Ever feel like playtime with your child is a struggle rather than a joy? Do you grapple with taking a backseat and letting your child lead? This episode might just change your perspective on play. We sit down with child play expert, Colleen Martinez, and take a deep look into the world of child directed play. We share our own initial resistance to this method and how it significantly improved our interactions with children over time. Together, we unpack the powerful principles of child-centered play therapy and its overlap with parent-child interaction therapy.
As we journey through the podcast, we delve into the common hiccups that you might face when allowing a child to command the play. We identify four key areas that might block a successful child-led play experience: asking too many questions, feeling the need to entertain, competing, and exerting control. Instead of these, we propose embracing observation, praising simple comments like "I see what you're doing". We also present an easy-to-follow model for setting empathetic and accepting boundaries. We encourage you to experiment with just 15 minutes of child-led play a week - you might be surprised at the positive changes it brings!
We wrap up the episode by focusing on the pivotal ACT model for limit-setting and its application in parenting. It's not just about enforcing rules, but providing healthier alternatives for children. We stress the importance of understanding and respecting a child's needs and desires while still setting appropriate boundaries. Lastly, we delve into the benefits of child-directed play for children - it's a safe and nurturing platform for self-expression and emotional processing. So, prepare to tune in, learn and evolve your playtime experiences with your little ones. It might just transform your relationship with your child in a beautiful and meaningful way. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation!
www.bethtrammell.com
Ever feel like playtime with your child is a struggle rather than a joy? Do you grapple with taking a backseat and letting your child lead? This episode might just change your perspective on play. We sit down with child play expert, Colleen Martinez, and take a deep look into the world of child directed play. We share our own initial resistance to this method and how it significantly improved our interactions with children over time. Together, we unpack the powerful principles of child-centered play therapy and its overlap with parent-child interaction therapy.
As we journey through the podcast, we delve into the common hiccups that you might face when allowing a child to command the play. We identify four key areas that might block a successful child-led play experience: asking too many questions, feeling the need to entertain, competing, and exerting control. Instead of these, we propose embracing observation, praising simple comments like "I see what you're doing". We also present an easy-to-follow model for setting empathetic and accepting boundaries. We encourage you to experiment with just 15 minutes of child-led play a week - you might be surprised at the positive changes it brings!
We wrap up the episode by focusing on the pivotal ACT model for limit-setting and its application in parenting. It's not just about enforcing rules, but providing healthier alternatives for children. We stress the importance of understanding and respecting a child's needs and desires while still setting appropriate boundaries. Lastly, we delve into the benefits of child-directed play for children - it's a safe and nurturing platform for self-expression and emotional processing. So, prepare to tune in, learn and evolve your playtime experiences with your little ones. It might just transform your relationship with your child in a beautiful and meaningful way. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation!
www.bethtrammell.com
Alright, listen, welcome back. This is part two. I am so happy that you are here and if you did not listen to part one, just feel free, you can listen in here and then go back and listen to part one with Colleen Martinez. But this is kind of a continuation of our conversation around play therapy, play with children, and today we're going to talk specifically about child directed play. And I'll tell you, colleen, I've been looking forward to this conversation because I try to teach child directed play to both parents and teachers and I think it's sometimes just not as intuitive as it sounds like it should be.
Speaker 1:It feels like, oh yeah, you know, let the child take the lead and play. I don't know, I guess it feels like that shouldn't be hard. Even in my own life I find myself butting in the way of child directed play all the time, and so I was really in our zone during part one when we were talking about therapist directed play. That's totally in my zone. And then we move into child directed play and it gets stickier, and so I'm so grateful you're here to talk about this and unpack it all. And before we get into why it's hard, let's just talk about kind of in general, when we say child led play or child directed play, what are we really meaning? Let's just clarify that before we go into like what's so hard about it?
Speaker 2:Excellent, that's a great question, beth.
