Introduction to Play Therapy – Transcript

00:03all right so it seems to be seven o'clock right now so we'll just go ahead and get started and if anyone comes in a little bit late that's awesome and if they missed any part of the presentation no worries because it's going to be recorded and uploaded to our youtube channel later anyway so hello everyone my name is joey harman and i am a counselor and play therapist at edin's counseling group here in houston i earned my bachelor of arts in psychology at nearby houston baptist university

00:29afterwards i went on to earn my master of science in clinical mental health counseling with a focus in play therapy at the university of north texas in addition i'm a national certified counselor with the national board of certified counselors and i'm a licensed professional counselor associate in the great state of texas under the supervision of diana cabrera stewart my experiences with children include working in summer camp settings working at an aba clinic for children on the

00:56autism spectrum and currently as a play therapist today i'm here to talk i'm here to talk a bit about both play therapy and filial therapy as therapeutic interventions for children as well as the specific type of play and filial therapies that i practice

01:24there we go so here is our agenda for today i hope to keep this presentation within roughly 45 minutes with about 15 minutes at the end for q a section so when we get to that point please just make sure to keep your mics muted and post in the chat whatever questions you have and we are also going to have various discussion points throughout this presentation tonight so feel free to use the chat feature for that as well and without further ado

01:54so we're going to get open with a very very important question for tonight what is play therapy well play therapy is essentially how you do counseling with children instead of a typical therapy room there's a playroom and it instead of expecting the child to sit on a chair or sofa they can roam around on the floor playing with the toys and a lot of the ways they'd like to play therapy is reliant on the notion

02:19that children utilize toys and play in order to express themselves as you can see in the quote here through play children express what their lives are like now what their needs are events of the past and or how they wish things could be and as you can imagine it's highly unlikely for a little five-year-old to come into a normal counseling room plop down in the chair sofa and start

02:45rattling off about in detail how hard life is and what not so little susie isn't going to come into my normal therapy room sit on my couch and say mr joey i just had the worst day at school i didn't get a lollipop from the doctors today and mommy's doing blah blah blah that's just not appropriate research has verified the quote to the right time and time again virginia axaline by the way is the founder of child centered play therapy

03:11which i'll get to in a little bit most forms of play therapy are best for kids ages three to eight although there of course can be exceptions even as kids enter pre-adolescence aspects of play therapy like the inclusion of certain toys and the use of certain phrases can be common but generally speaking play therapy is meant for that three to eight age range ultimately a child's brain is just not yet developed enough to express

03:38themselves verbally as adults and teenagers are able to do in order to articulate the way they are feeling children will naturally rely on play to communicate those of you who are familiar with human growth and development or maybe took an intro to psychology course at some point may recognize the ericssonian theory of human development created by the power couple you see to the right eric and joan erickson

04:05the ericssons believe that life is a series of crises and that as we age we move from one crisis to another each crisis is characterized by the individual feeling pulled between one of two sides in order to successfully move on from one stage or crisis to the other one must reconcile the challenges that come with these internal and external conflicts on the screen you'll notice three different stages these are the

04:33ericssonian stages that are related specifically to the ages of play therapy clients the first is autonomy versus shame and doubt and it lasts from roughly 18 months to three years of age this stage is characterized by children learning how to do things independently of their parents for the first time if they're successful they'll develop a firmer sense of autonomy and independence if they aren't they may develop low

04:59self-esteem and might either be very clingy to their parents or desperately try to prove themselves now you'll recall from the previous slide that the youngest even the youngest play clients are only three years old which is the upper end for the stage but i included it here because there is the possibility of unresolved issues from this stage continuing to plague the child as they grow older the ericssons believed that the way in

05:26which you handle a crisis influences the way you handle other crises creating a foundation for which you build the rest of your life upon next we have initiative versus guilt which lasts from three to five years of age during this time children further develop their self-concept by figuring out what kind of person they are am i a good kid or am i a bad kid children who succeed in navigating the stage develop a sense of purpose to

05:54their actions and walk away with a better sense of who they ultimately are however there is the possibility for children to not develop the sense of initiative and instead feel guilty whenever they attempt something that doesn't work out finally we have industry versus inferiority this stage lasts from roughly 5 to 13 years old and is hallmarked by children figuring out what they're capable of

