By Dr. Andi Thacker (MABC, 2006), assistant professor of biblical counseling at Dallas Theological Seminary. She is a licensed professional counselor and registered play therapist. She is married to Chad and they have 3 kids, Emerson, Will, and Webb.

When I graduated from DTS almost a decade ago with a Biblical Counseling degree, I had no intention of working professionally with children. I had deliberately chosen not to focus any of my time and training on the developmental needs of children in a therapeutic setting because I planned to work exclusively with adults. Ironically, I now find myself with an advanced degree in which most of my training was spent learning how to meet the unique developmental and therapeutic needs of children. Further, the vast majority of my private practice clients are under the age of fourteen.

During the beginning stages of my doctoral degree, I decided, somewhat on a whim, to take a play-therapy course. As a result of that course, I discovered a love of working with children and providing play-therapy services to those who are often voiceless and powerless to change their circumstances.

I also discovered that by counseling children, I might be able to address mental health concerns that could be a hindrance later in life. As I continued my training as a play therapist, I developed a deep passion to train other Christian professionals to meet the unique therapeutic needs of this population. In my dissertation, I examined the prevalence of seminary counseling students who intended to work with children and the amount of specific training in play therapy provided to these students. I found an alarming trend that revealed that most seminary counseling students planned to work therapeutically with children, yet they did not have specific training in the unique skills of child counseling.

This alarming trend of counselors who are not adequately equipped to counsel children from a developmentally appropriate perspective is somewhat disheartening in light of research that suggests that 9–13% of children and adolescents in the United States suffer from emotional disturbances (Child Health Care Relief Act of 2009, 2009).

Lesson #1: Teach Them to Name and Accept Emotions

 In addition to my role training future counselors to work with children, I have the unique privilege of teaching parents helpful parenting skills. I have found that some of the most important things I can impart to parents are how to first acknowledge and accept their child’s emotions. Emotions are part of our design, which make us uniquely human. Sometimes emotions can be seen as sinful, wrong, or invalid. However, we see in Scripture the triune God voicing felt emotions (Genesis 6:6; Zephaniah 3:17; Psalm 147:11; Matthew 21:12-13).

The issue with emotion is that we need to experience our emotions as acceptable and valid; however, sometimes actions birthed from emotions can be destructive.

The parents’ challenge is to help children experience their emotions, yet manage their behavior in an appropriate manner. Psychiatrist Dan Siegel (2013) calls this practice “name it to tame it.” Research indicates that naming a feeling and allowing the feeling to be felt helps calm the emotion. Naming emotions also builds greater neural integration and emotional regulation in both the parent and the child.

Lesson #2: Let Kids Make Choices

The second thing that I have found most important to impart to parents is to give children the opportunity to learn how to make choices. As Christians, the Lord allows us freedom to make choices. Sometimes we make wise choices and other times we make poor choices. Nevertheless, making wise decisions is an essential aspect of walking in maturity. In play therapy, we use choice-giving with a two-fold purpose. The first purpose is for discipline. By using choice-giving language, a parent can impart to a child that his or her actions have consequences.

The hope is that this type of language would build an internal locus of control in which the child can role-play the consequences of behaviors.  An example of choice-giving for discipline purposes would be “If you choose to hit Mommy, you then choose to not play outside.” For an older child an example might be, “If you choose to lie to me, you choose to lose screen time for the day.”

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