Speaker 2:I think I'd like to tell you a little bit of story about how I happened upon this kind of work. When I was earlier in my career as a clinical social worker and play therapist, most of the work that I had done was talky play therapy, if you know what I mean. So the work that I was doing was play based, but mostly directed by me and mostly required some degree of verbal engagement from the kids that I was working with, and so I was doing things like cognitive behavioral play therapy or other kind of creative and expressive ways of bringing play into the therapy process. And then here's what happened I was asked to work with preschoolers in special education that had speech and language delays, and I realized that I needed to expand my repertoire of skills, because there's no way I'm going to do directive or talky you know, verbal kinds of play therapy with three year olds that don't speak yet. So what happened was I went to the literature and I said and I searched what is effective, effective play therapies for three and four year olds, and what I kept coming across was child centered play therapy. I'm not sure if you've had anybody talk about child centered play therapy on your podcast before, but it's a specific discipline in play therapy that is very well researched and we know that it's effective. So here's the thing that child centered play therapy does not really fit with my personality. My natural tendency is to go into a session with a plan. I know what I want to happen and I'm going to lead my client to that, and that's that's what happens in therapist directed play therapy or directive play therapy. I read all this literature that said child centered play therapy is really effective with especially young children. I said to myself okay, colleen, you need to learn something new, you need to do something new, even though it doesn't fit with your personality or your natural style. And so that's kind of what brought me to child centered play therapy.
Speaker 2:And I have to tell you, over the course of the past 10 years or so, I've been astounded at what child centered play therapy can do for especially young children, especially children who are nonverbal or less verbal. And in that kind of therapy relationship we use play is a way to build connection and a way to allow the child to communicate. And so when I'm talking here with you, with parents, with teachers, with clinicians, about child's directed play. What I mean is that we're engaging in play with the child for the purpose of building a connection and improving our relationship, and it's very different from what we naturally do when we when we're playing with children. So this is like a really unique and different way of playing with children, and I believe, and I've seen, and there's research that indicates, that in the context of child centered play therapy, that kind of intervention is effective.
Speaker 2:That being said, our conversation today is just a little quick dip. We're dipping our toes in. You know, listening to this podcast isn't going to make somebody be ready to do child centered play therapy, but I'm hoping that it'll inspire someone to maybe want to learn more. And the other thing that I want to say is a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today may overlap and also sound very similar to what happens in parent child interaction therapy, which is another play based specific discipline, and so it's kind of like a melding of the two, because I want this to be most valuable to like the widest audience. So how can you play with children in a way that they are leading, and by you allowing them to lead, you are building and improving your relationship Boy. That was long winded, but I hope it was good.
Speaker 1:No, I think it's great and I I well want. I love that you're pointing out that this conversation is just the beginning of, maybe an inspiration for somebody who wants to learn more about this, and I also want for people to hear that you know, I've been working with kids and families for, you know, almost two decades. You have been working with kids and families for close to about that same amount of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, since 1995.
Speaker 1:Wow so longer, almost three decades.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So what we're suggesting here is that if what we're saying you think, oh, that sounds easy, or oh, I'm not sure, or oh, that's hard, we're saying to you this is not necessarily going to be something you step into and do beautifully the first 30 times. This is a practice to continue to build, just like all of your other therapeutic skills or, as a parent, just like all of the other parenting skills that you have. The things we're talking about today are going to be rooted in skill based things, so it's going to take time to practice, and so we just want to put that caveat out.
Speaker 2:There is also I could not agree with you more.
Speaker 2:When I talk to my students in the classroom about playing with children and following the child's lead, everyone's like yeah, like that makes sense, that's going to be. And then when they they go out and do it and I actually have my students videotape themselves and then watch the video and critique themselves like I can't believe how hard it is and, as you were suggesting, still to this day it's hard for me, I think, especially because we get so into the these patterns of I'm the leader and I am the one that needs to direct the process and I don't want to confuse things. But there are other ways of doing play therapy that it is very important for me to be the leader, so like I need to keep all of those muscles strong. But in this way of looking at play and child directed play, I have to get out of what my normal kind of intuitive pattern is. And it's hard, totally hard, and I agree with you that the more you practice it, the better you will get at it for sure.
