Monday’s Grateful List 

Today I am grateful that I am doing Prac for my Graduate Diploma of Counselling at Hilda House. Hilda House provides bereavement support services to the people in and around Ipswich. It is situated next to Ipswich Hospice which is a seven bed private healthcare facility providing quality end of life palliative care to terminally ill people, and support for their families in a caring home like environment. (Taken from http://www.ipswichhospice.org.au/). 


Today I am grateful that all the people I am going to be working with at Hilda House are so nice. Supporting people who are grieving is a pretty hard thing to do and I know all the people I will be working with are pretty special people and  they have shown that already by being so welcoming to me.

Today I am grateful that I have already learnt new things. I spent two days last week do a training course about child centered  play therapy. It was wonderful. We learnt that adults are able to express their thoughts and feelings through verbal communication. Children work through their experiences through toys and play and this is how they express themselves. In child centered play therapy there are no evaluations, no requirements to do anything in a certain way, no judgements about whether the child’s play is right or wrong or bad or good and no reprimands or criticisms.(Taken from the information we were given at the training day). I love the rationale behind this form of therapy that you are helping to develop a child’s self esteem. “You never do for a child what they can do for themselves as you take away the child’s opportunity to feel competent and their joy of discovery. You will never know what a child is capable of until you allow them to try things for themselves”. 

If you would like to know more about Play Therapy you can follow this link : Play Therapy.

Even though this is a form of therapy it reminded me of how important play is in children’s lives. I am so grateful for this reminder. It does make me feel sad for the direction our early childhood education is taking with increased testing, greater emphasis on curriculum and less emphasis on play. 


Today I am grateful that their are such special people in our community. People who work in and care about the quality of life for people who are dying and people who work in and care about the development of our children. 


Until next time

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