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How to Engage Challenging Parents in Play Therapy · Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

• 0:02
  Cathi Spooner: Welcome to Next Level Play Therapy, a weekly podcast dedicated to supporting the next generation of child and adolescent therapists to provide exceptional play therapy services.
• 0:14
  Cathi Spooner: We'll explore all things play therapy to elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play.
• 0:23
  Cathi Spooner: I'll discuss practical tips and ideas so you can provide a transformative experience for your young clients and make a real difference in their lives.
• 0:34
  Cathi Spooner: So get ready to take your play therapy skills to the next level and make a lasting impact in the lives of children, adolescents, and families.
• 0:47
  Cathi Spooner: Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Next Level Play Therapy.
• 0:53
  Cathi Spooner: Today we're going to talk about engaging parents, especially engaging challenging parents in the play therapy process.
• 1:02
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're a play therapist or maybe you're a child and adolescent therapist and you are kind of working with kids and adults, I'm sorry, and adolescents and you're probably experienced some challenges, maybe figuring out how to engage parents.
• 1:26
  Cathi Spooner: Maybe you've had them in sessions and it hasn't gone very well.
• 1:32
  Cathi Spooner: That's what I want to talk about today is giving you some tips and strategies that I've used and learned over the last 30 plus years through trial and error, um, to really gain the trust of parents, even challenging parents, and know how to engage them more effectively.
• 1:58
  Cathi Spooner: The byproduct of this is that you, you get rid of your imposter syndrome.
• 2:04
  Cathi Spooner: It's been my experience that play therapists probably their, their imposter syndrome probably comes out more when working with parents.
• 2:16
  Cathi Spooner: And it, it makes sense when you think about it, because most of the training that you get is based on working with kids.
• 2:24
  Cathi Spooner: And you know, you can get kids in the playroom and play with them.
• 2:28
  Cathi Spooner: And, and, and it's magic.
• 2:31
  Cathi Spooner: Then you build your rapport.
• 2:33
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, every once in a while we get some challenging and, and there are some challenging, children with really complex issues that we work with.
• 2:43
  Cathi Spooner: Typically what comes up, though, a lot of times, not always, but a lot of times when I am talking to people because I do a lot of consultation, I have my Play therapy Academy program, which is my online consultation program.
• 3:00
  Cathi Spooner: A lot of what comes out of the discussions is challenges figuring out how to work with parents.
• 3:10
  Cathi Spooner: And when I say parents, I'm going to use that in a generic way.
• 3:14
  Cathi Spooner: Um, anybody, any adult, any grown up kind of functioning in that parenting role for the child, because sometimes we work with kids who aren't living with their parents.
• 3:28
  Cathi Spooner: Maybe they're living with another family member or they're only living with one parent.
• 3:35
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and they may or may not have contact with the other parent.
• 3:39
  Cathi Spooner: or maybe they're living with grandparents.
• 3:42
  Cathi Spooner: So when I say parents, it's more of a generic, any of the grownups functioning in that parenting role.
• 3:49
  Cathi Spooner: And it can be challenging knowing how to engage parents in the change process in play therapy.
• 3:58
  Cathi Spooner: And so we also know that it's important.
• 4:02
  Cathi Spooner: If you're working with children and adolescents, then, you know, children don't exist in a vacuum.
• 4:09
  Cathi Spooner: They exist and are dependent upon and daily interact with their family members.
• 4:17
  Cathi Spooner: So parents, siblings, and we know from neuroscience and attachment, and especially all of the work that we're learning about interpersonal neurobiology and some of the work of, um, other early researchers like, um, Alan Shore and Peter Fonagy and his colleagues, learning about the role of those early experiences, on the formulation of emotion, regulation, capacity, also our identity.
• 4:56
  Cathi Spooner: So who we are, my beliefs about myself, others and relationships all come from these really important family relationships.
• 5:07
  Cathi Spooner: And we also know when parents are doing better, children do better.
• 5:13
  Cathi Spooner: I, I really kind of believe that a lot of the, uh, challenges that children are facing right now is because there's so much anxiety and distress and just some challenges with everything going on in the world, maybe in your community, I know here in the U.
• 5:33
  Cathi Spooner: S.
• 5:34
  Cathi Spooner: where families are really struggling.
• 5:37
  Cathi Spooner: And When we're able to create that strong environment where children can thrive within their home, we know they do better.
• 5:50
  Cathi Spooner: That's how they develop resiliency.
• 5:53
  Cathi Spooner: And to, to me as a play therapist, I think we really can do a better job of integrating parents.
• 6:02
  Cathi Spooner: And also, I'm a big fan of using a family systems lens with attachment and neuroscience to engage and look at relationship patterns going on within the family system.
• 6:19
  Cathi Spooner: I think we don't think a lot about sibling relationships and the role that they have to create a safe place to create strong support relationships.
• 6:33
  Cathi Spooner: All of all of those, that environment that children live in.
• 6:38
  Cathi Spooner: I think we can do a better job of finding ways to support children by supporting their parents and supporting their family systems.
• 6:49
  Cathi Spooner: So that And we also know that can be challenging.
• 6:53
  Cathi Spooner: We know that can be hard.
