Play Therapy Parenting Podcast

One of the "Rules of Thumb" that we teach you in the In-Home Play Therapy program is this concept of "When a child is drowning, don’t try to teach them to swim." In this podcast, I discuss why it is so important to remember that children don't have abstract reasoning skill until starting about 12. So "teaching a lesson" in the middle of an emotional moment for your child is absolutely futile... you need to meet them in their emotion to de-escalate the situation.   References: Cochran, N., Nordling, W., & Cochran, J. (2010). Child-Centered Play Therapy (1st ed.). Wiley.  VanFleet, R., Sywulak, A. E., & Sniscak, C. C. (2010). Child-centered play therapy. Guilford Press.  Landreth, G. L. (2002). Play therapy: The art of the relationship (2nd ed.). Brunner-Routledge. Bratton, S. C., Landreth, G. L., Kellam, T., & Blackard, S. R. (2006). Child parent relationship therapy (CPRT) treatment manual: A 10-session filial therapy model for training parents. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. Benedict, Helen. Themes in Play Therapy. Used with permission to Heartland Play Therapy Institute.

We all know that therapy is beneficial and that positive change is associated with the process. But what can you count on in terms of areas of growth when a child participates in play therapy? There are four universal outcomes of play therapy, regardless of what the child is dealing with when they begin. In this episode, I unpack each of the four outcomes and help you understand why growth in these areas are so beneficial for kids and their futures.

Often people assume that if talk therapy works with adults, it should work with kids, too. But have you ever asked your child a question about how they feel or why they did something and gotten, “I don’t know” or a blank stare with a shrug? In this episode, I talk about how adults compartmentalize their lives into boxes. But children feel everything and their lives are a big tangle of emotions. I also explain how play therapy principles make sense to a child who isn’t rational or logical. You will finally understand why kids need a different approach to dealing with their issues.

Do you know what your kids are doing on social media? Do you REALLY know? I work with a lot of pre-teens and teens every week, with debilitating personal issues. One of the common threads I see is social media use. If you really care about your kids, it's time to stop being passive, and start taking a more active role in supervising what your kids are doing on their devices.

Cutting: What You Need to Know as a Parent. Why kids are doing it. How they are finding out about it. How they are hiding it. How they are sharing it. What you can do about it.

You probably haven't heard many people talking about how badly our kids are absorbing the "adult response to the coronavirus". No one is really addressing it. The phones at my office are ringing off the hook with desperate parents trying to get help for their anxious kids. In this podcast, I talk about the problem, share three examples of what anxiety does to kids, and how you can effectively respond to your child, if you see the signs.

Often one of the underlying causes of emotional and behavioral struggles is that who the child wants to be (their "ideal self") is very different from who they are (their "actual self"). In this podcast exclusive, I share what happens in the playroom when a child is ready to bridge the gap between their actual and ideal self.

Parents are often concerned when children express angry or aggressive behavior. In this podcast exclusive I discuss how parents can recognize the deeper emotions driving the angry, aggressive behavior. Once you understand why kids default to anger, you will be able to respond in a way that helps them express their vulnerability and develop an emotional vocabulary.

Have you ever wondered if all the work you put into learning how to be a good parent is paying off? Have you noticed that the more consistent you are with applying your parenting skills, that you surprise yourself by how well you handle behavior situations with your kids? In this episode, I tell the story about how I noticed a parallel between something I have been personally training for, and how consistency and hard work pays off in your parenting.

Are you setting goals or resolutions for the new year? If so, is one to create a better relationship with your kids? Or to parent in a kinder way? In this episode, I share two main goals for 2021 that can start you off on the right foot in how you interact with your kids. If you just want to put 2020 behind you because of guilt over the way you handled parenting moments, then stick with me this year and I'll teach you how to build a better relationship and interact more kindly with your kids.