The assessment is aimed at understanding how the child experiences his world and the challenges that comes with it.
The following aspects are assessed:
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Motor, perceptual and language development of the child
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Attachment and emotional needs of the child
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Emotional experience of the child’s relationship with his/her parents and siblings
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Emotional experience of the child’s parents marriage relationship
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Possible trauma in child’s life
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Functioning of the child’s temperament and self esteem
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Relationships that possible causes discomfort for the child
The ultimate goal of evaluation is to provide recommendations that support the child’s emotional well-being and promote their overall development.
Socio-Emotional
Assessments
Interactional Analysis is a process through which parent-child interaction is observed and evaluated.
It determines the relationships:
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Strengths and weaknesses
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Attachment style
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Parental skills
Interactional
Analysis
Play therapy is typically targeted to children ages 3 to 11 years.
It is an intervention in abuse, neglect, aggression, attachment, chronic illness, depression, anxiety, grief, low self-concept, traumatization, enuresis/encopresis, phobias.
Children with social, emotional, or behavioural difficulties. Play is used to understand what is on a child’s mind because play is children’s natural medium of expression.
Through this medium a non-threatening and safe environment is created, where children can express feelings, learn coping mechanisms and work through trauma or difficult events.
Play therapy sessions are done together with parental guidance throughout, to ensure that parents are guided in terms of their parenting.
Play Therapy
Filial therapy is a ten week training program and it aims to support attachment relationship skills and therefore support parent/child relationship. Filial Therapy is based on the idea that parents/carers are the most important people in a child’s life and know their child well, therefore they are the best placed to work with their child.
The focus of this training is to alter the parents’ attitudes and perceptions of their children’s behaviours in order to change those behaviours. Parents receives training, supervision and feedback on the home playtimes.
Filial therapy utilizes a group format that trains parents to be the therapeutic agent with their children as they conduct weekly playtimes in their home in a very specific way. Through filial therapy, the child’s perceptions of the parent should change and also the parent’s perceptions of the child should change.
The child, allowed to express thoughts and feelings he or she has not communicated to his or her parents, gains self-respect, selfworth, and confidence.
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Parents reported a decrease in their stress levels after conducting their special playtimes with their children.
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The parents reported increased self-confidence, less need to be controlling, and increased awareness of their needs and the needs of their children.
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Parents reported increased closeness and improved communication in both the parentchild relationship and in the marital relationship.
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The parents reported more realistic expectations for their children and less friction between the parents and children.
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The parents perceived their children, as a result of filial therapy, as being happier, taking more responsibility for their actions, demonstrating fewer withdrawn behaviours and aggressive behaviours, and exhibiting overall enhanced communication.
Filial Therapy
E-motions are energy in motion. If they are not expressed, the energy is repressed. As energy it has to go somewhere. Emotional energy moves us, as does all energy.
To deny emotions is to deny the ground and vital energy of our lives.
- John Bradshaw.
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To help children identify and verbalise their feelings, leading to effective communication and the experience of being in charge rather than at the mercy of their feelings.
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Children learn to take risks, to accept setbacks as part of life, to learn from their experiences and above all to love being themselves.
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Children who have been taught the skills of EQ become more motivated, resilient and compassionate. It also enhances self-control and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Building Emotional Intelligence
Training of parents in the management of defiant child behaviour. It is expressively intended for children who display noncompliant, defiant, oppositional, stubborn or socially hostile behaviour towards their parents. The programme is designed for children between the ages of 3 and 12 years.
​Goals of this programme
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To improve parental management skills and competence in dealing with oppositional behaviour
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To increase parental knowledge of sources of childhood defiant behaviour and the principles and the extent to which learning within the family may contribute to such behaviour
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To improve child compliance with commands, directives and rules given by parents and so reduce the extent of parent-child conflict
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More generally to reduce parenting stress and it is hoped, thereby increase family harmony through the improvement of child behaviour management skills by parents