Therapies Offered

When it comes to early childhood therapy, ABC has several evidence-based therapies and models as its foundation.

1. Play Therapy, a psychosocial treatment based on the children’s language of play. Its efficacy is well documented in the work of Dr. G. Landreth at Northern Texas University, Drs. L. and B. Guerney at Penn State University. Many child development specialists, psychotherapists and pediatricians believe, play is the child’s most powerful tool for learning and growing. Play is to the child what verbal communication is to the adult, hence it is the most effective vehicle through which adults can understand and guide children. Through play, children learn about their world, understand how things work, express feelings and thoughts, and develop new physical, cognitive and social skills. Toys and play are used instead of words to express the same feelings that adults have but which children usually cannot express verbally. Through play children work out their problems and conflicts, increase feelings of self -worth and self-acceptance through a relationship with the therapist who models the core conditions for healthy relationships (i.e., congruence, acceptance, and understanding). The therapist understands the purpose of the child’s play in its relationship to associating with past childhood events, and its connection to feelings and behavior exhibited outside of the playroom.

2. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a psychosocial treatment model designed to treat posttraumatic stress and emotional and behavioral problems in children (it is listed on the SAMSA National Registry of Evidenced-based Programs). It is used with children who have a wide array of traumatic experiences, including domestic violence, traumatic loss, and the often multiple psychological traumas experienced by children prior to foster care placement. The components of the model include psycho-education and parenting skills, relaxation skills, affect expression and regulation skills, cognitive coping skills and processing, trauma narrative, parent-child sessions, and enhancing safety and future development.

3. Child-Parent Psychotherapy, an intervention to support and strengthen the relationship between a child and his or her parent (or caregiver) (it is on the SAMSA National Registry of Evidenced-based Programs). It is a method for restoring the child's sense of safety, attachment, and appropriate affect and improving the child's cognitive, behavioral, and social functioning. The structure of the session is based on the type of trauma experienced and the child's age or developmental status. For example, with infants, the model focuses on helping the parent to understand how the child's and parent's experience may affect the
child's functioning and development. With older children the treatment frequently includes play as a vehicle for easing communication and improving the relationship between the child and parent. The therapist can help a parent understand how his or her history of trauma interferes with his or her response to the child, and also to understand how this can affect their perception of interactions with the child, thus helping the parent relate to the child in more appropriate ways.

4. Think Kids, an evidence-based model that has been applied to children with a wide range of social, emotional, and behavioral challenges and in a wide range of settings: families, schools, and restrictive therapeutic facilities. The model is based on two major beliefs regarding challenging kids: first, that these challenges are best understood as the byproduct of lagging cognitive skills (rather than, for example, as attention-seeking, manipulative, limittesting, or a sign of poor motivation); and second, that these challenges are best addressed by teaching children the skills they lack (rather than through reward and punishment programs and intensive imposition of adult will). The model teaches these skills through helping challenging children and their adult caretakers learn to resolve disagreements and disputes in a collaborative, mutually satisfactory manner in 3 steps. The first step is to identify and understand the child's concern about a given issue (such as completion of homework or chores, sibling or peer interactions, and so forth) and reassure him or her that they are not in trouble (this first step is called Empathy/Reassurance). The second step is to identify the adults' concerns on the same issue (this is called the Define the Problem step because, in this model, a problem is defined simply as two concerns that have yet to be reconciled). The third step is the Invitation; this is where the child is invited to brainstorm solutions together with the adult, with the ultimate goal of agreeing on a plan of action that is both realistic and mutually satisfactory.