Speaker 1:And I think also, if you're listening and you're thinking this might fit for me, or how do I know if this fits for me, I would say if you're a parent, give it a shot. If you are a therapist or a therapist in training, I would say seek supervision about whether the current style of therapy that you're trying may or may not be as effective as trying a child centered therapy approach. And so, I think, seeking supervision, if you're doing this therapeutically and as a parent, try some of these things and give it a shot and see what happens.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:Okay, we've already sort of established like it might be hard, it might be sticky. Give us some of the main ideas around child centered play. Just in general, how might they go about switching their lens to be child led rather than adult led?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. So I was trying to think of the common challenges that happen when I'm trying to follow a child's, and I came up with four. It's totally not an exclusive list, but the things that I came up with is that when I'm with a child and they are playing or we are playing together, I often want to ask, I often want to entertain, I often want to compete or I often want to control, and what I mean by control is like either stop a certain type of play or maybe I want to teach a certain skill, and so all of these things are actually okay, they're not bad, they're not problems. But if I'm deciding, if I'm committing to for this 15 minutes, I'm going to follow the child's lead. I don't want to ask, I don't want to entertain, I don't want to compete and I don't want to control.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, I just need to like pause for a second and take a deep breath for all the listeners out there that are like then what am I supposed to do, colleen? Okay, if I'm not allowed to ask questions, if I'm not allowed to entertain, if I'm not allowed to compete and I sure as heck I'm not allowed to control, then I've got nothing to do. I'm just like I don't know what to do with my body.
Speaker 2:Yes. So that's where students get stuck, and when they look at their own videos they're like, oh my gosh, I'm just sitting there watching, yes, so the thing is, we believe, if we believe in this type of play, we believe that children can communicate and that children are going to engage in play. That's important to them, and we actually really want to understand what's going on, because we love them, we care about them, so we want to understand. But then I've just said we shouldn't ask so how do we understand? We understand by paying attention, and so the kinds of ways that we can communicate, that we're paying attention include saying things like I see what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Oh, look at that. You're putting that block on top of that block. It kind of sounds silly, yeah, but what's happening there? When I say you're putting that block on top of that block, I'm saying to you hey, kid, you're important to me and what you're doing is important and I'm going to follow you, my natural intuitive instinct. What most people I think would do would be like you're building a tower, you're building a house. But I'm going to encourage people to not make that interpretation.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to say oh look, you're putting one block on top of the other. Because here's the thing, kitto might be building a tower, they might be building a house, or they might be building a castle or a wall or a robot or a rocket, and we don't really know what they intend to do until they can communicate that to us. And so just observing and saying out loud what we see is a very basic thing that we can do to communicate what you're doing is important. I'm paying attention.
Speaker 1:I have coached parents to say, as I'm noticing so it's really similar to what you're saying. It's so hard, like I can remember moments where I was trying to do child led play and I would make the interpretation when it's like I noticed that you are building a tower and I see, I mean I know then, but I see now again, because you're pointing it out again that that becomes a therapist led or a parent led statement. Right, because I am making the interpretation about what it is instead of letting them create whatever. The interpretation is that they may not know right now. They may not know what they're building right now, and that's OK too.
Speaker 2:Right, and a lot of times, kids really do want to please their adults, and so if I say, hey, beth, you're building a tower, yeah, no matter what you had in mind, you're likely to build a tower just to satisfy me. And again, that's not necessarily a problem. But in this kind of setting, by the way, I have to tell you another tangential story, beth, I was learning about child centered play therapy when I had a toddler at home and it was like, oh wow, this is so great, I'm learning all these skills. It's going to be so valuable to my parenting.
Speaker 2:And I tried to be child centered all of the time and I exhausted myself within two days. So one of the other things I want to say to your listeners is that when we talk about being child led, child led play, we're not talking about all of the time. Yeah, I'm suggesting that it might be a good idea if families can commit to 15 minutes once a week of a special play time where they are child led. That is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about constantly doing this all the time, because it's literally exhausting. None of us are meant to be therapists for our children 24 seven.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you said that. Ok, so we've given them some alternatives to asking right, so instead you can notice things, or, like I see, trying just to state exactly what you're seeing, like I see that you're putting the play dough on the table. I see that you're putting, I see that you're putting the play dough in your mouth, hmm, ok, so this is your moment to step out of child led play, right? Yes, this is your moment to step out and then correct misbehavior and back in. Would that be?