06:20through social interactions and challenges as you can imagine school life and friendships play a large role in this stage children emerge with a confident sense of industry if they generally see themselves as being competent at what they do but may feel inferior if they don't believe they're as capable as other kids so why am i telling you all this why am i spending so much time on this slide

06:48because play therapy helps to develop a child's sense of independence self-esteem and sense of mastery amongst other things no matter which of these stages a child may be struggling with in their development play therapy can address these matters there are of course plenty of therapies that are geared for children and it's common for them to incorporate play some

07:16way somehow however it's important to keep in mind that these are not played therapy play therapy is expressly for the purpose of psychotherapy or counseling modalities such as the ones on the left may very well utilize play but it's not done in the same way for the same reasons again think of play therapy as counseling for kids clients are referred to play therapy when they're dealing with issues like

07:43anxiety depression low self-esteem trauma bullying etc and yes folks children can significantly struggle with things like anxiety depression and trauma so these other three things here on the left are wonderful and they are great and they are absolutely needed and they just don't do what we do they're all valid they just by definition are not play therapy the types you see on the right are

08:10examples of different kinds of play therapy if you're familiar with the world of counseling you may recognize some of these as being from different types of counseling if you will just like how there are different versions or theories of counseling there are different versions and theories of play therapy each one of these branch off from a well-established school of thought within psychotherapy they are all great in their own way but

08:37the type that i personally use and will be going into greater detail on today is child-centered play therapy for those of you who are familiar with humanistic or person-centered counseling child-centered play therapy stems from that tradition ccpt offers a completely non-judgmental environment in which the child is free to use the toys and their time in a lot

09:04of the ways they want to when you see non-directive on here that means the therapist does not come in with any sort of agenda the therapist does not see the child as a problem to be fixed as if they were just some car brought into the shop for a tune-up they see the child as a unique holistic human being who just wants to be understood and as adults a lot of the time we just

09:31want to be understood and therefore we should be extending that same grace to children and the therapist may end up being the very first person in the child's life to provide such an understanding the focus in child centered play therapy is exclusively on the relationship in doing so the child must now be the ones who take ownership of their actions

09:56bring themselves under control realize they're capable of great things and accept themselves for who they are in the moment in the next slide we're going to go over the only things that ought to be going through the play therapist's head as they interact with the child as mentioned before it is the child that takes ownership of their time in the playroom

10:22the ccpt playroom offers many children the very first sense of real control responsibility and liberty on the screen you can see the four core tenets of child centered play therapy called the be with attitudes the first one i'm here i am physically presence now that one might seem like an obvious one to y'all but what that means is i'm not going to be lounging on the couch i'm not going to

10:50just kind of half-heartedly slump in my chair while i glance over at the kid every once in a while i am sitting up leaning in and being physically in tune with what the child is doing my nose and my toes are always oriented in the direction of the child because in doing so i'm subconsciously conveying to the child that i am giving them my undivided attention so i'm here

11:17i hear you not only am i physically presence but i'm also mentally presence i'm not thinking about other clients i'm not thinking about notes that i have to do i'm not thinking about my social life and i'm not thinking about the mess i'm going to have to clean up after the session is over now that's not to say that my mind won't wander every once in a while play therapists are human too believe it or not but when my mind wanders i make a concerted effort to bring my attention back to the

11:45child so that i am not only physically but also mentally available i am here i hear you i understand or at least i want to understand i'm doing my best to understand play therapists do what they can to put themselves in the shoes of the clients doing whatever they can to try to see the world from the client's point of

12:07view as much as possible so i'm here i hear you i understand and i care we do all of these things because we care about the child this last one is essentially a call to action it's why we go into this field in the first place it's why we want to help children i care and there's also a fifth be with attitude that's being thrown around in plenty of play therapy circles called

12:35i delight in you so that goes beyond just caring about the kid and genuinely taking joy and pleasure from living life with the child in the moment for those 45 minutes this new way of working with children might seem strange to some of y'all and admittedly it's me at first as

12:57well but the research doesn't lie child censored play therapy has the most amount of research supporting its efficacy than any other form of play therapy which is one of the reasons why i like it so much the ways in which child-centered play therapy helps kids is quite extensive and the things listed on the screen are just some of the major highlights if you are aware of children that might