First Session
ASK VIOLET “You had stated that you see the parents and child together at the first session. I have been leery to do this because, when I have, the parents’ comments were hurtful for the child to hear. I thought…
Limited Sessions
ASK VIOLET Summer/Fall 2012 Question: How do you fit this system into a managed care treatment plan—having a limited number of sessions? Answer: With a limited of sessions I would follow a brief therapy model. This is useful not only…
Involvement
ASK VIOLET How can you work with children without working with the family? Aren’t you sending them right back to an often dysfunctional situation? ANSWER: There was a time when most therapists would not work with a child unless they…
How Did You Decide to Work with Children
ASK VIOLET How did you end up working with children and how did you know, or did you, that this was your career direction? I receive many variations of this question quite often so I thought it might be time…
Grounding After
ASK VIOLET Question: How do you ground children after they have been having a really good time, or perhaps a particularly emotional time? This is very important. I feel that children must make closure since have they to go out…
Expectations
ASK VIOLET 1. What kind of expectations should we have in our work with the child? I have a slogan that I often repeat to folks that were in my training programs: EXPECTATIONS BREED FAILURE This does not mean that…
The Full Nest: Working with Adolescents
The first article of this series, “Just for Now: Virtual Use of the Oaklander Model in a Time of Crisis,” discussed employing it with children and families in the context of social distancing and the unprecedented global impact of COVID-19.…
Just for Now: Virtual Use of the Oaklander Model in a Time of Crisis
We are all too aware that we find ourselves in an unprecedented global crisis due to COVID-19. As a child therapist who uses the Violet Oaklander Model of Gestalt Therapy with Children, I wish both to gather and to share…
The Many Faces of ADHD
My mentor, Violet Oaklander, who died September 21, 2021, and whom I’ll always miss, wrote a groundbreaking article, “The Many Faces of Anger.” [1 ] Violet saw anger as the least-tolerated and most-misunderstood emotion. She noted that children get so…