Using Play
When working with kids in care with a history of emotional wounding, there is so much scope for things to go wrong. Behaviours such as anxiety counterwill (pushing back against caregiver instructions) aggression and a tendency to take an alpha stance are all typical responses whanau encounter.
Building a close relationship with the tamariki and rangatahi in our care is our first priority. However, often kids in care push back or resist relationship and connection when we try to provide it. Play provides a surprisingly simple yet effective answer to these problems. Play can melt defences, release emotions, invite attachment, and tend to the emotional needs of kids with wounding experiences.
This training offers teams a chance to collectively experience playful activities together which can in turn be used when inviting tamariki and rangatahi into play. The material makes sense of challenging behaviours from an attachment-based,developmental and trauma-informed model using insight from the Neufeld Institute.
