About The Willabee Project
“Welcome to Willabee” is a unique product idea that my now 17 year old son Grant and I designed specifically for psychotherapeutic work with children aged 4 to 12 years old. We feel that the product is fascinating to children and it evolved through the periodic review of Grant’s drawings and characters that he created when he was 8-9 years old. As I looked at his artwork, reflected on my almost 20 years of clinical work with children, and thought about children’s affinity for the computer, I imagined that we could create a computerized therapeutic tool.
The final product that I originally envisioned was a computer program that would allow a child or therapist to access characters and therapeutic concepts during the therapy process. At the time, I believed that this type of newer technology, which one could conceptualize as a “computerized tool for therapy,” would be very engaging to the child, serve as a springboard for discussion of therapeutic topics and/or play, and provide the therapist with a means to visually present various problems and solutions.
My hope is that the therapist and child will view one or more of the video vignettes during a standard therapy session. The vignettes can be used at any time during a session to illustrate a certain problem or skill and facilitate the child’s understanding.
The therapist would become familiar with the tool’s content because of the predetermined themes and guide the child toward a particular location and character in a therapeutic environment called “Willabee.” The therapist could “Download” and print any character or concept before or during the session, allowing the child to write or draw on it and take it with him/her when the session is over. This print-out could then serve as a memory aid (and maybe even end up being posted on the refrigerator at the child’s home); or it may be part of a homework assignment for the next session.
The host for the child’s journey through Willabee is a character named “Will” who narrates and leads the child through a variety of struggles and what can be done about them. The product addresses emotional issues involving depression, anxiety, and anger; the tendency of children to hold on to emotions and displace them by acting them out; and the need to develop coping and problem-solving skills.
This project primarily uses cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic theories that have been adapted developmentally to create child-oriented content that conveys therapeutic techniques and change and acceptance processes.
Like most scientists, I have been influenced by many authors and researchers, and would like to acknowledge and thank a few of them for their contributions to psychological theory, assessment, and therapy. They are Aaron Beck, David Burns, Marsha Linehan, Arthur Freeman, Albert Ellis, Martin Seligman, John Bowlby, Albert Bandura, R.S. Lazarus, S. Folkman, David Barlow, Bessel Van der Kolk, Stephen and Sybil Wolin, and Lynn Rehm (Click here to see specific references).
Thanks for your interest in this product!
Sincerely,
Meryl Willert, PhD
Clinical Child/Adolescent Psychologist