Family play therapy offers a compassionate and collaborative approach where both parent and child work together alongside the family therapist, fostering an environment of equality and connection.
Unlike traditional family therapy models, which often require children to meet at their parent’s level for verbal discussions, family play therapy invites parents or carers to engage with the child through play, entering both the child’s world and that of the parent, to listen to what is unspoken and work through emotional and relational dynamics inherent within the parent-child relationship. This form of family therapy allows both parent and child to increase their self awareness, congruency (to feel safe) and acceptance of one another, strengthening their bond through deeper understanding and connection.
Rooted in humanistic principles, attachment theory, and interpersonal neurobiology, family play therapy shares a similar theoretical foundation with Child-Centered Play Therapy. Both therapies emphasise the importance of the parent-child relationship, offering a path for families to build stronger bonds through the therapeutic process.
If you’re looking to strengthen your child-parent relationship or seeking support for your family, our expert team at The Family Systems Hub is here to guide you. Reach out today to learn how family play therapy can help your family grow and heal together.
Our family therapists work to expand both the child and parent’s capacity to tolerate uncomfortable emotions that arise during perceived challenging interactions within the dyad. These challenges often stem from past experiences or events that have become stuck and unintegrated. Our family therapy approach seeks to diffuse the intensity and frequency of fight, flight, and shutdown stress responses by redirecting energy towards becoming more grounded, present, and regulated. Additionally, we focus on reframing perceptions of these challenging experiences, which in turn influences the functioning of our flight, fight, and shutdown nervous system circuitry. These dyad sessions provide a judgement-free environment for parent-child communication, nurturing understanding, trust, closeness and co-regulation experiences.
Family Play Therapy is suitable for parents who are ready to repair relationship dynamics, trauma wounds and reset the family system to a place of deeper understanding and acceptance.
Why Family Play Therapy?
Family relationships between parent and child, and between siblings are the first relationships we form in our lives. They shape who we are, how we think and feel about ourselves, how we relate to others in our world. Because of this, the family is a powerful system that can get stuck in roles and patterns that are challenging to break.
Investment
Our fees vary dependent on the level of expertise and experience of the therapist. Please contact us directly to discuss our schedule of fees. Medicare and Private Health rebates are available with certain therapists that are registered providers. We are able to provide support for self and plan managed NDIS funded families.
Frequency: 45-minute play therapy sessions on a weekly basis + Scheduled Parent Feedback sessions every 3-4 weeks.
Therapy Duration: Each child is different based on their temperament, the complexity and duration of their presenting symptoms and the functioning of the family environment, but on average it is a minimum of 6 months or more (roughly translating to 24 weekly sessions). Some children require less or more.
How to Book
The first step to enrolling into family play therapy is to Book an Initial Parent Consultation. This 90-minute appointment, specifically designed for parents/caregivers, is priced at $320 and can be covered by third party funding ie NDIS, DHHS.
The pathway consultation aims to create a safe space to feel heard and understood, where we can gather information from you about your present stressors and challenges being experienced within your family system. We explore and bring awareness to any relational dynamics and repeated patterns that may be influencing the current symptoms and behaviours being expressed within the family systems. Based on our discussion and in collaboration, we’ll determine whether a play therapy pathway or combined pathway approaches would align best to support your child and family’s needs to grow, heal and thrive.