Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

• What Are the Top Mistakes Play Therapists Make Working with Parents?

  Send us a textRaise your virtual hand and shout YES! if you never make mistakes and you are the perfect play therapist who does everything right all the time.Do you hear those crickets? 🦗🦗🦗The sound of silent voices, well, except for the crickets.  😂That’s because no one is perfect.  The good news is that we don’t need to be perfect.If you have been doubting yourself and thinking about all the ways you messed up and probably made things worse, Then you are not alone.We all make mistakes and sometimes we make the same mistakes over and over until we figure out how to stop making those mistakes in play therapy.That’s what we’re going to talk about in this episode.  Let’s name the common mistakes play therapists make when working with parents so we can call them out, get honest, and figure out how to stop doing them.I’m discussing the three most common mistakes that I see play therapists make when working with parents that result in poor play therapy outcomes for their clients AND what to do instead.If you’ve been struggling and thinking deep down that you’re the only play therapist who makes mistakes with parents, then you don’t want to miss this episode!  We’re going to have an authentic conversation about engaging parents as your partner in the healing process for their children.  Let’s do this! Join my free Facebook Community Play and Expressive Arts Therapy Playground.Check out my free resources for mental health professionals working with children, adolescents, and families who want to integrate play therapy and expressive arts into their clinical work. I work with individuals and agencies to develop successful strategies and meet the treatment needs of your child and adolescent clients and their families using play therapy & expressive arts.Contact me to schedule a free 30-minute video call if you're ready to level up your skills

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• How to Conceptualize the Role of Parents in Play Therapy

  Send us a textWhat’s one of the biggest struggles play therapists say causes them to feel anxious, incompetent, frustrated, and generally overwhelmed on a regular basis?If you guessed working with parents – winner, winner, chicken dinner!It’s one of the most common challenges I hear from play therapists.Do any of these sound familiar?“I can’t get parents to schedule a parent only session with me.”“I’m getting lots of phone calls, texts, and emails from a parent telling me all the things their child is doing and I feel pressure to fix it fast.”“I feel like parents just want to drop off their kid for me to ‘fix’ and they want things fixed yesterday.”“My client asked if their parent could join the session so I said yes and it was sooooooooo awkward. It was awful.”If you said yes to any of these then you are not alone.  The underlying root of these stressful situations is a fundamental missing ingredient in your approach to play therapy.The problem is that most play therapy training doesn’t talk about how to work with parents in play therapy, especially challenging parents.If this is your struggle then join me for this weekly podcast! We’re going to tackle the question of how to conceptualize the role of parents in play therapy so you can get better engagement and stop feeling emotionally drained and frustrated.There are three key things you need to figure out that will set you up for success engaging parents as your partner in the play therapy process.  Join my free Facebook Community Play and Expressive Arts Therapy Playground.Check out my free resources for mental health professionals working with children, adolescents, and families who want to integrate play therapy and expressive arts into their clinical work. I work with individuals and agencies to develop successful strategies and meet the treatment needs of your child and adolescent clients and their families using play therapy & expressive arts.Contact me to schedule a free 30-minute video call if you're ready to level up your skills

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• How To Talk to Parents About Difficult Issues in Play Therapy

  Send us a textWhen I talk with play therapists about reasons they avoid having difficult conversations with parents/caregivers, here's the most common worry they tell me 👇“What if I say something and they pull their kid from play therapy?”It can feel awful when parents terminate play therapy before real change can happen.We feel like giant failures and then start listing all the ways we failed the child (and ourselves).So, this fear is real.  Sometimes parents do pull their child from play therapy prematurely and it does feel awful.Play therapists often avoid hard conversations—like naming the parent’s role in a child’s symptoms—because they don’t want to rupture the relationship or risk the parent pulling their child from play therapy.   If we look a little deeper into this fear, what’s really beneath the surface? It’s often rooted in people-pleasing, imposter syndrome, or fear of being seen as “too much” or “not helpful enough.”  (Ouch!)So let’s talk about it.  Let’s dive right in and have a conversation so you can move beyond your fear and have those hard conversations so your clients can get real healing.Join me for this week's podcast! I’ll share four tips to help you overcome your fear and take charge with compassion and kindness to have difficult conversations and reduce the likelihood parents will pull their child from play therapy.Join my free Facebook Community Play and Expressive Arts Therapy Playground.Check out my free resources for mental health professionals working with children, adolescents, and families who want to integrate play therapy and expressive arts into their clinical work. I work with individuals and agencies to develop successful strategies and meet the treatment needs of your child and adolescent clients and their families using play therapy & expressive arts.Contact me to schedule a free 30-minute video call if you're ready to level up your skills

