Kids SPOT.
PLAY THERAPY FOR KIDS
Play Therapy offers kids an opportunity to explore intense feelings in order to understand their internal world and develop the ability to express themselves verbally instead of through their behavior. Utilizing a psychodynamic and attachment based therapy approach, child therapists attempt to understand how a child relates to the world and to others to determine the underlying cause of their anxiety symptoms. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) interventions are used to address specific symptoms and develop effective coping skills to manage anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, fears and more.
What is Play Therapy?
Play Therapy is a treatment intervention that utilizes a child's natural environment, play. Children play for many reasons, but most overreaching is their need to understand and master their world. That is why you may notice your little one return from a trip to the dentist or the car wash and begin acting out the events of the day. Your child is trying to make sense out of the event. In the same way, children come to therapy and use the toys to express themselves during play therapy. Your child's therapist is given a glimpse of the child's internal world and an opportunity to intervene to help them resolve their emotional difficulties. Online play therapy offers the same interventions as face-to-face sessions, but utilizes the child's own toys during therapy sessions.
Playing vs. Talking With Children
Children are constantly learning to understand their feelings, find words to express them and communicate them to others. This is no small feat! Even when they have the words for happy, sad and mad, those words often feel inadequate to explain how they are feeling. Ask a child why they like something or why they did something, and you will probably receive a shrug. It takes years of development to be able to explain that cookies are yummy because they are soft, sweet, chewy, crunchy and melt in your mouth, which makes you smile. They just know that they taste good. To be able to explain that you are jealous of the attention your brother gets or you miss daddy when he travels for work is difficult, but doubly complicated because of the guilt, sadness, fear and anger that goes along with those feelings. Play is meant to be the vehicle, and toys the words to communicate and resolve intense feelings of anxiety and depression. Play during therapy also allows for the development of rapport in which your child will also engage in talk therapy so that they learn the words to express their feelings.
ONLINE PLAY THERAPY
Online Counseling For Kids of All Ages
We live in a time with vast technology options to help us manage our lives. Online therapy and virtual counseling can bring support right to your home, where you need it, when you need it. My office is in Barrington, Illinois, near Palatine, Hoffman Estates, Algonquin, Elgin, Oakwood Hills, Trout Valley, Tower Lakes, Cary, Rolling Meadows, North Barrington, Lake Barrington, Barrington Hills and Wauconda. I am able to offer online counseling services to all Illinois residents. Kids love technology and really enjoy 'FaceTime therapy' or 'Skype counseling' right from the comfort of home. Research shows that virtual counseling is just as effective as in-person therapy.
HELP FOR PARENTS
Parent Consultations
Working Together
Online consultations with parents are paramount to successful treatment with kids. Not only do you know your child better than anyone, but you have the best chance to help your child implement what is learned in therapy and apply it at home, where it counts. Often, kids attend therapy because they are having difficulty regulating their emotions. The most effective therapy intervention is structure, which is most often modeled during the session and addressed during parent consultations. Parents are then challenged to implement changes in structure at home in order to help their child regulate intense feelings. Online therapy and parent consultations offer a unique and convenient method.