Speaker 2:what you say, yeah, so here's the thing even though in some therapy relationships I am completely child directed, there are still times that I actually have to set limits because, like exactly exactly what you were suggesting like the child is going to be in danger, or the child is going to get hurt or I'm going to get hurt. So limit setting is important. There is actually a model that I love in terms of how to set limits in a way that is still very empathic toward the child and very accepting of the child, and it's actually a model by a play therapist named Gary Landrip. I don't know if you know Gary Landrip.
Speaker 1:I do. I love what you're going to say. I know what you're going to say and I love it.
Speaker 2:Do you want me to talk about the ACT model? Yeah, let's do it. So the ACT model of limit setting suggests that, like, when children want or need to do something, it's because that's all they have in their repertoire. And so if we need to set a limit, we want to help them develop healthier alternatives. So in your example of child wants to put the play dough in his mouth, I might say something like oh, I see that you want to put the play dough in your mouth. The play dough isn't for eating. And then I want to give them options. I might give them a paper cup and say you can put the Play-Doh in the paper cup or you can put the Play-Doh in the garbage can. So I say I see that you want to do something, but that's not for doing in here. You can have this option or you can have that option.
Speaker 2:And I have to tell you, this was also really influential in my parenting. So when my child was early school age, we would have friends come over and every house has different rules, and in my house I have a rule that you don't jump on the bed. That's just one of my things. So instead of doing like the automatic mom thing which in my head is going no stop, don't jump on the bed. When kids came over and inevitably they wound up on the bed, I would go in and say oh, I see that you all want to jump on the bed. Beds in our house aren't for jumping on. You can come and jump in the living room on pillows on the floor or we can go outside and you can jump and across the board.
Speaker 2:100% of the time they chose something else and it wasn't me enforcing a rule on them. It was giving them more acceptable alternatives. So that kind of stuff happens in the playroom a lot. I see that you want to put the Play-Doh in your mouth. It's not for putting in your mouth. You can put it in the cup or you can put it in the garbage can, and sometimes the kiddo would like smush it into a cup. There was something about the smushing it somewhere that they needed to do?
Speaker 1:I mean, one of the most common things I say is kids are doing what they think is best. Right now, it's just inconvenient or unsettling to us. Most kids are not being naughty just to be naughty. Most kids are not sociopaths, just even statistically speaking. It's just that they follow the normal curve Without the alternatives. They're doing what they think is best, and I think that that's why this approach matters so much is because they, in this moment, need us to acknowledge hey, I know this looks fun and here's the limit, and here are some things within the limit that you can do. Pick something within the limit, agree. So now that we're past the Play-Doh in the mouth thing, how do we get around not entertaining me?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm not suggesting that adults should never entertain children. Yeah, yeah, but in those 15 minutes or so I think it's good to avoid it. And a lot of times kids are so used to that pattern of like the grown-up is going to entertain me. So the kid almost leads us up to being the entertainer, because that's what they're used to. So I'm going to suggest something that you might call like a stage whisper or something like that, or a kind of a director's whisper.
Speaker 2:So what I learned in training was that when the child says to me act like a teacher, I don't just decide what kind of teacher I'm going to be or how I'm going to act as the teacher. I'll do this. What's a teacher like? What kind of teacher should I be? So I'm literally, I'm taking their direction, but I'm asking them I don't know what kind of a teacher you want me to be, how should I do it? So it might go like this I want you to play the teacher. What kind of teacher should I be? You should be a mean teacher. Oh, what would a mean teacher say? A mean teacher might say you didn't do your homework, you're going to detention. So then I would say okay, you're going to detention because you didn't do your homework. Did I do it right?
Speaker 2:So that stage whisper or director's whisper, it kind of ensures that when I'm playing a role, that I'm playing it the way the child has it in mind and so it can work for other things, not just playing roles, but for example, even if we're playing Uno, I might be like do you want me to win? Do you want to win? Should I win on purpose? Should I lose on purpose? So that goes also to the competing thing. Like I believe in the child's ability to do what they need to do and play. I just need to get out of their way and let them do what they need to do. But I need to not make the storyline, I need to not determine how it's going to end. Everything that happens should be because they've said this is the way I need it to go.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? I love it and I love this example of the director's voice. I just can picture so many kids really just like playing right along with it. I can imagine so many kids already knowing how they want you to do it. I imagine them not being stumped by this. You know that they're like I know how I want you to be, I know how I want you to do, and often it's just a new experience for them to like be given the opportunity.
