Child/Parent Relationship Training (C-P-R), or Filial Therapy, is an approach used by play therapists to train parents to become therapeutic agents with their own children. Parents are taught basic child-centered play therapy principles and skills including reflective listening, recognizing and responding to children’s feelings, therapeutic limit setting, building children’s self-esteem, and structuring required weekly play sessions with their children using selected toys. Parents learn how to create a warm, nonjudgmental, accepting environment in which their child feels safe to explore the parent-child relationship and themselves.
Ask yourself:
- Do you feel like you have lost control of your role as a parent?
- Do you find yourself yelling at your child more often than laughing with your child?
- Do you feel you have lost touch with your child or don’t feel as close as you’d like?
- Do you feel frustrated and find yourself saying the same things over and over, with no results?
- Do you often find yourself getting so frustrated with your child that you end up saying or doing things that you later regret?
- Would you like for your relationship with your child to be different?
Research studies have shown that C-P-R Training can:
- Reduce or eliminate behavior problems
- Enhance the parent-child relationship and the marital relationship
- Develop responsibility and self-control in children
- Increase children’s self-esteem and self-confidence
- Increase the parents’ feelings of warmth for their children