Using EMDR with Children

October 13, 2010:  With no rest for the weary, we began a specialty training on working with children the very next day. Dr. Frances Klaff combined her many years of experience with video tapes of actual sessions with children, to provided the 35 participants with ideas on using EMDR with this population.

Children present their own challenges due to their short attention spans and their non-verbal ways of expressing their problems and emotions. Dr. Klaff, one of earliest therapists in the EMDR world to adapt EMDR to these young clients, emphasized how creative a therapist needs to be in order to respond appropriately to the unique way that each child participates in therapy.

In Ethiopia, due to the millions of AIDS-orhphaned children, the majority of therapists taking EMDR trainings are working with children. To help them get started, wands, finger puppets, laminated charts about emotion and I Think, I Feel, I Am Cards donated by Melinda Halpern-Collins were handed out to everyone at the end of the day.


And to top off the afternoon, the first group of Ethiopians to complete both Part 1 & 2 of the training and demonstrate competence in EMDR were awarded their EMDR Completion Certificates. These therapists, among others, have been working on this for the past year, and are the first of many to join the International EMDR community of therapists.