Helping Children smile
again
For parents and professionals who want to learn how to help children navigate change and express their grief
Helping your child through play therapy
Is your child angry, withdrawn, anxious or even depressed? Is your child’s behaviour impacting their siblings and preventing you from enjoying family life? Are you at your wit’s end and just don’t what to do?
Behaviour problems are the first sign that your child is struggling with something internally. Whether they’ve suffered a loss or experienced a big change in their life, your child may be feeling confused, angry or even scared.
As a parent, you might feel frustrated, overwhelmed or even guilty. Why is your child so angry? Are you doing something wrong? Why can’t you help them? But it’s not your fault.
Helping a child to process a complex loss isn’t easy. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone.
I offer a 30-minute assessment call to help establish the core challenges you and your child are facing and discover if play therapy is the right treatment for you. Click on the button below to send me an email with your details and what you need support with and I will be in touch to book your assessment call.
Healing through play
Play therapy helps your child to understand, communicate and process their struggles, developing new skills and resources and helping them to feel safe, secure and happy once again.
Using a variety of play and creative art mediums you can learn how to help your child unpack their emotional backpack and teach them skills and strategies that will make them more resilient and help them to feel calm, happy and confident.
Play therapy is child-centred therapy in which your child takes the lead. Working together with the child and parents, we can resolve the issues that are causing unhappiness and behaviour problems, to create a more relaxed home atmosphere and enjoyable family life.
The result is often life-changing, with both parents and children feeling freer, happier and more at ease.
How I can help you
Parent-Child Attachment Play Training
For parents and carers who want to learn how to help their child through their natural communication method – play! Learn how to support your child as they navigate big emotions.
Private Therapy Sessions
Family play therapy sessions in person or online, to help your child cope with their grief, and give families the resources they need to live a happy life.
Children process differently
Loss can come in many forms, from bereavement or abandonment to divorce, changing schools or moving home. And when a child suffers a loss, it can be hard for them to process. A child who has experienced loss won’t always know what’s making them feel anxious, angry or unhappy. They can’t tell you what’s worrying them or explain what they need.
If your child is struggling
you may see behaviours such as:
- Angry outbursts or aggressive behaviour.
- Anxiety and excessive worrying.
- Separation anxiety or clinginess.
- Difficulty sleeping or nightmares.
- Defiant, rude or difficult behaviour.
- Problems at school or socially.
Have you noticed one or more of these behaviours and have some concerns?
If you are concerned about certain behaviours your child is exhibiting, I encourage you to book an assessment call. During this call we will chat through your concerns about your child, and I can assess whether these would be best treated with play therapy. Click on the button below to send me an email with your details and what you need support with and I will be in touch to book your assessment call.
Testimonials
I've found these days developed specifically for our team by Amanda as invaluable. I feel the work has facilitated me to look at my therapeutic work on a much deeper (subconscious) level and deal with the stress this work presents in a much more conducive way. I feel calm, contained and relaxed after the session, which in turn has led me to be a more thoughtful, productive practitioner and provide a better service for the children and families I work with.
Amanda’s expertise and knowledge has not only given me ideas to assist my practice with clients but has also highlighted the importance of focussing on myself within the work which I am sure has made me a more reflective, centered and aware practitioner. Thank You Amanda!
For me, as the Manager of the team, the sessions Amanda delivered for us have really helped the team to take a step back and to slow down from a busy role that is heavily influenced by social work culture and pressures. The different approaches used in the sessions, which allow creativity, such as drawing and talking or the use of clay, helped tap into the emotional part of ourselves and aided us to express what has been going on for us.
For parents and other adults who are supporting bereaved children, Amanda’s story is a gentle and intuitive way to open up a dialogue about grief. The questions at the back of the book are particularly helpful, providing openings and prompts for those conversations that are so important, but often difficult to begin.
This book is a fabulous tool to help kids cope with the loss of a loved one. The colorful pictures make a topic such as death relatable for children. You can't help but want to give Isaac the biggest hug by the end of the book!
This book is a fabulous tool to help kids cope with the loss of a loved one. The colorful pictures make a topic such as death relatable for children. You can't help but want to give Isaac the biggest hug by the end of the book!
The pictures in the book are powerfully emotive and I bet viewing the artwork for real would be a real treat. Probably the most amazing part of this book is that, despite her fighting for survival she still 'lived' and was always looking for opportunities to enrich her life as well as using her experience to coach others and even working with art as a therapeutic tool and going on to be a practitioner herself. This book was an enjoyable and easy read which was hard to put down.
The terror of feeling that you have emotionally ‘lost’ your child is horrendous. Nothing we read or tried was working and although we understood intellectually why she was the way she was, that didn’t help us to either cope or to move through it. Amanda took the time to allow us to unburden ourselves as parents and there was a lot of that to be done in the beginning! Then she worked with our daughter. We feel that we've made extraordinary progress and cannot thank Amanda enough. I don’t quite understand how the process worked but some kind of magic seemed to happen whilst she played and we are extremely grateful for that.
This is a really simple, quirky and beautifully illustrated story that can be read with a smile. The suggestions for questions an adult could ask at the back of the book are more than helpful. A great book.
This book is brilliant for children who have had a bereavement. I found that the book helped the child to open up and talk about their loss more than anything else I have tried. The characters are interesting and engaging and the illustrations really got the child's attention and interest.
I have found the sessions with Amanda to be thought provoking and have had a positive impact on me as a worker and as an individual. I have gained skills and strategies that I’ve been able to use in my day to day work. The sessions have enabled me to get to know / understand my colleagues on a deeper level, which I feel has brought us all closer together.
This beautifully crafted book is a must read for anyone supporting or parenting a child who has experienced loss. Either through bereavement, divorce or a series of losses as a looked after child, or adoption. As a professional in this field, I particularly liked the case studies, therapeutic stories and ideas of how to help. I’m very often asked for strategies and this book is brimming with them. It really gives the reader a greater insight into the inner world of a grieving child, and the subtle differences between child and adult grief.
About Amanda Seyderhelm
Making Children Smile Again is founded by Amanda Seyderhelm, a recognised expert in her field of innovative creative play therapy for children.
As a Certified Play Therapist, Published Author and Accredited CPD Trainer for Practitioners, Amanda has worked with parents, children, schools, hospitals and local authorities to help children unpack their emotional baggage and be able to smile once again.
Amanda is friendly, experienced and hugely passionate about what she does. Her methodology and approach is highly effective and gets incredible results in a way that feels fun, engaging and comfortable to the child.
Is play therapy
right
for your child?
Every child is different and every problem is unique. That’s why I offer a 30-minute assessment call to help establish the core challenges you and your child are facing and discover if play therapy is the right treatment for you. Click on the button to send me an email with your details and I will be in touch to book your assessment call.
