I end up working with a lot of clients and their siblings within therapy. Often, when a client is suffering from a life-limiting illness, they tend to gain a lot of attention from parents, medical staff, teachers, and others. The siblings see this and usually don’t understand the complexity of the situation or that not all attention is good attention. Therefore, increasing positive sibling interactions, increasing cohesion between siblings, improving problem-solving, and improving social-emotional skills of both client and sibling become a top goal in therapy.

Although there are many serious moments in therapy with children diagnosed with life-limiting illnesses, I often focus on supporting quality of life as well. Creating a fun, upbeat, and exciting environment for these clients and their siblings ends up being incredibly important and effective.

DISCLAIMER: 

***INTERVENTIONS ARE NOT RECOMMENDED TO USE AS “PRESCRIPTIONS” TO APPLY TO ALL CLIENTS. READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC HERE. ***

“What Instruments Is That!?!?”

Of course, whenever I say the name of this intervention, I say it with an extremely exaggerated tone, not unlike an SNL game show host impression. The kids love this game. The point of this game is to guess the name of the instrument by hearing its sound and looking either on the iPad or with real instruments. The therapist starts at the instrument “leader” while the clients guess. The clients can then earn/switch to be the leader.

Kate

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