We’re celebrating 6 years by sharing our favorite 6 games and books that parents can enjoy at home with their anxious kids and teens!

The kids are at home (still), summer camps are closed, and all the ways you normally fill your summer time look a lot different, thanks to Coronavirus.

So, what’s a parent to do?

This week, we put together a list of some ways to fill up summer - while still building skills for anxiety management, frustration tolerance, and relationship building (kind of the three big things we most care about here at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis!)

What do you actually do this summer? We have 10 ideas right below!

Games work as anxiety treatment and anger management, too.

As we discussed last week, when we use play interventions, we focus on three things:

1. Building our relationship

2. Following the rules

3. Practicing self-regulation

Games provide us a great opportunity to help model rule following, to process frustration as it arises, to build self regulation, and to build up our parent/child relationship.

Below, you’ll find 25 of our favorite games to incorporate at home, including a few that we use as child therapists...

You know your child’s not just angry. There’s something going on underneath the surface, too.

And a lot of times, that anger is masking anxiety, stress, and overwhelm.

When kids and teens (and even adults, too!) get anxious, their brains and bodies start to take over. Their fight/flight/freeze response gets activated.

That means for some kids, when they feel scared, they look scared.

The run away (flight) or totally shut down and clam up (freeze).

For many of us, our fight reaction takes over.

And instead of just looking scared on the outside, we look MAD. We look like we’re ready to get into a fight and defend ourselves. We’re ready to yell, or scream, or call you bad names, and we have a very, very hard time calming down.

So how can you integrate games to help your child build up their anxiety and anger management skills?

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy

Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is based on play therapy models. It teaches parents how to work with their children in much the same way that a play therapist will build rapport and engagement. There are two components of this: Child Directed Interaction (CDI), and Parent Directed Interaction (PDI).

CDI - Learning to Become a Parent Play Therapist:

Child directed interaction is where the child leads the content of the play. This is most often what we integrate in our office as a way to build a relationship and engagement with our client.

During the CDI, or “special play time” as I often term it for kids, we play for 5 minutes. During this time, I do not take the lead at all. I let the child choose what activities they do, and the whole time, I’m engaged in the following three components:

1. Reflecting/paraphrasing the child’s speech

2. Describing the child’s behaviors

3. Specific praise of the positive behaviors seen in play

The most challenging part: not jumping in to redirect, lead the play, or make suggestions.

How we incorporate play therapy techniques for anxiety at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis:

We tailor our approach to each individual client and family we work with. That means, for some kids, we focus much more on building our anxiety and anger management skills through play.

Rather than non-directive play therapy (where therapists allow your child to free play and analyze what’s going on and themes they notice), we incorporate play in a couple of different ways.

Today, we’re talking Theraplay. In our next blog, we’ll be exploring Restorative Play. And in the following post, we’ll talk more about PCIT.

What is Theraplay?

Theraplay is a research-based type of play therapy that is focused on four main components: structure, engagement, nurture, and challenge. Per the Theraplay institute, Theraplay is “child and family therapy for building and enhancing attachment, self-esteem, trust in others, and joyful engagement.”