Supportive Counseling and Play

Active Listening

Active listening is an important skill of supportive counseling and involves many micro- skills. Active listening can help your students feel heard, valued, and understood which can help you to build trust with your students. See below for examples of active listening skills.

Restating: when you repeat the exact phrase that a student used to summarize the main thought or feeling of their statement.

• Student says: My tummy hurts every time I take my test.
• SMHP says: Your tummy hurts every time you take your test.

Paraphrasing: when you put the student’s statement into your own words to reflect back to them an understanding of what they are saying.

• Student says: Ever since I moved I just don’t feel like I have a group of friends.
• SMHP says: You have been feeling lonely since you moved here.

Summarizing: bring together and connect multiple statements that the student has made in your own words.

•  Student says: I really want to get the prizes in class for behaviors points, but it is so hard, and I can never get enough points. I asked my teacher if she could give me a prize   anyways because it is hard, but she said no, and it made me mad.
• SMHP says: It seems like you are frustrated because you have not earned enough points in class to get a prize so that makes you feel mad at your teacher.

Validating: help the student understand that their feelings are normal and acceptable.

• Student says: I am just really mad because my friend told me that our team lost in soccer because I was the worst one of the team.
• SMHP says: It makes a lot of sense that you feel mad when your friend says that to you.

Open-ended questions: help further the conversation or explore topics deeper by asking questions that do not involve a “yes” or “no” answer and does not lead them to a specific answer. These often begin with a “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, “why” or “how”.

•  Student says: I listened to my parents talking last night and I think they are getting divorced.
• SMHP says: How are you feeling about that right now?

Non-verbal skills: there are many non-verbal skills you can use to show your student that you are actively listening and care about what they are saying. These should be paired with the skills listed above.

• Examples: Nodding along, leaning in, sitting with an open posture (legs and arms uncrossed), paying attention to your facial expressions.

Incorporating Play

It may be helpful to incorporate games or play into your supportive counseling. This can help to build rapport with your students, especially if they need time to warm up. You can also incorporate therapy or conversation into many of the games you may play. For example, you could play Jenga, and each time you or the student take a turn, you ask or answer a question. You can purchase therapy specific games, like question card decks, which can help get students conversing with you or each other. This is a great time to get creative and show your students that you are interested in getting to know them. Consider giving them choices in the games that you play in order to help them feel a sense of autonomy over your session together.

Examples of games you can play with your students

• Uno
• Jenga
• Connect Four
• Checkers
• Chess
• Playing cards
• Ungame
• Talking, Feeling, & Doing Game

Supportive counseling can be helpful for building trust and a strong working alliance which can help them feel comfortable opening-up and sharing with you. However, supportive counseling alone, is often insufficient for helping the students overcome their problems because it does not help students learn specific techniques or skills for coping with or managing their presenting problems. Supportive counseling may be best when paired with another intervention that is more specific to your student’s presenting concern. You can use supportive counseling skills and activities to get buy-in and build trust with your student and take that momentum into a more targeted intervention.