What Is It?
Child-Parent-Relationship (C-P-R) Training is a special 10-session parent training program to help strengthen the relationship between a parent and a child by using 30-minute playtimes once a week. Play is important to children because it is the most natural way children communicate. Toys are like words for children and play is their language. Adults talk about their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Children use toys to explore their experiences and express what they think and how they feel. Therefore, parents are taught to have special structured 30-minute playtimes with their child using a kit of carefully selected toys in their own home. Parents learn how to respond empathically to their child’s feelings, build their child’s self-esteem, help their child learn self-control and self-responsibility, and set therapeutic limits during these special playtimes.
For 30 minutes each week, the child is the center of the parent’s universe. In this special playtime, the parent creates an accepting relationship in which a child feels completely safe to express himself through his play—fears, likes, dislikes, wishes, anger, loneliness, joy, or feelings of failure. This is not a typical playtime. It is a special playtime in which the child leads and the parent follows. In this special relationship, there are no:
• Reprimands
• Put-downs
• Evaluations
• Requirements (to draw pictures a certain way, etc.)
• Judgments (about the child or his play as being good or bad, right or wrong)
How Can It Help My Child?
In the special playtimes, you will build a different kind of relationship with your child, and your child will discover that she is capable, important, understood, and accepted as she is. When children experience a play relationship in which they feel accepted, understood, and cared for, they play out many of their problems and, in the process, release tensions, feelings, and burdens. Your child will then feel better about herself and will be able to discover her own strengths and assume greater self-responsibility as she takes charge of play situations.
How your child feels about herself will make a significant difference in her behavior. In the special playtimes where you learn to focus on your child rather than your child’s problem, your child will begin to react differently because how your child behaves, how she thinks, and how she performs in school are directly related to how she feels about herself. When your child feels better about herself, she will behave in more self-enhancing ways rather than self-defeating ways.
CLASS LOCATION
South Jordan Office
1258 W. South Jordan Parkway
Suite 202
South Jordan, UT 84095