Speaker 2:It can be incredibly empowering, yes, and for the adult to say to the kid I'm going to play the role the way that you imagine it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the way that I am imagining it.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know, when we're thinking about clinical settings or even school settings, or even at home settings, what we have in our mind is like act like a teacher, or act like a mom, or act like a police officer. That may be very different from what they have in their mind is what we want to help them communicate.
Speaker 1:That's the important part. That's what we want to get at. We want to get at what they have in their mind and if we keep getting in the way, we just keep redirecting them away from where they're headed. Yeah, that's the difference. I mean, that's the part that I try to help parents understand too. It's that, to your point right.
Speaker 1:There's no real like, right or wrong, necessarily. It's just if I want to open a different type of relationship with my child or if I want to try a new way of engaging with my child, child directed play might be one of those tools you can try, and in small doses you may be really shocked at what you learn. I mean, I have been in situations I'm sure you have too right when I take this time to intentionally like let the child remove the veil, I'm like doing this thing with my arm, or I'm like taking something off or lifting something off, and that's how it has felt for me, that when I can do this, the child shows me a whole different way that they're encountering the world that I would have never known. Yeah, it's so enlightening for me as the adult in the room.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 2:You're making me think of my own 17 year old child at this moment.
Speaker 2:When they come home in a grumpy mood or a sad mood or upset, I can make all kinds of guesses as to what is bothering them, and maybe sometimes I'm going to get it right, but a lot of times I'm going to have no idea, because they have a whole life in a whole world outside of what I see.
Speaker 2:And so I think it's similar when I'm working with a three year old or a five year old or a seven year old, that like sure I have on my paperwork what's wrong or what the issue is or what the problem is. But to be honest with you, that thing that was written on that referral form or that one incident that is the reason why they're referred to therapy, may not in fact be what the biggest issue is for them. It might not be the most important dynamic or experience, it might not be what they're struggling with, yep. And so if I have in my mind that I have the map to the fix of the problem but I'm not even working on the right problem, I'm not going to help them heal as much.
Speaker 1:It's so true, and I think even little little kids, even preschoolers, learning their perception, can be so powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I don't want parents or teachers to think here that I'm suggesting that they have to be therapists because they're already doing enough by being good parents and good teachers. I guess to kind of like bring this to the to the nonclinical world, if we believe that kids can communicate through play, we really want to look for the themes and the stories that they bring to us, rather than us making that storyline. I can be entertaining, I can be funny, but does that help me to learn what's in the soul of the child? And it typically doesn't. So to let the child's story and theme emerge is going to help us learn more about what's going on for them.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what happens when I'm a parent and I'm noticing this theme or pattern and I don't like it? Or it's hard for me, or I I don't believe it Sometimes, as parents were like, what do you mean? You're lonely, what do you mean you are in you know this hard space or whatever. Like as a parent, that is just hard for me. So I guess how do I tolerate the distress of that if I do this 15 minutes with my child and what comes out of that kind of jolts me a little bit as a parent into this uncomfortable place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's a really good and big question. So I appreciate you asking good and big questions. So I would say that for everyone, especially teachers and parents, we need support because, because our everyday lives of caring for children, that in itself can be overwhelming. Besides everything else we have to do, like acknowledge that it is difficult and and and try and have a team which could just be one person that totally gets you and holds you and comforts you when, when you have difficult things. But what do I do in the moment?
Speaker 2:A lot of times, kids will communicate themes that make even me as a therapist uncomfortable. For example, the child might do aggressive play. Every single time I see them, they're always doing fighting or or or beating up and or they might play out something. The the story of the loss that my family just experienced, and it makes me super sad. So there's lots of things that do come up.
Speaker 2:I think that I have to, like make a mental note and pay attention to my own feelings and remind myself that I'm going to be here with this child for 15, 20 minutes, maybe even an hour. If it's a, if it's a therapy session, I'm going to take care of myself later. It's important for me to stay with the child. I want to have curiosity in my mind, but I don't want to again ask those questions or try to pry. So I want to be reflective of you know, what do I think might be going on?
