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If you’re a child therapist using play therapy or play-based approaches, you have no doubt resonated with Garry Landreth’s famously quoted phrase – “Toys are children’s words and play is their language”. It has likely been instilled in your training, and you hold firmly to this anchor in your practice.

But at what cost?

What potential does the child miss out on if we don’t feel competent and confident to work with a child’s verbalisations in therapy?

Children communicate in many ways – through their play, behaviour, body, and patterns of relating.

And of course….Kids Talk Too!

They have valuable insights into their own experiences they are capable of speaking about.

They strive to make meaning of their experiences and communicate this through narrative.

They seek understanding and ask questions. 

As child therapists, if we’re not comfortable and skilled to go to these places the child want to go, we deny them these opportunities.

This is the second workshop in our “Kids Talk Too” series, and is designed especially for child and play therapists. 

This workshop will be facilitated by our Director, Katherine Olejniczak, a highly experienced Psychologist and Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor™ who has worked extensively over the recent years to document and share how cognitive therapy goals can be addressed in play therapy.

This workshop will provide essential foundational verbal counselling skills across 3 evidence-based cognitive therapy modalities highly relevant for children:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

You will also be provided with a range of play-based activities associated with each of these modalities covered.

Our goal is to support you to integrate developmentally appropriate verbal counselling techniques seamlessly with your play-based interventions so you can effectively respond to the child’s need for this when it arises in sessions.

As a BONUS OFFERING, all participants will receive FREE access to a 2-hour recorded webinar introducing the Play Therapy Dimensions Model – a very helpful model that can help guide clinical decision-making when working integratively with multiple therapy modalities.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

•  Describe the principles and indicators for using cognitive counselling in the context of play therapy and play-based children’s counselling
•  Use foundational CBT play-based counselling skills with children
•  Use foundational DBT play-based counselling skills with children
•  Use foundational ACT play-based counselling skills with children
•  Seamlessly and naturally integrate cognitive counselling techniques within the play therapy process

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

This workshop is essential for play therapists and other child therapists from various professional backgrounds (e.g. psychologists, social workers, counsellors, MHAOTs etc.). Supervisors will also benefit as the workshop offers a helpful process for supporting supervisees in this area of their work.

POST-TRAINING SUPPORT

To provide a pathway for ongoing reflection, questions and discussion, we have established a closed Facebook Group which all workshop participants are invited to join. All the details will be provided on completion of the training.

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