Reaching out to single parent children through filial therapy

Single parenthood as a common psychosocial phenomenon seems to be regarded as one of the most significant issues in the psychological domain and needs to be taken into serious consideration due to emotional, psychological, and social problems created by it. With regard to the rapidly growing population of single parents and their children experiencing relationship-based problems, interventions which deal with relational issues are worth in-depth explorations. This study was primarily concerned with the betterment of single parent-child relationships. For the purpose of this research, a case study was conducted to probe into the impact of filial therapy—a relationship-enhancement family/play therapy—on (1) reducing children’ problem behaviors, and (2) ameliorating parent-child dysfunctional relationships through improving parenting knowledge and skills. The intended data for the study was gathered through (1) pre-post play observation, (2) parent’s self-reports, and (3) the reports obtained from a kindergarten trainer. The outcomes of this one-month long case study revealed that filial therapy has the potentiality in enhancing and rebuilding parent-child relationships through teaching single parents the skills necessary for coping with the problems accelerated by the newly developed situation, which might be seen as a result of single parenthood (e.g., childhood problem behaviors, parent-child relational problems, lack of adequate parenting knowledge and skills). In the end, this article concludes a few suggestions for future studies in this field.