It’s two weeks before Christmas. The exhaustion that comes along with the end of the calendar
and school year is palpable throughout the clinic. I’m baked. The kids are all baked. My next client
is an eight-year-old boy with ASD, with whom I’ve conducted over 20 sessions during the year
working on emotional and social skills. He’s a great kid, and we have a good rapport. But I’m
instinctively feeling that if I pull out another social skills game or emotions cards in this last
session of the year, we might both meltdown.

And here’s the challenge – after the obligatory opening game of Uno, what on earth am I going to
do in this session?

Before clinic today I trawled the internet, looking for fun and creative activities that I could turn to
a therapeutic purpose. There’s lots of great craft activities, and not enough time to read through
them all while trying to work out how to adapt it to a therapeutic setting. And I’ve got to be honest
– I am not the craftiest person around, and my craft supplies are running low after a year of work.
Plus, there are other limitations – it’s got to be easily done within 40 minutes, it’s got to be takehome-able, and for the sake of my co-workers and the carpet, it’s got to create minimal
stickiness. And probably the most important thing of all, as far as my eight-year-old client is
concerned, it’s GOT to be something we haven’t done before.
At this point I’m hoping that a least a few of you reading this are recognising my plight. Working
with kids is an ever-changing playing field. Sometimes sessions go as planned. At other times, the
child who turns up is just not the child you expected, and as a clinician you need to be prepared
to think on your feet and adjust to where your young person is at.
After 25 years of working with kids, I have a fairly extensive array of ‘alternative’ activities and
tactics, but even then it’s easy to get stale if you aren’t refreshing yourself from time to time.
Regular PD is of course helpful, but also just exposing yourself to new approaches, books, games
and ideas is stimulating as a therapist.
I often find that the best ideas come from my colleagues – in the lunchroom, in group supervision
discussions, or in those quick chats where you share your challenges and brainstorm solutions.
I’m lucky enough to work in a multidisciplinary clinic with OT’s and Speechies, and find it brilliant
to get those different perspectives to broaden my thinking. Other practitioners know where you’re
at, because they’re right in there with you.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you had access to other practitioners’ ideas 24 hours a day?
When Vicky from Praxel approached me about the knowledge-share community idea, this is
exactly what came to my mind. All the lunchtime chats, the supervision meetings, the sharing of
PD notes, the quick consults between clients in each others’ therapy rooms – all rolled into a
single resource website that I can search specifically for the kinds of activities I need to keep
sessions fresh and innovative for my young clients. Amazing!
And then I began to think of the times I had offered up my ideas to colleagues in those
discussions – things that for me were perhaps well-worn or a core part of my approach – only to
find my colleagues reacting with eagerness for this ‘new idea’. So when Vicky explained the
Praxel concept – that consumer practitioners also become creators of resources – that also made
sense.
I’ve begun to work on creating some resources and I am finding that this process is pushing me
to reflect on my own practice as a Psychologist. I’m stimulated again to try out new ideas and
hone my usual activities so that I can more effectively share them with others. It’s an unexpected
bonus, and I’d encourage others to have a go at creating some resources to share.
So you might be thinking – what ever happened in that session? Well, Master Eight and I
constructed a Christmas decoration – a multi-coloured paper chain. On each link of the chain we
had written something he had worked hard on, had learned, had achieved, and had enjoyed
throughout the year. And at the end of the session, as he skittered out the clinic door, I heard him
say excitedly to his mum, “I’ll read them all to you on the way home in the car!”
Job done.