The heart of my beliefs in children and my approach as a psychotherapist comes from my own childhood. The care and self-respect my parents instilled in their 10 children, while raising us in ongoing poverty, resounds in the authentic experiences that children in my practice have communicated. 

In my work with children over the past 45 years, my strength to care drew from the combination of a personal and professional balance. The personal offered resilience to small people, while the professional dressed me in the legal and ethical understandings needed to work in the field of trauma. 

I returned to school for my master’s when I had been working in alternative school systems for 10 years, and realized that many children had personal traumas that preschools could not address. My next step was a natural effort to get the degree that would place me where these very young children needed me: in one-on-one settings. Play therapy settled in quickly, as did the need to work compassionately with parents.

In the rural town where I practice, children’s direct services were difficult to come by. Families needed to access trauma and attachment care by traveling across ferries and into the neighboring city. That would not cut it for families who wanted more for their children, but could not afford the costs of travel and therapy. I opened Jumping Mouse Children’s Center to address what the children in our community needed.

Jumping Mouse opened in 1999 in my home. My children’s rec room was the office, and my private practice held the play therapy with its sand tray and its art supplies. It was so fitting to use a home to begin this non-profit, with the therapists being trained immersed in their own family-like professional environment. We quickly grew with the help of the community, which served as the aunties, uncles, and grandparents of these high-needs children. Theirs was a recognition of the resources needed to sustain therapeutic relationships long enough for healing to take hold. Christmas presents to Jumping Mouse included our first printer, fax machine, and new puppets. 

To date, Jumping Mouse Children’s Center has become a model in working with high needs children and their families. The center has served nearly 1000 families long term, with no objective requirements to pay for services. In keeping to the needs of children, what has been striking is that the children themselves, as young as five, six or seven, have stated when they need to return to therapy for a re-up in relational skills. 

Community has been within these children because the families were not forgotten in the obscurity that can exist in larger communities. When they feel remembered, the children themselves give voice to what they need, when they need it. Some children have returned two and three times to the same therapist to work on their attachment needs as their development pushed them into more complex relationships. In keeping with the needs of children, I opened a training program to master level interns and externs. Training in depth play therapy and the use of the co-transference in the therapy relationship continues. I received an award from Sandplay Therapists of America for training the numbers and depth of other therapists in the Northwest.

I retired at the end of 2018 to write about the courage and honesty of the hundreds of children I have served. Children have moved me along my path, and the book I am writing is simply the next move on the path. I am determined to reveal to others who want to hear the voices of children, but who do not have the resources to do so, how it is that children speak, and what they have to say. All children are clear in their need to be understood, to be seen by someone who respects and authenticates their truths.