Counseling activities for telehealth sessions with children: "Pick an emotion, any emotion!"

Telehealth counseling activities: “Pick and emotion, any emotion…”

As families, societies and all organizations learn how to do things differently in the face of COVID-19, many clinicians are offering telehealth services to make sure counseling is still available at a time needed more than ever. 

Many play therapists (or therapists in general who work with kids) are adding new tools to their tool box in finding ways of engaging children in safe and familiar modalities to promote communication with this new digital format in mind. 

As we constantly model flexibility and creativity for our clients, we are relying on those same abilities as therapists. As I tweak and create new activities that effectively meet clients’ needs, I hope by sharing I can add new tools to your clinical toolbox. 

Many of these activities rely on children preparing for the session by gathering some basic items they are likely to have in their home. I keep the design of all of these activities basic and realistic in terms of what I think households generally have. This pre-session preparation adds value to the therapeutic process as it increases the ownership and participation beyond the session (and in it, too!)

Pick an emotion, any emotion…

Session prep for client: ask child to come to the session with paper or index cards and any writing implements

Counselor prep: create index cards with various scenarios and prompts (as pictured below for ideas, but you can customize these prompts to the needs and goals of any client. I am going to have a master deck that I keep and can reuse in other sessions but add or change as needed). 

After your session welcome and warm up, cooperatively brainstorm a list of emotions (pick a # you want to aim for. I suggest the same number of prompt cards you’re planning to use and 10-12 seems to be an appropriate number. For younger children you may choose to do less. Also for younger children you can ask them to draw faces to represent the emotions if they do not know how to write the words). I suggest you ask the child to think of emotions they have felt recently. And if they get stuck or just to have a cooperative process, you can encourage them by giving them specific situations you know they have encountered and think about how they felt in that moment. This can be particularly useful for identifying emotions in situations you know are currently difficult for the child. (See picture for example!)

Now explain you have a deck of cards, and you are picking one at at time and each has a prompt to respond to. After reading the prompt the child can pick the emotion he/she wants to use to discuss the prompt. But each emotion can only be used once! I use this rule to help minimize avoidance of difficult emotions. 

Of course, use each one to develop any natural conversations or explore topics that come up in the discussion!