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Theraplay: Helping Parents and Children Build Better Relationships Through Attachment-Based Play
Theraplay?a pioneering application of attachment theory to clinical work―helps parents learn and practice how to provide the playful engagement, empathic responsiveness, and clear guidance that lead to secure attachment and lifelong mental health in their children. This third edition of the groundbreaking book Theraplay shows how to use play to engage children in interactions that lead to competence, self-regulation, self-esteem, and trust. Theraplay's relationship-based approach is uniquely designed to help families facing today's busy and often chaotic lifestyle challenges form joyful, loving relationships.
640 pages, Paperback
First published October 27, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 29, 2019
The book provides a comprehensive and thorough outline of the Theraplay program. It avoids the tendency of other program manuals to offer 'just enough' substance to make you want to pay more money for the training. Here, instead, the authors have been profoundly generous and given the right amount of substance for practitioners wanting to understand Theraplay or even to integrate some of the principles into their own practice.
Of particular importance is the authors' understanding and discussion of how play can be differentiated to provide certain experiences that support specific elements of attachment. For example, using structured play to support predictability, using engaging play to support connection, using nurturing play to support safety and security, and using challenging play to support exploration and risk. The detail on this is rich, and would be useful not only to therapists, but also to teachers.
However, the book (and its representation of Theraplay itself) starts to come undone when dealing with the issue of touch in parent-child relationships. The authors acknowledge that the program is heavily based in the work of Viola Brody, who was a notable therapist working with touch. Her approach, however, would be highly questionable these days, as her publications advocate for the forced use of touch/ cuddles/ holding, even when children found it distressing. While this philosophy is not so evident in the Theraplay approach, there is only a few paragraphs dealing with how to "approach" a touch-resistant child without nearly enough detail needed to consider and manage this issue safely.
The minimal discussion on touch-resistance is deeply problematic for a couple of reasons.
The first is, simply, that the importance of healthy touch in attachment relationships is a central element of the Theraplay model philosophy. Taking this into account, along with a much greater level of attention given to elements of "other activities", the lack of information about how to go about promoting healthy touch specifically, seems a significant and strange gap.
So it is interesting that, in second half of the book, there is a second, brief discussion about touch, in the context of sexual abuse. This is revealing, because it seems to speak to audience confusion between healthy and sexualised touch. This may simply reflect the cultural anxieties of the context in which this book is published (i.e. written by white, middle-class Americans for 'dealing with' the predominantly minority, low income families using HeadStart).
However, by failing to offer a discussion that helps the reader to distinguish between healthy parent-child touch, and abusive sexualised touch of children, the book (and thus the program) seems to shy away from one of its most important elements. It is as if they are saying "we know this is important, but we don't want to (or know how) talk about it".
The second problematic here is that there are multitudes of authors and notable practitioners who have dealt with this issue of parent-infant touch - with far more principled detail than Brody. Thus, grounding Theraplay on Brody's work is a confusing choice.
One author that comes to mind is Vimala McClure (who also pre-dates Brody) and whose work on parent-child touch education is far more nuanced and detailed than Brody's.
McClure's model is also far less brutal, in that Brody tended to focus on "fixing" the child at all costs. McClure on the other hand, not only emphasised the importance of the child's "voice" in the parent-child interaction...she also provided incredible detail and practical strategies for understanding the ways that children exercised this voice. Antonella Sansone is another author who has made a profound contribution to understanding the embodiment of children's communication, in the context of healthy touch. In a contemporary context, this ability to 'hear' the child's voice is known as mentalisation.
Perhaps most importantly, McClure not only understood the role and unfolding of touch in parent-infant attachment - she was the first to offer deeply important and considered pedagogical understandings in how to effectively pass these understandings and mentalising strategies along to parents.
As well as understanding the relational nature of touch, McClure's work was far more grounded than Brody's in a view of the child as a person in the 'here and now', rather than as someone who needed to be "fixed" (at all costs) for the future. Thus, even though Theraplay manual does not go so far as to advocate for Brody's forced touch of children, it lacks any real attention to the pedagogy of touch education with parents and any real perspective of the child-as-a-person.
