User:Nicolle.howard/Play therapy

Play therapy is an effective way for parents and children to interact with one another and for the parents to see their child progress through their life. Children go through a lot such as parents do, but for a child it affects their school performance along with their relationship with their parent.

Parent/child play therapy
In 2006, Garry Landreth and Sue Bratton developed a highly researched and structured way of teaching parents to engage in therapeutic play with their children. It is based on a supervised entry level training in child centred play therapy. They named it Child Parent Relationship Therapy. These 10 sessions focus on parenting issues in a group environment and utilises video and audio recordings to help the parents receive feedback on their 30-minute 'special play times' with their children.

More recently, Aletha Solter has developed a comprehensive approach for parents called Attachment Play, which describes evidence-based forms of play therapy, including non-directive play, more directive symbolic play, contingency play, and several laughter-producing activities. Parents are encouraged to use these playful activities to strengthen their connection with their children, resolve discipline issues, and also help the children work through traumatic experiences such as hospitalization (changed the spelling) or parental divorce.

A study was done on several children who were observed and did training with children for Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). Stress can accumulate for a child is doing Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, but the stress also comes from the parent. Harsh parenting behaviors is what causes a child to have their clinical problems and have them act a way that their parent didn’t expect.