Child-Parent Relationship Therapy

STRENGTH AND SELF-ESTEEM BUILDING FOR EMOTIONAL WELLBEING

You might experience some of your child’s behavior patterns as disruptive, but to your child, the behavior is often an attempt to communicate a need they have that has yet to be met. By using skills to validate your child’s feelings and show you understand, you can create new ways of communicating together that result in fewer meltdowns and more harmony in your relationship.

By focusing on the needs of your child rather than just the challenges of behaviors and dynamics, Child-Parent Relationship Therapy, or CPRT, can be one way to use therapeutic support to deepen your family relationships and build existing strengths into even stronger new ones.

When you focus on what is going well in your relationship with your child, you get to focus on what you are capable of, allow them to show you what they are capable of, and collaborate on your strengths together to build a bond you’re proud of.

What is Child-Parent Relationship Therapy?

Child-Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT) is an evidenced-based therapy program focused on the premise that a secure caregiver-child relationship is the curative factor for children’s well-being. You have the potential to have huge emotional significance for your child, and you can use that opportunity to positively influence your child’s development through your own learning. Receiving your own guided support and therapeutic skills can offer a foundation for your own understanding of how you show up to your relationship with your child, how you interact with each other, and what you want your child to learn from you.

Originally developed by doctors Garry Landreth and Sue Bratton at the Center for Play Therapy, CPRT mentors caregivers during weekly play sessions with their child where they can receive feedback on their skills from a certified CPRT facilitator. Therapy sessions are structured to teach parents and caregivers skills during focused play time to build their child’s self-esteem, strengthen the quality of the child-caregiver relationship, and address family dynamics. In these sessions, therapists observe, assess, and teach parents and caregivers Person-Centered Play Therapy principles and techniques to create a non-judgmental, understanding, and accepting environment where trust, experimentation, and change is possible for everyone involved.

Play is inclusive for children and allows for a broader range of expression than can be communicated in words, and sometimes we just need new ways to translate what’s what’s being said. Broadening your own toolkit for relating with your child can teach them skills to build unconditional positive regard for themselves as worthy, capable, responsible, loving, and lovable. This regard is excellent on its own, but it also gives your child a foundation that lets them communicate what they need in ways that are much clearer, easier to interpret, and easier for you to respond to. By being heard, your child gets to feel like they have their own agency and lets them have a well-balanced sense of control, and when that happens, you don’t have to try to establish external controls to limit undesirable behaviors. That means fewer tantrums and fewer tears from either of you.

The skills you learn strengthen your shared relationship, but in the process, what you learn can help address the dynamics that cause snags and strife in your relationship at the same time. By teaching you how to support your child’s needs, CPRT focuses on treating the root cause of miscommunication and misbehaviors so less of them happen in the first place and are easier to address when they do.

What CPRT Can Do

The primary outcome of Child-Parent Relationship Therapy is to provide strong foundations for relationships that are based on trust, respect, and mutual acceptance. Those foundations include a deep sense of security in your bond that allows you to foster greater intimacy with one another and create positive opportunities for independent growth. CPRT allows you to acknowledge the importance of your family relationships through your actions, and reduce the potential for and severity of stress and conflicts by clarifying miscommunications early.

CPRT seeks to support parents and caregivers like you to learn how to:

  • Become more receptive to your child’s feelings and develop more realistic expectations for their development and behavior

  • More skillfully communicate your understanding and acceptance of your child to them, as well as communicate your own experiences and needs

  • Understand how to respond to your child’s emotional needs with greater effectiveness and ease

  • Implement more effective discipline strategies, limit inappropriate behavior, and regain control without using aversive discipline strategies

  • Shift your family’s interactional system to one that is more positive, functional, and proactive

Through your own growth together in CPRT, your child will be empowered to:

  • Better understand and be able to communicate their feelings and needs more effectively

  • Accept themselves more completely by feeling secure in their own independence and your shared attachment bond

  • Gain mastery, solve problems, and learn to be responsible for their own actions

  • Change maladaptive behaviors to more proactive ones because there’s less need to act out to get their needs met

  • Become more interpersonally competent and gain a greater sense of empathy and awareness

Research-Based Treatment

CPRT is a well-researched parenting model with numerous studies investigating its effectiveness. Overall research indicates that CPRT is effective in reducing children's behavior problems and decreasing parental stress (Bratton et al., 2010).

CPRT demonstrates moderate to large treatment effects on:

  • Decreasing parental and caregiving stress (Landreth & Bratton, 2006)

  • Reducing children’s behavior problems, including aggression (Landreth & Bratton, 2006; Bratton, Landreth, & Lin, 2010)

  • Decreasing children’s depression and anxiety (Landreth & Bratton, 2006)

  • Enhancing parental and caregiving empathy (Landreth & Bratton, 2006)

  • Improving overall family satisfaction and communication (Cornett & Bratton, 2014)

CPRT can help with relationship problems within a family, depressive symptoms, oppositional behavior, family reunification, single caregiving, attachment disruptions, foster care and adoption, and adjustment during & after divorce.


Visit the Center for Play Therapy or read our blog for more information about CPRT.

Services

We know that all behavior is communication and all behavior makes sense in context, so getting an inside look into how family members influence each other in Child-Parent Relationship Therapy can provide insight that an individual play therapy session might not achieve.

Ensemble Therapy provides one-on-one structured play therapy sessions for Child-Parent Relationship Therapy, as well as 10-week facilitated groups. (Looking for a group? Learn more here.)

In our individualized sessions, you will learn Person-Centered Play Therapy principles and skills including reflective listening, therapeutic limit setting, and self-esteem building to enhance a secure attachment with your child and help you attune to and respond to their underlying needs.

CPRT is designed for parents and caregivers of children who are around 3-10 years of age. Sessions are 90 minutes and can take place remotely or in-office.

Our Approach

All of our therapy at Ensemble is based on empowered learning for you and your child, embedded in trauma-informed, human-first perspective. This is especially true in Child-Parent Relationship Therapy, and even though your therapist is teaching skills, they seek to understand where you’re coming from first and explain second. The tools we offer are to enhance what you already have in order for you to feel confident in how you relate and respond. We also treat your child like they are their own person who can do the same (because they are!)

Our approach is grounded in a research-based understanding of child development, psychology, education, kinesiology, and biology and research-backed intervention strategies, but we never approach your family like you’re part of a data set. Our therapists hold you and your child as the experts of your experience, and we come to every session to be present with the unique family dynamics you’re living through right now.

At Ensemble Therapy, CPRT offers a supportive environment to move the focus back to your child rather than just the problems you’re facing, while still acknowledging those challenges exist and finding ways to counter them. We’re able to help you be here in the present rather than the past without forgetting what has happened, and help you feel proud about the choices you make now to support your future together.

READY TO FIND OUT IF CPRT
IS RIGHT FOR YOUR FAMILY?

Learn about our therapists and choose your best fit.