So - overall Theraplay is a good framework, and the book holds many gems for practitioners. It certainly fills a gap in parent-infant interaction programs (compared with the much more common parent information-giving programs). However, it would benefit from a deeper consideration (or at least acknowledgement) of what is known, particularly about touch and parent education pedagogy, particularly given that these are two core elements of the program.
Of particular importance is the authors' understanding and discussion of how play can be differentiated to provide certain experiences that support specific elements of attachment. For example, using structured play to support predictability, using engaging play to support connection, using nurturing play to support safety and security, and using challenging play to support exploration and risk. The detail on this is rich, and would be useful not only to therapists, but also to teachers.
However, the book (and its representation of Theraplay itself) starts to come undone when dealing with the issue of touch in parent-child relationships. The authors acknowledge that the program is heavily based in the work of Viola Brody, who was a notable therapist working with touch. Her approach, however, would be highly questionable these days, as her publications advocate for the forced use of touch/ cuddles/ holding, even when children found it distressing. While this philosophy is not so evident in the Theraplay approach, there is only a few paragraphs dealing with how to "approach" a touch-resistant child without nearly enough detail needed to consider and manage this issue safely.
The minimal discussion on touch-resistance is deeply problematic for a couple of reasons.
The first is, simply, that the importance of healthy touch in attachment relationships is a central element of the Theraplay model philosophy. Taking this into account, along with a much greater level of attention given to elements of "other activities", the lack of information about how to go about promoting healthy touch specifically, seems a significant and strange gap.
So it is interesting that, in second half of the book, there is a second, brief discussion about touch, in the context of sexual abuse. This is revealing, because it seems to speak to audience confusion between healthy and sexualised touch. This may simply reflect the cultural anxieties of the context in which this book is published (i.e. written by white, middle-class Americans for 'dealing with' the predominantly minority, low income families using HeadStart).
However, by failing to offer a discussion that helps the reader to distinguish between healthy parent-child touch, and abusive sexualised touch of children, the book (and thus the program) seems to shy away from one of its most important elements. It is as if they are saying "we know this is important, but we don't want to (or know how) talk about it".
The second problematic here is that there are multitudes of authors and notable practitioners who have dealt with this issue of parent-infant touch - with far more principled detail than Brody. Thus, grounding Theraplay on Brody's work is a confusing choice.
One author that comes to mind is Vimala McClure (who also pre-dates Brody) and whose work on parent-child touch education is far more nuanced and detailed than Brody's.
McClure's model is also far less brutal, in that Brody tended to focus on "fixing" the child at all costs. McClure on the other hand, not only emphasised the importance of the child's "voice" in the parent-child interaction...she also provided incredible detail and practical strategies for understanding the ways that children exercised this voice. Antonella Sansone is another author who has made a profound contribution to understanding the embodiment of children's communication, in the context of healthy touch. In a contemporary context, this ability to 'hear' the child's voice is known as mentalisation.
Perhaps most importantly, McClure not only understood the role and unfolding of touch in parent-infant attachment - she was the first to offer deeply important and considered pedagogical understandings in how to effectively pass these understandings and mentalising strategies along to parents.
As well as understanding the relational nature of touch, McClure's work was far more grounded than Brody's in a view of the child as a person in the 'here and now', rather than as someone who needed to be "fixed" (at all costs) for the future. Thus, even though Theraplay manual does not go so far as to advocate for Brody's forced touch of children, it lacks any real attention to the pedagogy of touch education with parents and any real perspective of the child-as-a-person.
So - overall Theraplay is a good framework, and the book holds many gems for practitioners. It certainly fills a gap in parent-infant interaction programs (compared with the much more common parent information-giving programs). However, it would benefit from a deeper consideration (or at least acknowledgement) of what is known, particularly about touch and parent education pedagogy, particularly given that these are two core elements of the program.
February 2, 2022
Very comprehensive; an easy to understand, helpful guide to play therapy. Lots of great activities in the back of the book as well.
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January 27, 2014
I am about to start the Theraplay training to use it in my practice. I loved this book. It was very clear with great examples and case studies. It had a great variety of scenarios and gave great background to the theory behind Theraplay. It also focused on mixing different modalities and how to use it with different client groups.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews