long hours, early start to nursery and education, activities and opportunities to develop the brain as much as we can in the early stages. Without the emotional stability needed to explore this exciting world, young children sometimes develop coping strategies that we label as bad or negative behaviour. Primary age children have neither the words nor the experience to understand or to reason with us, ending in battles over food, toilets, sleep and so on. With a therapeutic parenting approach we can provide the emotional security needed to help our children cope with demands, change the adapted behaviour and watch them blossom. If a child suffers a traumatic experience or suffers separation or loss during these early years they can become emotionally damaged and stuck. Play Therapy is finally emerging in the UK after years of pioneering for the effective treatment for children who have suffered trauma, neglect, loss, separation and anxiety. I have worked for many years with children from 4 to 14 struggling with emotional anxieties and disorders using various forms of behavior strategies and therapeutic exercises and found Play Therapy and therapeutic play, seem effective where other interventions fail. By building a positive attachment and providing a safe space for the healing to take place a child can recover from their trauma. Scientific evidence has proven that Play Therapy can make a change to the child's core beliefs and the earlier the intervention the better the effects. Here at Elderside I work with the whole family offering behavior strategies, Therapeutic skills and Play Therapy sessions one to one or in group. I can also offer birth family contact supervision and life story work. Therapeutic play and parenting is effective with children who have other moderate to severe learning disabilities or physical disability, ADHD and autism. Children who are unable to express their feelings verbally and become frustrated with the world around them. This usually manifests itself with behaviour and relational difficulties causing real family disruption and sadness. By using art, music and play a child can communicate their feelings safely, externalizing fears and emotions where words fail. Freeing a child from the burden of stress can enable them to be happy, social, engaging and ready for learning.
