What is Child Parent Psychotherapy?

CPP is an evidence-based therapeutic approach developed in the USA. It aims to help infants and young children from birth to age 5 as well as their parents.

Some infants and young children and/or their parents may have encountered traumatic or scary experiences. The bad memories of these experiences can affect their emotions and behaviour; either the child or the parent having problem in managing emotions will get in the way of the parent-child relationship.

The CPP therapist will try to help the parents understand how the past traumatic experiences of themselves and/or their children affect their emotions and behaviour.  Through participating in the parent-child play, the CPP therapist helps the parent re-build a safe and secure relationship with the child and reduce stressed emotions and problem behaviour.

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FAQs

    • Fostering parent-child relationship

    • Helping parents to provide a sense of security to children

    • Guiding parents to understand the meaning of child’s behaviour and help children to express their feelings and cope with intense ones

    • Supporting parents to reflect on how their own past experiences and their feelings towards their child affect the current parent-child interaction

    • Assisting parents to learn to manage anger or sadness arising from their past experiences so that no harm can be done to the child

  • CPP can last from a few sessions to over 20 sessions depending on the complexity of the problem. The therapist will set up the treatment plan with parents after assessment.

  • To be qualified as a CPP provider, one has to:

    • be a mental health professional having clinical experience with children;

    • receive training in CPP for 18 months under intensive supervision from an overseas accredited CPP trainer.

  • Yes, you can find the contacts of local accredited CPP providers from the international roster.

Find a CPP provider