The Social Skills Game

This game is a therapeutic board game for children and adolescents who experience difficulties with relationships, enabling them to explore and reflect upon adaptive interaction styles. The game addresses behavioural responses, cognitive processes, belief systems, interactive processes, verbal and non-verbal communication and assertiveness. The focus of the game is on a positive group experience and is non-threatening. The game will allow children to explore adaptive interaction styles within a safe group and helps them to improve self-concept, whilst encouraging the generalization of behaviour into other settings. The board game comprises a game board, counters, dice and four sets of colour-coded cards arranged in categories corresponding to coloured shapes on the board. This is part of a series of therapeutic board games, each of which has been carefully developed utilizing an integrative psychotherapy model which incorporates systemic, cognitive-behavourial, humanistic and psychodynamic orientations. A therapist should always be present playing the games, which address factual issues and focus on emotional expression, belief systems, cognitive processes, behavourial responses, relationships, fantasies, memories and dreams. They provide a safe, boundaried space where children and adolescents may explore their inner feelings, and can be used to answer questions which children may have been afraid to ask.