What to Do When Children Clam Up in Psychotherapy: Interventions to Facilitate Communication (Creative Arts and Play Therapy)

Therapists who work with children and adolescents are frequently faced with nonresponsive, reticent, or completely nonverbal clients. Most chapters conclude with succinct lists of recommended practices for engaging hard-to-reach children that therapists can immediately try out in their own work.. This volume brings together expert clinicians who explore why 4- to 16-year-olds may have difficulty talking and provide creative ways to facilitate communication. A variety of play, art, movement, and animal-assisted therapies, as well as trauma-focused therapy with adolescents, are illustrated with vivid clinical material. Contributors give particular attention to the neurobiological effects of trauma, how they manifest in the body when children "clam up," and how to help children self-regulate and feel safe

Liana Lowenstein said A Must Have. An excellent resource for mental health practitioners who provide therapy/counselling to children and teens. I especially like the emphasis on the importance of the therapeutic relationship, and the variety of creative ways to facilitate open communication including play, art, and animal assisted therapy. I also like the Recommended Practices at the end of each chapter. Highly recommended.

"This is one of those rare clinical books that not only will occupy a prominent place on the therapist's bookshelf, but also will be reached for time and time again between sessions. The volume presents models that highlight the primacy of creativity and relationship when counseling children. As a graduate educator in play therapy and expressive art therapy for more than 36 years, I am refreshed to find a book that provides even the neophyte therapist with such usable, inviting intervention strategies."--Julia Byers, EdD, Division of Expressive Therapies (Emerita), Lesley University "The title immediately lets the reader know that this is a practical,