The Therapist's Notebook for Children and Adolescents : Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy

This book puts a myriad of homework, handouts, activities, and interventions in your hands!

Targeted specifically toward children and adolescents, the “therapist's helpers,” you'll find in this extraordinary book will give you the edge in aiding children with their feelings, incorporating play techniques into therapy, providing group therapy to children, and encouraging appropriate parental involvement. The Therapist's Notebook for Children and Adolescents covers sleep problems, divorce, illness, grief, sexual abuse, cultural/minority issues, and more, incorporating therapeutic approaches that include play, family play, psychodynamic, family systems, behavioral, narrative, and solution-focused therapy.

This ready reference is divided into eight thoughtfully planned sections to make it easy to find the right activity, handout, or intervention for the problem at hand: Dealing with Children's Feelings, The Use of Play in Therapy, Special Child Problems, Youth/Adolescents, Specific Approaches or Interventions, Family Issues, Parent Education and Intervention, and Illness and Bereavement.

Covering a wide age range, The Therapist's Notebook for Children and Adolescents will help you become even more effective with your youthful clients by:

• providing creative ideas for use with children
• expanding your repertoire of proven interventions and approaches to working with children and specific children's issues
• exploring effective ways to run children's groups
• showing you how to work with children in many modalities--individual, family, with parents, and in groups
• examining ways to include parents and families in child/adolescent therapy to increase the ability to make systematic changes-helping the client’s behavioral change to be reinforced at home

A far cry from typical child intervention books, The Therapist's Notebook for Children and Adolescents: Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy does much more than simply help you teach skills to children. Make it a part of your therapeutic arsenal today!

• About the Editors
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Therapist Attitudes About Play
• Acknowledgments
• Section I: Dealing with Children's Feelings
• 1. Feeling Faces Prevent Scary Places
• 2. Deflating Fear
• 3. A Child's Impossible and Scariest Tasks
• 4. Soaring Above Stress: Using Relaxation and Visualization with Anxious Children
• 5. Getting to Know the Characters Inside Me: Children Coping with Thoughts and Feelings
• Section II: The Use of Play in Therapy
• 6. Play Genograms
• 7. Strengthening Parent-Child Attachment with Play: Filial Play Therapy
• 8. Using Play to Help Parents Share Difficult Information with Young Children
• 9. Explaining to Parents the Use of Play in Family Therapy
• 10. Family Sandplay: Strengthening the Parent-Child Bond
• 11. Spin Me a Yarn: Breaking the Ice, and Warming the Heart
• 12. Co-Art: A Joining Activity for Therapist and Younger Clients
• 13. Using LIFE to Explore Children's Worlds
• Section III: Specific Childhood Problems
• 14. Learning and School Related Problems in Childhood
• 15. Superman versus the Monster: Assisting a Young Child with Nightmares
• 16. “Mommy Is a Restless Sleeper”
• 17. Secret Signals Soothe Separation Stress
• 18. A Brief Assessment of Social Competency Skills in Preschool and Early Elementary Children
• Section IV: Dealing with Illness, Trauma, and Bereavement
• 19. Children's Understanding of Death
• 20. Tips for Parents When There is Illness in the Family
• 21. Scrapbooking During Traumatic and Transitional Events
• 22. Animal-Assisted Therapy for Sexually Abused Children
• Section V: Youth/Adolescents
• 23. Using Adolescents As Consultants in Therapy
• 24. Creating a Participating Role for Adolescents in Group and Family Therapy
• 25. Silent Scream: Opening Adolescent Communication
• 26. The Places You'll Go: Developing Hope and Self-Efficacy
• 27. Therapeutic Letters to Young Persons
• 28. Parental Involvement in an Adolescent's Career Decision Process
• 29. Improving Behavior and Identities of Youths: Exploring and Creating Culturally Relevant Masks
• 30. Judge and Jury: A Creative Approach to Discussing Sex with Teens
• Section VI: Specific Approaches or Interventions
• 31. The Use of Consultants in Play Therapy: Narrative Practices with Young Children
• 32. Integrating Externalization and Scaling Questions: Using Visual Scaling to Amplify Children's Voices
• 33. Becoming the Author of Your Life: Writing Stories of Change
• 34. Jumanji
• 35. A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Getting to Know a Child's World Through Photographs
• 36. Champion Pack
• Section VII: Family Issues
• 37. The Family Play Planning: Playing Together, Staying Together
• 38. Kidsculpt: Children's Role in Marital and Family Therapy
• 39. Special Time Activities
• 40. Anger Collage
• 41. Director's Chair
• 42. Using Children's Books in Family Therapy
• Section VIII: Parent Education and Intervention
• 43. The Parent's Guide to Good Divorce Behavior
• 44. Ten Commandments for Stepfamilies
• 45. Helping Parents Understand and Use Natural and Logical Consequences
• 46. Helping Parents Use the Time-Out Procedure
• Index
• Reference Notes Included