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• What is Best Practice in Play Therapy Clinical Decision-Making

  Send us a textHow does being trained to use a specific play therapy model influence clinical decision-making vs clinical decision-making of child/adolescent therapists using play in therapy? Hmmmmm.  What the heck does that question even mean? Essentially clinical decision-making involves our expertise and training in a play therapy model and how play therapists engage in the decision-making process to get excellent treatment results for their clients. Is the clinical decision-making skill level of play therapists who are trained to use specific play therapy models better than child/adolescent therapists not trained who are using play in sessions? A study by Baker-Ericzen, Jenkins, Park, and Garland (2015) explored the quality of clinical decision-making for child/adolescent therapists who were trained in an evidence-based treatment model (EBT) versus therapists who were not. This study, Clinical Decision-Making in Community Children’s Mental Health: Using Innovative Methods to Compare Clinicians With and Without Training in Evidence-Based Treatment, 👇🏼 Had some interesting results. Join me for this week's podcast episode, I’ll discuss the findings of their study and how it relates to play therapy.  There are several play therapy models considered to be EBT models, so this study provides some interesting points for child and adolescent therapists to consider when working with children using play. #playtherapy #expressiveartstherapy #sandtraytherapy #renewingheartstraining #renewingheartsconsulting #playtherapist #playtherapyaroundtheworld #internationalplaytherapy #playtherapyworks #playtherapymatters #expressivearts #childtherapy #adolescenttherapy #familytherapy #familyplaytherapy #playtherapytraining #expressiveartstherapytraining #childrensmentalhealth #adolescentmentalhealthJoin my free Facebook Community Play and Expressive Arts Therapy Playground.Check out my free resources for mental health professionals working with children, adolescents, and families who want to integrate play therapy and expressive arts into their clinical work. I work with individuals and agencies to develop successful strategies and meet the treatment needs of your child and adolescent clients and their families using play therapy & expressive arts.Contact me to schedule a free 30-minute video call if you're ready to level up your skills

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• How to Work with Resistance in Play Therapy: 4 Approaches for Reluctant Clients

  Send us a textWhat do you do when you keep getting frantic phone calls from caregivers between play therapy sessions telling you all the things going wrong with their child?You feel the weight of these phone calls and the pressure to make everything better- quickly.You’ve tried many times to get these caregivers to schedule an appointment with you but there’s always a reason they can’t meet with you.So, you spend hours writing emails and responding to phone calls with little to no success.Or - what about the client that seems to do the same thing week after week after week in their play therapy sessions?  You begin to wonder if play therapy is really working and start to second-guess your clinical decisions about what to do in sessions.You start to research new play therapy activities and frantically try anything you can in play therapy sessions - hoping that something will “work.”Sound familiar?  Working with challenging cases in play therapy can leave you feeling defeated, frustrated, and wondering if you’re making the right decisions or making things worse for your clients.If that’s you, then join me for this weekly podcast! I’ll discuss how to engage children and caregivers who are resistant to play therapy.  I’ll share insights from neuroscience and attachment theory that provide the keys for engaging even the most challenging clients and their caregivers in play therapy.Join my free Facebook Community Play and Expressive Arts Therapy Playground.Check out my free resources for mental health professionals working with children, adolescents, and families who want to integrate play therapy and expressive arts into their clinical work. I work with individuals and agencies to develop successful strategies and meet the treatment needs of your child and adolescent clients and their families using play therapy & expressive arts.Contact me to schedule a free 30-minute video call if you're ready to level up your skills

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