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CHILD’S PLAY: UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA THROUGH A CHILD’S PLAY Nora R Cord M.A. Ed, PCC-S Dayspring Counseling

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child’s Play: Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play. Nora R Cord M.A. Ed, PCC-S Dayspring Counseling. What is Play Therapy. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

CHILD’S PLAY: UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA THROUGH A CHILD’S PLAY

Nora R Cord M.A. Ed, PCC-S

Dayspring Counseling

Page 2: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

WHAT IS PLAY THERAPY

Play therapy as defined by the Association for Play Therapy is “the systematic use of a theoretical model to establish an interpersonal process wherein trained play therapists use the therapeutic powers of play to help clients prevent or resolve psychosocial difficulties and achieve optimal growth and development.”

Page 3: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

WHAT IS PLAY THERAPY

Play therapy as explained in my office to parents• “The belief that children play their thoughts and

feelings better than they talk about them. A play therapist believe that play is a child’s language and toys are their words.” Therefore a play therapist office will have many toys to assist a child in expressing themselves and their language.

Page 4: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

WHY THERAPIST USE PLAY?

Play is a fun, enjoyable activity that elevates our spirits and brightens our outlook on life. It expands self-expression, self-knowledge, self-actualization and self-efficacy. Play relieves feelings of stress and boredom, connects us to people in a positive way, stimulates creative thinking and exploration, regulates our emotions, and boosts our ego. (Landreth, 2002).

Page 5: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

WHY THERAPIST USE PLAY?

Play also allows children to rehearse skills and roles needed for survival. Learning and development are fostered through the play experience. (Russ, 2004).

Page 6: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

PSYCHOEDUCATION

BibliotherapyProvides an opportunity to do psycho education in a fun and engaging way.

Allows you to address any misconceptions and clarify what is “normal” within the experience of a traumatic event.

Builds rapport because you as a clinican understand what is happening and can explain it to not only the child but to the parent.

Page 7: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

PSYCHOEDUCATION

Brave Bart by Caroline H Sheppard• Provides clinician with the opportunity to educate

child and parent on symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

• Done interactively can be an initial assessment tool for what symptoms the client is presenting with a time of intake.

• Does a nice job of explaining flashbacks in a way that a child can understand and make sense of.

• Good for use with complex trauma cases

Page 8: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

PSYCHOEDUCATION

A Terrible Thing Happened by Margaret Holmes, Sasha Mudlaff, and Cary Pillo.

• Another resource for educating the child and parent of the symptoms they may be experiencing after a trauma.

• Should be done interactively so that parent can understand and validate symptoms child is endorsing.

• Never identifies what the terrible thing was so it is a good resource for domestic violence, gang violence, community violence, shootings, traumatic accidents, etc.

Page 9: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

PSYCHOEDUCATION

Parental Disclaimer• Typically in this period, I will give a parent my anger

disclaimer. • “Anger is the backbone of healing.” Until your child

becomes angry about what has happened, no real change will occur. This means that your child will have a period of intense anger, it is not a fun stage to live through but when it comes, I want you to remember this conversation.

• Rationale: Preparing parents to handle what is coming in recovery, helps them stay the course and not pull their child because their behavior has become “worse.”

Page 10: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

PSYCHOEDUCATION

Perception Activity (family or group activity)• Fill a tray with different small items; toys, things connected

to their trauma, office items, etc.• Have each individual look at the tray for 10 seconds.• At the end have everyone write down what they see on the

tray. • Process what everyone wrote down and discuss how each

one brings their own perceptions to the traumatic experience.

• Rationale: Help each member understand that although we all experienced the same things, we perceive it differently.

Page 11: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

FEEL INGS (AFFECT REGUL ATIO N)

Candy land Feelings• Using the board game, Candy land, explore the client’s

understanding of feelings. • Red- Mad, Blue-Sad, Green- Scared/Worried, and Yellow –

Happy. • Can be used during entire time working on feelings as

individual will be able to explore more of their feelings as trauma work goes on.

• Rationale: Play at the beginning of work on feelings to get a baseline and then use as a teaching tool to explore more difficult emotions related to trauma. Therapist can model this in their answers.

Page 12: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

FEEL INGS (AFFECT REGUL ATIO N)

Scary Night Visitors by Irene Wineman Marcus, Paul

Marcus, and Susan Jeschke • Dream Catchers: Popsicle sticks, glue, yarn to make

or have family purchase a dream catcher. • Discuss with client what he or she needs in their

dream to feel powerful and have control over their nightmare. Provide tangible presentation of item next to bed such as a key to unlock a door, or a flashlight to see.

