Dear Stephen
I have replied in the main to your message separately. (Feminists)
You may be interested to read Barbara Dockar Drysdale; 'Therapy and
Consultation in Child Care
Gerald
-----Original Message-----
From: Rennie, Steve [HES] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 02 May 2000 11:43
Subject: RE: ADD & ADHD
>Helen (and others in the ADHD thread), I have been a playworker since the
late 1960s, mostly on adventure playgrounds in the UK. In the last fifteen
years my direct work with children has tended to be more specialist. Over
the years many children have come to me with labels, increasingly of late
ADHD. I have never yet found a child labelled in that way who was unable to
relate to me constructively and attentively through their play. In a short
series of experiments, I asked principal carers, who had expressed major
concerns about their relationships with their children, to engage with them
in imaginal play. Every one reported considerable and sustained improvements
both in their relationships with the child and in the child's relationships
with others.
>
>My observations of children with their principal carers (overwhelmingly
their mothers) appear to indicate that most apparently anti-social
behaviours exhibited by the children are best explained as "dysplay",
distorted play cues arising from increasingly desperate attempts on the part
of the child to get playful interaction with the carer. A short period of
accurate response to play cues appears to diminish this "dysplay"
dramatically and in a sustained fashion.
>
>The major problem I have had in gaining acceptance of this technique, would
appear to be its lack of seriousness. Engaging with a child in imaginal play
looks silly and adult participants often say that it feels silly at first.
One mother of a four year old who had set fire to his nursery school and his
house said that it felt she was ignoring the problem when she just played
cars (with noises) while lying on the carpet with him. However, she also
said that the end of that session, when he spontaneously cuddled her, was
the first time that had happened since he had been a baby.
>
>If I had made the option of medication for the child available to that
mother at the outset, I am sure that she would have taken it. She would have
felt she was addressing a serious problem seriously.
>
>Stephen Rennie, Leeds Metropolitan University
>[log in to unmask]
>
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|