436 | Should You Ever End a CCPT Session Early? (Clarifying Ultimate Limits in CCPT)

Play Therapy Podcast: A Master-Class in Child-Centered Play Therapy · Sep 22, 2026 · 14m · transcript

In this episode, I clear up an important misconception about ultimate limits in child-centered play therapy: Can a child ever "choose" to lose the rest of their play session? While some approaches to CCPT teach ending playtime as an ultimate consequence, I explain why that is not consistent with the Landreth model as clarified in the fourth edition of Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship. Landreth emphasizes patience, moving through the ACT limit-setting sequence at least three times—and often more—and using the final step only rarely. In almost every situation, the appropriate ultimate…