Speaker 2:Why is this child often doing this theme of play? Or why is this theme the child often doing this theme of loss or aggression? To just be curious and observe. And if I notice like, let's say, I've had this weekly session for eight weeks now and I see this child is playing this similar theme over and over again, I might actually say something like I noticed that there's a lot of fighting in the play during our special play time. Or I notice that you play about losing someone when you come to me. So you could say something about what you notice. And not that I want to get all philosophical and theoretical, but one of the underlying theories and ideas of this kind of play in a in a clinical setting, is that I help the child to develop insight. The child may actually realize I play this a lot and may develop an understanding of themselves. What I will say, though, beth, more often than not, when I allow children to play out what they need to play out. The play usually evolves over time.
Speaker 2:So, it's not typically, you know, really serious aggression for eight, 12, 20 sessions. So I would say that it's not typical for kids to have the same kind of worrisome or problematic play week after week after week. Usually it evolves and the child comes to some kind of resolution and that's when I can actually see wow, this is helping the child process something that's important to them.
Speaker 1:I love this.
Speaker 1:I have seen this in my clinical work also that you know I'll have a friend of mine who comes to see me over and over and they do a lot of crashing of things, right, things crash, the toys crash together and it does evolve, right, as long as you can kind of stick with it. And so I'm glad that you kind of mentioned that. If you're seeing week one, week two, week three and you're like dang, my kid keeps talking about like killing people, or you know they keep being aggressive in some way, does that mean that they are going to turn into a serial killer? And if they're making other big statements or if they're having other like moments in their life, then maybe you need to have greater intensity or intentionality around those kinds of statements. But it might also just be that they're figuring out how to play and with setting those effective limits and continuing to let the play evolve over time you might begin to see some variation of conflict in the play. Right, that might tell us something else about what's going on with the child.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about concerns about the kinds of things that children play, and this often happened for me when I was doing play therapy in schools. There was a lot of concern oh, if you let the child do all this kind of play in the therapy room, they're going to think it's okay to act that way in other places. Yeah, yeah, and that's a very valid concern and I do want to make sure we talk about that. So my experience is that kids typically understand that special playtime has different rules and I've not seen kids have intense play in my room and then carry that out into the rest of their world. They really do know that this is special and that this is different.
Speaker 2:And what I would say to parents or teachers who want to do some child-directed play during their days is that they frame it in this special playtime and, whereas other times of the day, when the child is playing with other children, we might need to set a limit on aggressive play or we may need to set a limit on themes of play, like in the classroom or on the playground, when they're with me, I really want to tolerate it as much as possible because it's giving them that outlet.
Speaker 2:It's just like that, you know. Like as adults we go into therapy sessions and we might cry and we might yell and we might even use foul language. I do it in my therapy sessions so I don't have to do it in the rest of my life. You know what I mean. Oh, it's a good parallel. So if I can give the child that opportunity to express it with me, I always see that when they go out into the rest of the world they don't carry it over. And we're talking about like pretty intense themes here and I don't want parents to think that if they start letting their child lead the play, that it's always going to go to this. Really, good stuff.
Speaker 2:I think in clinical settings there is much more of that likelihood. I think that with children and their families your children and their teachers they're not going to have deep psychotherapy things that they need to process. They're going to process things about like, maybe always needing to win yeah, we're feeling very lonely or feeling afraid. They're going to possibly, in the themes of their play, communicate a feeling and when you can be the adult there and say it looks like somebody's scared or it looks like somebody feels so alone, that will help the child to feel so much more understood by you.
Speaker 2:And in the event that that play does get really deep with with parents or teachers, I do think it's a good idea to kind of like maybe check in and say you know, is this something that I should talk to a child therapist about? Is this something I should talk to a play therapist about? But I would be surprised if it got super deep like that. I think that kids know how much we're ready for and what we can handle. That being said, those those clinicians or those students in training to be clinicians, I think it's super important to always have a trusted supervisor that knows play and understands play therapy, so that they can talk through these things, because I've been really astounded at what you know, nonverbal three, four, five older children can, can process in this kind of relationship. So it can get very deep and really powerful. So we don't want to be like figuring this out on our own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love that you're saying like, hey, we're talking about the more extreme ends of things and that, for the most part, child directed play is just an engagement connection tool and that a huge proportion of our kids are just going to love the 15 minutes of time that they get with us. So for the parents out there, for the teachers out there who implement this with kind of the general population of children, you're just going to love it. When you can do it well, when you can feel like a release of freedom from the pressure to have to ask, to have to entertain, to have to compete, to have to control, like when you are free from having to do all of that, you can just go along with what the child wants to do for this 10 or 15 minutes of special play time and maybe you set a timer so that both you and the child know how much time you have left. Most kids are just going to love it.
