Playful Approaches with Kids and Teens: A Crash Course in the Kids’ Skills Method

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If you’ve been under the impression that therapy with children and teenagers always needs to be serious business, be prepared to change your mind. In this workshop, we’ll explore Kids’ Skills, a systemic approach that offers a solution-focused, fun way of helping children and teens who suffer from behavioral problems, anxieties, and other psychosocial issues. The key is the provocative notion that children don’t have any problems—they have incipient skills they need to improve with the support of those around them. You’ll discover how to:

• Instill hope in young clients, even when they don’t feel any
• Establish collaboration between kids and important people in their lives, even when everyone seems disconnected
• Generate a playful, creative mood, even when everyone seems gloomy
• Facilitate client-based solutions, even when the clients are focused on how insurmountable their problems seem to be