Reaching Out to Single Parent Children through Filial Therapy

The Family Journal, 2007

According to the most recent U.S. Surgeon General's report on mental health, it is crucial for family counselors to use parents and families as partners in delivery of mental health services for children. Filial therapy, a unique, evidenced-based approach, may be useful for fulfilling the aforementioned mandate because filial therapy teaches parents to be the primary therapeutic agent of change in the lives of their children. This article overviews the basic principles and procedures of filial therapy training and provides a case study illustrating this strategy for building strong parent-child relationships.

Psikiyatride Guncel Yaklasimlar - Current Approaches in Psychiatry, 2023

Child-Parent Relationship Therapy is an approach that combines play therapy and family therapy. It is based on the idea of teaching parents the skills of structuring, emphatic listening, imaginary play and limit-setting and enabling their children to become play therapists. The overall aim is to strengthen the child-parent relationship. It is a structured, 10-week, group format training for parents with children aged 3-10. After 3 week-parent training, special play sessions with their children for 7 weeks begin in parallel with the training sessions. These sessions teach parents to recognize their children's emotions, listen effectively, build self-esteem, and set boundaries therapeutically, while helping parents develop parenting skills. In this review, the history of Child-Parent Relationship Therapy, its aims, parent-child interaction and training dimensions, play room and toy selection, content of training sessions and research studies on its effectiveness are explained. Evaluating the model, it was seen that CPRT was an effective approach in reducing parental stress and behavioral problems of children, and improving parental acceptance and empathy levels.

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy (ANZJFT), 2011

This article describes Filial Therapy, a structured and straightforward approach to working with parents and young children in family therapy; it highlights the congruence between Filial Therapy and the values and principles of family therapy. The historical, theoretical and research foundations of Filial Therapy are described. The family science and child socialisation literatures are also briefly reviewed, linking key predictors of positive child outcome with the goals of Filial Therapy. Finally, we discuss the consistencies between Filial Therapy and experiential and structural models of family therapy. We conclude with a description of Filial Therapy followed by a case example to illustrate the process.

The purpose of our study was to understand, document, and report conservative Christian parents' perceptions of the effectiveness of an intensive 5-week filial therapy program, ChildϪParent Relationship Therapy (CPRT). A transcendental phenomenological approach (C. Moustakas, 1994, Phenomenological Research Methods, Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage) was used to gather, analyze, and report the findings from this study. A 14-question, semistructured interview was used with 10 parent participants to ascertain the parents' perceptions of the CPRT model. Overall, the parents thought the CPRT model was effective and had a positive change on the parent-child relationship and behavior problems the child was experiencing. Several techniques and interventions were described by the parents as the most helpful and beneficial. The results of our study suggest that CPRT may be effective for conservative Christian parents when certain modifications are made. The themes that emerged may be used to provide alternative methods to assist clients who hold conservative Christian beliefs.

Psychology and Psychotherapy-theory Research and Practice, 2006

The short-term mother-child and father-child psychoanalytic psychotherapy assumes that children develop specific types of relationships with each parent, as well as with the parenting couple. The model integrates an intra-psychic, object-relational view with an interpersonal perspective to the treatment of relational disturbances in childhood. The same therapist meets with the mother-child, father-child dyads on a weekly basis, along with regular meetings with the parental dyad. The model focuses on the developmentally prelatency child's need for the active participation of both parents in the here-and-now shared experiences of the therapeutic process. The participants express, in interactions and in enactments, various contents and meanings of their specific patterns of relations. The therapist addresses the behaviours as well as the meanings of relations, thus promoting reflective understanding and experiential changes in self, other, and self-other relations. The child's active and different participation with each parent is the main change-promoting factor. The child uses mainly the medium of play to express his/her needs and to mobilize the therapist's help. The therapist's access to the different dyads is utilized to better understand the explicit and implicit relational themes. The therapist supports the co-construction of new and different behaviour patterns and the co-creation of additional meanings to representations. The setup fosters the child's active participation in each dyad's growth-promoting changes. This article presents a psychoanalytically oriented model for the treatment of relational disturbances in childhood. The model focuses on children who are at a prelatency level in their development (Bleiberg, Fonagy, & Target, 1997), and emphasizes the child's role in the treatment process (Lojkasek, Cohen, & Muir, 1994). Like infant-parent psychotherapy, the mother-child and father-child treatment model focuses on the

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010

This study drawing on a relationship-enhancement family/play therapy known as Filial Therapy (FT) attempted (i) to examine the changes that mothers report in their children's problem behaviors, (ii) to investigate the ways FT could affect parenting knowledge and skills, and (iii) to evaluate participants' perceptions about the FT intervention. To this end, twenty-four motherchild dyads were assigned randomly to an experimental group (n=12) and a control group (n= 12). Necessary quantitative data were gathered at pretest and posttest. Through observation and questionnaires, complementary qualitative data were also collected. In view of the results obtained, the current study concludes by the assertion that FT has potential to be utilized as a culturally responsive intervention.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

The present study aims to investigate the outcomes of the Focal Play Therapy with Children and Parents (FPT-CP) in terms of parent–therapist alliance, parent–child interactions, and parenting stress. Thirty parental couples (N = 60; 30 mothers and 30 fathers) and their children presenting behavioral, evacuation and eating disorders took part to the study. Through a multi-method longitudinal approach, data were collected at two time points (first and seventh sessions) marking the first phase of the intervention specifically aimed to build the alliance with parents, a crucial variable for the remission of the child’s symptoms (and to the assessment of the child’s symptoms within family dynamics.) Therapeutic alliance was assessed by the Working Alliance Inventory by therapists and parents. Parent–child interactions and parenting stress were evaluated using the Emotional Availability Scales and the Parenting Stress Index, respectively. Results showed that a positive parent–therapist al...

Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2015

The significance of enhancing parenting skills to reduce child maladjustment is well-established and supports the important role of evidence-based parenting programs. However, the notion that parenting should be the exclusive focus for enhancing child behavior is necessarily limiting. Evidence is growing that relationship-oriented treatments may be another powerful approach to improve child adjustment, albeit the underlying effects in coupleversus parenting-focused programs have been subject to limited study. The aim of this RCT was to compare the treatment effects of (1) a couple-focused program (the Couples Coping Enhancement Training) to (2) a parenting training (Triple P) and (3) a control group on children's behavioral problems in 150 couples. The parents' perceptions of relationship quality, parenting behavior, and child's behavioral problems were assessed by means of questionnaires completed prior to and 2 weeks after the end of the treatment. Multi-group path analyses revealed that in mothers' perception the couple-focused program reduced child behavioral problems by enhancing the relationship quality whereas improved parenting mediated the benefits in the parenting training. In fathers' evaluations the couple-focused program reduced dysfunctional parenting which largely accounted for the benefits in child adjustment. The dearth of research on child outcomes in couplefocused intervention studies is a striking gap that should be overcome. It is a promising field because of its evident potential to foster the health of many children.

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2009

Psychotherapy with infants and young children: Repairing the effects of stress and trauma on early attachment. Guilford, New York, 2008, ISBN: 978-1-59385-675-5 (cloth), 366 pp., $40