Birdhouse therapies offer a therapeutic approach which encompasses both therapeutic play and creative therapy.
What Does it Address?
Anxiety, aggression, ADD/ADHD, bereavement, depression, attachment difficulties, abuse and trauma, grief, loss, communication difficulties, family breakdown, low self-esteem, separation anxiety, disturbed sleep and underperformance academically or socially.
Therapeutic Play
How often have asked your child what they did at school today to be told, ‘nothing!’ Nothing can mean a multitude of things for which your child has no words, as for children play is their natural way of communicating rather than words.
Therapeutic play is a non-directive approach which makes use of a creative arts toolkit to enable each child to explore their anxieties, anger and difficulties in a safe, contained space with a therapist who is separate to home and school.
In therapeutic play each child is able to choose how s/he wants to play in a session. I will watch, tune in, mirror, reflect back feelings and share in the experience as the child takes me on a journey and shares their story.
Through the metaphor of play a child can experience, explore, feel, control and try out new ways of being and behaving.
Creative Therapy
Creative media and activities are used as a way of engaging the child and enabling the child to tell their story and will differ according to an individual child’s age, abilities and needs. The creative arts toolkit can be used in a variety of ways to enable children to achieve their goals which may be:
- To gain mastery over issues and events (stories, drawing, sandtray)
- To be powerful through physical expression (clay, puppets, pretend play)
- To express emotions (clay, drawing and painting)
- To develop problem-solving and decision-making skills (storytelling, puppets, sandtray)
- To develop social skills (games, pretend play, puppets)
- To build self-image and self-esteem (drawing, games, collage)
- To improve communication skills (storytelling, puppets, role-play)
- To develop insight (books, creative visualisation, sandtray
Play and Creative Arts Toolkit
The toolkit comprises a number of creative media to encourage children to express themselves through play. Clay, art, puppets, sand, dressing-up, music, therapeutic story-telling and games are used to help children express their feelings and explore them in a way that feels natural and developmentally appropriate.
