Child Therapy Flexibility vs Plans

Flexibility is needed to adapt the program to each particular child and not the contrary.

It is the approach designed to achieve the therapeutic goal of healing each child, tailored to personal specific needs as with time we come to realize

what they are. The dynamics in the home between involved persons do not rely on well-defined treatment plans set up in advance because for each

child the therapeutic situation is similar to the one in adult psychoanalysis when therapist and patient meet with no preparation and no predetermined subject to discuss at the new session, the guideline being that preparing a session in advance would be contra-therapeutic because of blocking the emergence of spontaneous expression which is the best and quickest way to release the repressed feelings inside the patient that cause the patient's symptoms.

Flexibility allows any personalized way to help a child according to the

moment and to the situation "here and now". Thus for us at the therapeutic milieu the goals are only general :

- cure the child from the mental or physical symptoms

- help the child turn into a happy and independent person

- help the child develop ces personality to the best extend possible.

Further, flexibility is needed to meet the changing needs of each particular child as ces situation and dynamics progress with time. Thus in this project there is no routine schedule for the week days nor specified time table for sleeping and eating. Children are free to eat when and what they want, and engage in activities of their choice.

Assistants can propose activities and try to meet what the children would like

to do. Assistants also focus their attention where the troubles are the sharpest and the most painful for the children. For example, if a child does

not want to go to sleep at night, the preferred assistant can propose to stay with the child and try to uncover the reason for the blocking.

Generally letting the children free allows to see clearly what their

disturbances are, thus placing us in a better position to offer relevant help. The process needs to lead to the cause of the symptoms so they will disappear.

Trying to fight the symptoms themselves would be vain because they are

only a surface consequence, even when they are as dramatic as life-threatening. In case of fire, trying to unplug the alarm that is sounding helps in nothing with the fire : putting out the alarm does not put out the

fire.

Symptoms are like signals sent by the unconscious part of the person that express suffering and need for help. They are communications that come from

deep and on which the person has no control.

rev. 2013