Page 13: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

FEELINGS (AFFECT REGULATION)

Nightmares• Jessica and the Wolf by Ted Lobby and Tennessee

Dixon; story of a little girl who has nightmares and needs help in addressing and

• Magic Wands: Using dow rods and shapes, with ribbon, have child create a magic wand to use to scare away their nightmares.

• Monster Spray: Spray bottle, water, food coloring, etc.

Page 14: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

FEEL INGS (AFFECT REGUL ATIO N)

Go Away Monsters Game• Board game by Gamewright. Individual selects

items out of a bag to create a room that is safe. • If a monster is selected, individual tells the monster

to go away and then places the monster in the “jail”• Rationale is to work on overcoming fear of monster

and being able to stand up for oneself when unexpected things happen.

Page 15: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

FEELING S (AFFECT REGUL ATION )

Feelings Puzzles• Puzzles that have different emotional faces that can

change and discuss feelings.

Feelings Boat • Ending session activity for children who have a

difficult time transitioning. Using boat to discuss good and bad emotions about session terminating for the day. Individual controls how hard or soft they hit the boat.

Page 16: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

COPING SKILLS

Identify Coping Skills• Provide a list of various skills that individuals who

have survived trauma often use. • Give individual a highlighter and ask them to

highlight those skills that are true for them. • Discuss ways in which they have used or are

continuing to use those skills.

Page 17: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

COPING SKILLS

Mask Activity• Discussing how individuals will hide their different

emotions by creating a mask they wear in front of others.

• Provide student a ceramic or paper mask to decorate to illustrate how they hide themselves away.

• Process the beauty of the design they made but the pain it eventually causes as they are lost to the image they have to upkeep.

Page 18: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

COPING SKILLS

Hurt Feelings• Read The Hurt by Teddi Doleski. • Discuss the hurts the child has experienced and ask

him or her to create a hurt rock. Can be made out of paper or can be made out of pantyhose and stuffing. Have the child fill their rock with the amount of hurt he or she has experienced and then allow him or her to share the hurt they want to.

• Discuss ways to let the hurt out like the child in the story did.

Page 19: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

COPING SKILLS

Anger Poster• Anger is an emotion that masks many other

emotions. • Helping a child to begin to identify what feelings

their anger masks, gives voice to those emotions and helps them begin to identify ways to manage and cope with those feelings.

• Normalizing anger in situations where it is appropriate.

Page 20: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

COPING SKILLS

Anger sometimes needs a physical outlet• Helping parents and caregivers understand that

sometimes anger needs a physical outlet and children need a positive and safe way to physically get there anger out.

• Having a place to stamp out their anger with there feet, having a place to punch a pillow, having a place to punch a punching bag, a place to shoot hoops, run, walk, scream. However whenever any of this is happening it is important that the child be able to verbalize afterwards why they were doing it.

Page 21: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

NARRATIVE

Being a witness to their narrative• A survivor needs one witness to their narrative.

Someone who can share the raw emotions of their experience and help them make sense of it. • Can be done in play, sandtray, puppetry, drama, music,

art, writing, there is no limit to how it can be done. • Will be done over a course of sessions. • No longer done at the beginning but after skills are

built. • Can use the TF-CBT workbook to assist with this.

Page 22: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

RELAPSE PREVENTION

Trust Experiments• Who is trustworthy/who is not?

• Using scenarios- determine if someone can be trusted with a secret or they can not be. • Depending on age of child can be done with a real

person, can be done with puppets, etc. • Rationale: Traumatized children do not know who

to trust and often have peer difficulty as a result. Helping them to understand ways to build relationships will help with this.

Page 23: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

RELAPSE PREVENTION

Stages of a Relationship• Individual or group activity in which you have the

person order the stages of a relationship from meeting the person to engaging in sexual relations.

• Goal is to help individual and group of abused children to consider the consequences of their behaviors and how these behaviors led to more and more risky behaviors.

Page 24: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

TERMINATION

Stepping down sessions. • Helps clients who have come to rely on you to learn

they are successful without you. • Also allows you to praise their success and the ways

in which the individual and family are handling themselves and the crisis.

• Create a plan together for termination. • Discuss termination openly and how to re-engage in

services. • Also discuss times that family may need services.

• Booster shots- times when family may need additionally support to deal with experience such as a new developmental stage or milestone.

Page 25: child’s Play:  Understanding Trauma through a child’s Play

TERMINATION

Celebrate the work• Whether successful completion or moving on to a

higher level of care, celebrate the work done together. • Create a board game of the work that client has done. • Read Oh The Places You Will Go by Dr. Seuss and

create a star which discuss ways you have seen the client learn and grow since beginning therapy.

• Provide client with a graduation certificate and note one specific goal he/she has improved on.