PCIT and Play Therapy

PCIT: Parent Child Interactive Therapy

About PCIT

Each family is a team. When one part of the team is working really hard and the other isn’t doing much, the team as a whole has more difficulty succeeding. When everyone on the team is working toward a common goal, chances are, the team will be more successful. PCIT is all about taking a team approach to your family. With both caregivers and children putting in the work, you will learn to work together better and communicate more effectively and in a way that feels good for all those involved. PCIT teaches kids and their parents how to better get along with each other and the world around them.

PCIT is suitable for kids that need help increasing attention, have ADHD, or want to work on building their confidence or easing their anxiety. It’s also suitable for families who simply want to increase their child’s compliance when they ask them to do something. PCIT can also be used to help children that are having tantrums, displaying attention seeking behaviors, or even aggressive outbursts.  Since parents work directly with their child during the session, children experience feelings of safety and security as well as increasing their healthy attachment to their parents. This attachment can go a long way.

“We’ve tried therapy before. How might PCIT be different?”

• While many behavior parent training programs teach similar parenting skills, PCIT differs from other programs because it:
  • Emphasizes in-session parent practice of skills
  • Parents receive live coaching and feedback related to skills
  • Parents are required to master specific parenting skills
  • PCIT is not session-limited
  • Graduation is based on parent demonstration of mastery of skills
  • Parents rate children’s behavior problems as within normal limits before treatment graduation (in order to graduate, parents must feel confident in their ability to support and manage child behavior and emotions)

PCIT Quick Overview:

• PCIT is an evidence-based practice that has been researched since the 1970s.
• PCIT typically encompasses 12-20 sessions
• After you graduate from PCIT, parents and the children have the skills they need to be able to maintain the progress made during therapy.
• It can be difficult for a child alone to make a major change in their system as they do not have much control over much of their life or their system. That’s why it is paramount that parents are involved every step of the way.
• Parent involvement allows for the child to more easily generalize the tools they learn in session outside the office.
• Through the research, it is proven that PCIT will:

INCREASE: 

• Attachment between child and caregiver
• Child attention span
• Increase self-esteem
• Pro-social behaviors (i.e. sharing and taking turns)
• Compliance with adult requests
• Positive behavior in public
• Parental calmness and confidence during discipline.

DECREASE:

• Frequency/duration/severity of tantrums and/or aggressive behaviors
• Negative attention seeking (whining/bossiness/etc)
• Parental frustration
• Child anxiety

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