ABSTRACT
Parents in all stages of parenthood are continually in the process of co-creating and solidifying familial bonds. Early life parent–child relationships have long been of interest to researchers in the fields of attachment, human development and ecological systems, offering much knowledge that informs today’s practice with expectant parents, young infants and family systems. Filial Therapy has been recommended as the most appropriate form of Play Therapy when working therapeutically with very young children (Ryan & Bratton, 2008). Despite this recommendation there is scant literature on Filial Therapy with infants and very young children and no literature that focuses specifically on the first 1000 days, i.e. from conception to 2 years (Moore, Arefadib, Deery, Keyes & West, 2017) and limited literature that focuses on the first 5000 days, i.e. conception to 5 years of age (NSW Ministry of Health, 2019). This chapter contributes towards filling this gap by providing the theoretical underpinnings and clinical practice to support Infant Filial Therapy. The story of Jack and his family comes to life to illustrate this approach.