Speaker 2:Can I tell you another quick story? Yes, so it's like a bright memory in my heart from many, many years ago that probably nobody ever remembers besides me. But I was at this family gathering in an uncle's backyard. And I don't know about you, but in my family whenever there's like a new baby, everyone's like, oh my gosh, the new baby so cute, so adorable. Everyone wants the new baby to like them and it was so funny. You know, everyone has their different personalities and ways of engaging, and so there's the adult that's, you know, trying to entertain. There's the adult that's trying to get the child to do something with them.
Speaker 2:So I had this magical experience. Where he was, he was probably like between one and two, he was about one and a half, and he just wanted to run around the backyard and every once in a while he would lay down and look up at the sky and laugh. So I started following him around the backyard and when he would lay down, I would lay down and we would look at the sky and laugh, and he was filled with joy. We did that for like 20 minutes, Like literally. He just kept getting up, running around, laying down, and I did the same exact thing, and it was.
Speaker 2:It was an incredible moment of connection and and the child was so happy to be with me he wasn't anywhere near having words, but that connection that we felt together, literally it's probably 20 years since it happened, but it still feels very connected and at that moment he felt very connected in a way that he enjoyed and I think, like I didn't even plan to talk about this, but following his lead, that's what I was doing. I was literally following his lead around the backyard and and that is what he, he enjoyed tremendously at that time and so if we could follow that child lead, it's a way to connect in a way that feels so different for them and also feels really good for us.
Speaker 1:Yes, Thank you for sharing. I mean just, I just couldn't love it more because it solidifies, it brings home the message that this does not have to be complicated. Right you don't have to have lots of materials, you don't have to have lots of things, you don't have to like set up the date and the time and the. I mean it can just be so simple and so powerful.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you liked it.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh, my goodness. Okay, last things that you wanted to say about Child Directed Play before we close out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so can I give a suggestion on where people might go to learn more if this is interesting to them?
Speaker 1:I would love that so much.
Speaker 2:So there is a lot of information on the internet about parent-child interaction therapy. You can just Google, search PCIT, and there's a set of skills that they call the Pride Skills. Oh yes, so many, so many organizations have put up really great handouts on this topic of Pride Skills, which are very similar to the kinds of things we're talking about today. I'd encourage people to look at that for lots of stuff, free stuff, online. And the other thing is if clinicians are interested in learning more about any particular type of play therapy, if they like this idea of Child Directed, I strongly recommend books, articles, trainings on child-centered play therapy. It is the most widely researched form of play therapy. We know it's effective, especially with young children, and the skills that you learn in child-centered play therapy are valuable across the board, as I was suggesting, not only in the therapy office and in the classroom, but also in parenting. So those are two things that, if people are interested, I think those are good ways to go in terms of trying to learn more.
Speaker 1:I love that and I can actually share a link to the Pride Skills stuff. For sure, it's something that I use with the preschooler population that I work with and their parents. It's really just a set of skills that are just easy to learn and easy to implement. You just have to learn a new way of kind of interacting. So, colleen, it's always so good to have you. I am so grateful for your expertise in play therapy and engaging with kids. I just am so grateful that you came back and part two has been incredible and I'm so grateful for you.
Speaker 2:I appreciate having these wonderful conversations with you and I'm so grateful for all the wonderful listeners, your parents, your teachers that are doing such good work with kids. I'm really glad to be able to support them and your work. Thank you, beth.
Speaker 1:I want to do all that I can as well to support parents and teachers. I mean, we are raising a generation of kids who's going to be different than we were. You know, they're just being raised in a time that's so different than when we were raised, and so I just love that we can walk alongside parents and teachers and future therapists, or current therapists, for that matter Anyone who's listening who falls into any of those categories. So thank you for listening, colleen. As always, it's a pleasure to chat with you and listener. Until next time, stay safe and stay well and ciao everyone.