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🚨 The Big Miss in Traditional Play Therapy (And Why It’s Holding Back Progress)

We talk a lot about helping kids heal using play therapy…

But here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud:

Most traditional play therapy approaches treat the child like they exist in a vacuum.

👀 Reality check:

What kid do you know is paying their own rent, making their own dinner, and handling life without family dynamics shaping them every single day?

Exactly. None.

Families are the ecosystem kids live in. 

Every belief, every meltdown, every bedtime battle—it’s all influenced by the way their family dances together (or doesn’t).

And yet… we often work with kids alone, peeking at the family system through the keyhole of second-hand parent reports.

No wonder some problems keep coming back no matter how many play therapy tools we throw at them.

If you’ve ever wondered – What am I missing? – when progress stalls, you need to be here.

Join me for this free weekly podcast! Because it’s time to stop guessing about the family system and start seeing it for what it really is so your play therapy clients can thrive.

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

Send us a text

🚨 5 Signs You Might Be Accidentally Sabotaging Your Play Therapy Progress (and What to Do Instead)

If you’re a play therapist who’s tired of getting those frantic mid-week parent calls, texts, or emails saying “nothing is working”—even though you see real progress in the playroom—this week’s free livestream is for you.

Here’s the hard truth: sometimes our best play therapy efforts fall flat outside our offices. 

Parents get frustrated.   Kids feel misunderstood. 

And you end up buried under play therapy session notes, parent updates with phone calls/texts/emails, and endless questions… while the transformation you know is possible never fully takes root at home or school.

Leaving you feeling like you’re missing something but can’t quite figure it out.

What’s a play therapist to do? In this podcast episode, we’ll unpack the 5 signs you may be sabotaging your client’s progress without even realizing it—like relying too much on parent reports, or missing the chance to see family dynamics play out in real-time. 

Then I’ll show you exactly what to do instead so you can stop guessing what’s happening outside the playroom and start watching your clients and their families heal right in front of you.

Expect a fresh perspective, some “ouch” moments (in a good way), and practical steps to shift your sessions from just play to powerful, family-centered transformation.

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

Send us a text

The norm in play therapy, and the mental health profession in general, is to meet with a child or teen every week for individual counseling sessions and meet with parents as an adjunct to treatment.

This format has been around for decades and is the approach taught in most universities.  

I’ve always been a believer that this isn’t the best way to help children heal.

Don’t get me wrong – individual play therapy counseling is beneficial and I use it with my clients.  

Individual counseling allows the ability to provide a space where children and teens can have your undivided attention and support.  Who doesn’t love that, right?!

However, if play therapists only conceptualize the individual child then they miss out on influential dynamics impacting the child’s everyday life.

I’m referring to conceptualizing the child within the context of their larger family system and the influence of generational family dynamics on children. (Can I hear an Amen! from my marriage & family therapy peeps?!)

Family play therapy sessions allow play therapists to see in real time the relationship interaction patterns among children and their family members.  

What’s the saying?   – No man is an island unto himself.

We are all influenced by and influence our family members through the generations.

So – which is best – individual play therapy or family play therapy?

I’ll be discussing the benefits and drawbacks of individual play therapy and family play therapy.  Spoiler alert – I’m not an either-or kind of person generally speaking.  

Grab your coffee, tea, or other beverage and join us for this week’s episode and share the information with your colleagues!  

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

Send us a text

If you’re a play therapist – either a newbie, got some experience under your belt, or full on seasoned play therapist – this is bound to happen more than once.

To be honest I’ve had this happen so many times, I’ve lost count.

You get frantic phone calls, emails, or texts between sessions telling you all the “bad” things your client is doing at home or school.

You can hear the concern in their parents’ voices and you feel the pressure in your chest to fix it fast. 

You feel the weight of responsibility to fix this fast so parents and your clients get the relief they’re seeking.

You wonder what’s going on and how you can make things better.

You’ve got your favorite play therapy interventions, your best play therapy activities, and your clinical skills dialed in… so why isn’t your client making progress? 🤔

The answer might be hiding in the family dynamics you’re not seeing. 

You gathered all the information at the intake appointment and parents describe what’s happening from their perspective, but you haven’t seen the dynamics in action.

Getting a first hand glance at the dynamics in action can give you that missing piece to the puzzle. 🧩

Learn how small shifts involving caregivers can make big breakthroughs happen.

Join me for this weekly podcast! We’re going to break down the benefit of using family play therapy sessions to get the breakthroughs your clients and their parents are seeking.

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

Send us a text

How many of you have had this happen with play therapy clients (raise your virtual hand in the Comments) –

You greet your client in the waiting room and your client looks at you with an eager face and asks, “Can my mom/dad come with us?” 🙄 Or …

When you meet with parents for the first time and they ask you why you only meet with their child.  Why don’t they get to join the sessions?  They want to know what you’re doing with their child.  😬  Or …

You know that parents are important in play therapy because you’re a firm believer in helping children establish strong attachment relationships, so you include parents in the session with no real plan or direction and it ends up feeling awkward and doesn’t go well.

This is the ongoing dilemma in play therapy – 

Do you or don’t you include parents in play therapy sessions?

Can play therapy be successful without parent engagement and what does parent engagement look like?

Join me for this week's podcast episode. I’ll also share 5 tips for improving successful outcomes when integrating parents in play therapy.

So make sure to join us and pass on the information to your colleagues to share the love.  🤩

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

Send us a text

Have you ever had this happen with a play therapy client?

You greet your young client in the lobby and your client asks – “Can my mom/dad come with us today?”

Or maybe you’re talking with a parent who asks you what you do in their child’s play therapy sessions and why do you only work with their child?  Why aren’t they (parents) allowed in the play therapy session?

What do you say as you feel the lump in your throat growing and your voice stammers a little bit to find the right words?

Underlying these questions is a fundamental clinical consideration that requires you to figure out these two critical components:

🧭What do you believe are critical for providing quality play therapy?

🧭How will parents be involved in their child’s treatment?

So often play therapists just say yes to including parents in sessions, but they have no plan or purpose for including parents.

That usually results in confusion for parents about their role in the sessions and what are the expectations for them during the sessions.

Play therapists often feel awkward and unsure about what to do in these sessions, then doubt their ability to use play therapy effectively.

So, this week we’re going to tackle the question of whether you include parents in play therapy sessions.

Join me for this free weekly podcast! I’ll discuss three things you need to consider when figuring out if parents will be in their child’s play therapy sessions and how to include them.

So bring your pen and paper because this is going to be a practical application episode!

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

Send us a text

Raise 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

Send us a text

What’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

Send us a text

When 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

Send us a text

How 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.

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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