Families At Play

How family video game play promotes intergenerational communication, connection, and learning. Video games have a bad reputation in the mainstream media. They are blamed for encouraging social isolation, promoting violence, and creating tensions between parents and children. In this book, Sinem Siyahhan and Elisabeth Gee offer another view. They show that video games can be a tool for connection, not isolation, creating opportunities for families to communicate and learn together. Like smartphones, Skype, and social media, games help families stay connected. Siyahhan and Gee offer examples: One family treats video game playing as a regular and valued activity, and bonds over Halo. A father tries to pass on his enthusiasm for Star Wars by playing Lego Star Wars with his young son. Families express their feelings and share their experiences and understanding of the world through playing video games like The Sims, Civilization, and Minecraft. Some video games are designed specifically to support family conversations around such real-world issues and sensitive topics as bullying and peer pressure. Siyahhan and Gee draw on a decade of research to look at how learning and teaching take place when families play video games together. With video games, they argue, the parents are not necessarily the teachers and experts; all family members can be both teachers and learners. They suggest video games can help families form, develop, and sustain their learning culture as well as develop skills that are valued in the twenty-first century workplace. Educators and game designers should take note.

The Maine Play Book is a thought-fully curated guidebook gives parents an insider's perspective of Maine through a mother's eyes. Organized by season, each section features farms, nature preserves, and parks, as well as events and activities for families.

Play therapy and family therapy both are well established therapeutic paradigms. Often, however, play therapists have minimal contact with the nuclear family of which their child patient is a member. Similarly, family therapists frequently view young children as disruptive and exclude them from family sessions. By combining both play and family treatment modalities as this unique book Family Play Therapy suggests, all family members can participate in a therapeutic process which, in its inclusion of everyone, is more genuine and therefore successful. Family Play Therapy encourages the blending of play therapy and family therapy by discussing and demonstrating various techniques and diverse theoretical approaches that will enable readers to broaden their repertoire when working with families and their young children. Each author describes his or her own creative avenue of expression such as puppetry, psychodrama, and sandplay, which facilitate the family's communication, helping members to find new ways to hear each other. Family play therapy and play therapy need not be exclusionary. The two approaches actually can enhance and enrich each other. While each therapist ultimately will use his or her own ideas in the critical combining of both methods, Family Play Therapy offers various possibilities and as such, helps therapists to help their family patients to be readily engaged in treatment and to experience therapy as a fun, inclusive, transforming time together.

This classic volume, now completely revised, has helped tens of thousands of therapists integrate play therapy and family therapy techniques in clinical practice. Eliana Gil demonstrates a broad range of verbal and nonverbal strategies for engaging all family members--including those who are ambivalent toward therapy--and tailoring interventions for different types of presenting problems. Numerous case examples illustrate ways to effectively use puppets, storytelling, art making, the family play genogram, drama, and other expressive techniques with children, adolescents, and their parents. Gil offers specific guidance for becoming a more flexible, creative practitioner and shows how recent advances in neuroscience support her approach. Photographs of client artwork are included. New to This Edition *Incorporates 20 years of clinical experience and the ongoing development of Gil's influential integrative approach. *All-new case material. *Discusses how current brain research can inform creative interventions. *Heightened focus on personal metaphors, complete with detailed suggestions for exploring and processing them.

Play Therapy and Families: A Collaborative Approach to Healing provides a thorough description of play from prominent academics, researchers, and relevant writers who review it historically. It contains a unique approach for helping families, outlining an in-depth review of play and its relevancy to healing for children and families, putting forth a brand new Collaborative Play Therapy Model. The application to healing and psychotherapy follows, outlining the directive and non-directive orientations to healing, models that are current in the literature, and selected family-based play therapy models. An extensive overview of family therapy and associated models is presented as a foundation for the reader in order to relate play and family therapy from an academic point of view. This provides the theoretical background for the chapters on play therapy approaches that follow. Family play therapy addresses the inclusion of the family with techniques that contribute to healing. Narrative play therapy is presented with an in depth historical account and the phases of the narrative approach. Filial and theraplay models of play therapy are presented with an account of their development and focus on the phases of intervention for children and families. The book concludes with a sandtray approach to working with adoptive families, rounding out this collection’s presentation of current and researched models of play therapy.

Attachment-Focused Family Play Therapy presents an essential roadmap for therapists working with traumatized youth. Exploring trauma and attachment through a neurobiological focus, the book lays out a flexible framework for practitioners treating young clients within the context of their family relationships. Chapters demonstrate how techniques of play and expressive therapy can be integrated into work with different developmental stages, while providing the tools needed to fully incorporate the family into the healing process. The book also provides clinical examples and guidance on the ethical decision-making needed to effectively implement attachment work and facilitate positive change. Written in an accessible style, Attachment-Focused Family Play Therapy is an important resource for mental health professionals who work with traumatized children, adolescents, and adults.

Play provides young children with the opportunity to express their ideas, symbolize, and test their knowledge of the world. It provides the basis for inquiry in literacy, science, social studies, mathematics, art, music, and movement. Through play, young children become active learners engaged in explorations about themselves, their community, and their personal-social world. An Integrated Play-Based Curriculum for Young Children offers the theoretical framework for understanding the origins of an early childhood play-based curriculum and how young children learn and understand concepts in a social and physical environment. Distinguished author Olivia N. Saracho then explores how play fits into various curriculum areas in order to help teachers develop their early childhood curriculum using developmentally and culturally appropriate practice. Through this integrated approach, young children are able to actively engage in meaningful and functional experiences in their natural context. Special Features Include: Vignettes of children’s conversations and actions in the classroom Suggestions for activities and classroom materials Practical examples and guidelines End-of-chapter summaries to enhance and extend the reader’s understanding of young children By presenting appropriate theoretical practices for designing and implementing a play-based curriculum, An Integrated Play-Based Curriculum for Young Children offers pre-service teachers the foundational knowledge about the field, about the work that practitioners do with young children, and how to best assume a teacher’s role effectively.

Incorporating mindfulness and family therapy into play-family sessions. When a child is offered a space to relax the “busy mind,” his experience is comparable to mindfulness meditation. Therapists can help children remain in this calm state—in the state of the present moment—if they have the right tools and techniques to do so. During this stillness, a child can reach a level of consciousness that is parallel to the deepened awareness that occurs during mindfulness meditation. Conducting play sessions in this stage allows for healing and progress. Not only can the symptoms of children’s pain be reduced in intensity and duration, but their self-esteem can be enhanced. This book presents a new and comprehensive framework for helping children through play therapy within the context of the family and incorporating ideas from the practice of mindfulness. This experience-based therapeutic model respectfully derives from the best roots of traditional family therapy and play therapy modalities. Additionally, it draws from child development theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and mindfulness. Either spontaneous play or directed play can be used according to the need.

Integrative Play Therapy with Individuals, Families and Groups is a complete theory-to-practice introduction to a comprehensive integrative model of play therapy, developed by Shlomo Ariel. It synthesizes numerous concepts, methods and techniques found in the various branches of play theory and research under a unified conceptual and linguistic roof of information-processing, cybernetics and semiotics. The author's tenet is that any case, whatever the presenting difficulties, can be treated by such an integrative, multi-systemic approach. This book abounds with vivid observations and case descriptions, followed by discussions in a fictional inter-disciplinary seminar. Every chapter is followed by a brief summary, homework assignments and a classified list of relevant publications. Integrative Play Therapy with Individuals, Families and Groups will generate immense interest throughout the play therapy community. It can serve as a textbook for budding play therapists and as a reference book for more experienced practitioners.