ABSTRACT
This chapter deals mainly with crafting skills that useful in working directly with children either on their own or with their families. These skills are: playful mind-reading, mini-sculpting and therapeutic rituals. Sculpting was devised originally by David Kantor and other workers at the Boston Family Institute in 1973 and further developed by therapists at the Ackerman Institute in New York. The mini-sculpt allows for ease of movement between contexts in space and time. The mini-sculpt can be considered as the co-creation of a theatre designed and built in the minds of the children and the therapist. The therapist is placed, quite literally, on the same level as the children and is both audience and adviser to the choreographed movements of the symbols created by the child. Using therapeutic rituals can be seen as a way of gaining access to another context of competence and resourcefulness in children's lives.
