05/06/10 LONDON: Helping Troubled Children & Teenagers Speak About Feelings & How to Respond When They Do.

Saturday 5 June 2010 (10.00am-5.15pm, registration 9.30-10.00am)
HELPING TROUBLED CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS SPEAK ABOUT FEELINGS AND HOW TO RESPOND WHEN THEY DO: KEY TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES (ages 4-16)
Cost: £160 (includes a complimentary buffet lunch)

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort, of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away. (Dinak Craik)

Children and teenagers often don’t know what to do with the feelings they are having. As a result they discharge their emotions in destructive ways or defend against them. Both ways of coping are nevertheless understandable. It can be just too frightening to think about intense or painful feelings on your own. In contrast, What is shareable is bearable (Siegel 2007). If a child or young person is to be helped to resolve, work through and develop emotionally and socially, it is essential that the listening adult knows how to have a therapeutic conversation. This day therefore focuses on the key skills for effective therapeutic communication, in terms of ‘what to say and how to say it.’ This rarely comes naturally and cannot simply be learnt from a book!.

Delegates will learn:

How to become more talkable to
Ways of opening up a therapeutic dialogue with a child/teenager
How to help a child/teenager find words for their experiences instead of discharging or defending
How to convey accurate empathy with age appropriate vocabulary
How to develop the child’s communications to the point of resolution
How to transform a child’s inner world from a harsh place to a warmer kinder one
How to find the words to say it, so that children and teenagers will: find their voice, often for the first time; know what it feels like to be profoundly understood; find solace; know how reflecting with someone feels so good instead of managing big problems all on your own; develop a far wider range of relational and emotional options
Specific tools and techniques taught include:

Empathic Intervention based on life data and play data
The big empathy drawing
‘Show me’
Rehearsal of the possible
The finish the story technique
Use of indirect expression
Rehearsal of the possible
Emotion worksheets
Structured sandplay tasks
Unfinished sentence technique
Speaker

Dr Margot Sunderland
Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health, London. UKCP Integrative Adult and Child Psychotherapist, Academic Psychologist, Parenting and Child Care expert. She has over 20 years experience of working with children and families. Author of 20 books in child mental health. BMA award winning author: What Every Parent Needs To Know (Dorling Kindersley). Senior Lecturer, MA Integrative Child Psychotherapy and MA Education: Emotional Literacy for Children (London Metropolitan University and The Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education), Founding Director of ‘Helping Where it Hurts’, a therapy programme for children in Islington Primary Schools.


*For more details and to book, contact direct:

The Centre for Child Mental Health
2-18 Britania Row
London N1 8PA
Tel. 020 7354 2913
Fax. 020 7704 0171
Email: info@childmentalhealthcentre.org