• 6:55
  Cathi Spooner: So that's what I want to talk about today is giving you some tips and strategies, how to engage parents more effectively, more confidently in the change process.
• 7:11
  Cathi Spooner: And I am also going to talk about my Attachment Focused Family Play Therapy model that I developed several years ago.
• 7:22
  Cathi Spooner: Actually, it's been longer than several years ago.
• 7:26
  Cathi Spooner: Because I needed a way that had enough flexibility, but was also rooted and grounded in theory and family systems and attachment and neuroscience that had enough flexibility to work with parents or just work with siblings or get the whole family in there or parts of the family and facilitate the change that I'm about to talk about today.
• 7:49
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're interested to learn more about that, I do have a live webinar coming up and or a recorded version if you're not able to attend the live webinar.
• 8:00
  Cathi Spooner: So you'll want to hang on to the end.
• 8:01
  Cathi Spooner: I'm going to talk a little bit more about it.
• 8:03
  Cathi Spooner: I'll also talk about my book, which I based the webinar on attachment focused family play therapy.
• 8:11
  Cathi Spooner: So let's get started for today.
• 8:13
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're watching, I would love to see who's here, post your name in the comments, um, where you're from, what population you're working with, what are your challenges?
• 8:28
  Cathi Spooner: Feel free to ask questions.
• 8:29
  Cathi Spooner: The only thing that I ask is that you don't bring up like specific client issues because it is a public format.
• 8:38
  Cathi Spooner: So we, we want to keep it more private and maintain that privacy.
• 8:43
  Cathi Spooner: And feel free to join this discussion.
• 8:46
  Cathi Spooner: If you're watching live, I would love to hear from you.
• 8:50
  Cathi Spooner: If you're watching on the replay, I would also like to know, uh, your thoughts, where you're from, what population you work with.
• 8:58
  Cathi Spooner: And for those of you who are listening on the podcast, um, feel free to join the conversation.
• 9:07
  Cathi Spooner: And for those of you listening on the podcast, there is a recorded version of the training that I have coming up as well.
• 9:13
  Cathi Spooner: And I'll talk more about that as we go along.
• 9:17
  Cathi Spooner: So first things first, today's topic is really on how to engage challenging parents in the play therapy process.
• 9:30
  Cathi Spooner: And to do that, you really need to think about what lens, what theoretical lens that you're kind of looking through.
• 9:43
  Cathi Spooner: So what do I mean by that?
• 9:47
  Cathi Spooner: Our theoretical model helps us understand and make sense of what's going on.
• 9:53
  Cathi Spooner: So when we're seeing certain things happening, we conceptualize them from a specific theoretical model that's going to influence why we think the behavior is happening and what patterns in the client's life are supporting that.
• 10:11
  Cathi Spooner: That's your case conceptualization, which will be based on your theoretical model.
• 10:16
  Cathi Spooner: So I, when I'm working with children, especially when, um, when I'm thinking systemically and I'm looking at them with in context of their family system, then I love using an attachment and neuroscience lens to conceptualize that with some family systems theory kind of thrown in there.
• 10:42
  Cathi Spooner: Um, because that's going to help you figure out what's the role.
• 10:47
  Cathi Spooner: Once you figure out why the behavior is, or, you know, get a good sense in the beginning, we're not always going to know everything, right from day one.
• 10:56
  Cathi Spooner: Some of that.
• 10:56
  Cathi Spooner: I usually like to take like the first 90 90 days to get a really good sense of things.
• 11:03
  Cathi Spooner: Um, And I'm going to use that information to help me figure out what's going on.
• 11:12
  Cathi Spooner: And my theoretical lens is going to help me figure out what's the role of parents.
• 11:18
  Cathi Spooner: What is the role of parents?
• 11:21
  Cathi Spooner: in the treatment that you provide for children and adolescents.
• 11:26
  Cathi Spooner: And in play therapy, there's kind of this traditional approach of you just focus on the individual client, which is the child.
• 11:36
  Cathi Spooner: And that makes sense because it answers the question, who's the client.
• 11:40
  Cathi Spooner: From a play therapy perspective, the child is the client.
• 11:45
  Cathi Spooner: However, that doesn't mean that we don't look at the child in context.
• 11:52
  Cathi Spooner: We look at the child in context of what's going on in their family.
• 11:57
  Cathi Spooner: And the role of parents and, and in the change process, helping their child through the change process.
• 12:08
  Cathi Spooner: So when we see parents as a vital component of the change process, then we'll begin to formulate our expectations.
• 12:20
  Cathi Spooner: You can't really clearly communicate expectations to parents about their role in the change process if you haven't first figured that out for yourself.
• 12:31
  Cathi Spooner: A lot of mistakes that I see happen a lot are, you know, as play therapists or child and adolescent therapists, you know, parents are important.
• 12:41
  Cathi Spooner: So you want to involve them or any number of reasons child won't go in the session alone or, um, you're noticing parents are anxious or you start worrying about, um, what's going to happen, what parents are thinking is going on in the play, in the playroom without being present.
• 13:02
  Cathi Spooner: All of these things, all of these, um, worries pop up in your head.
• 13:09
  Cathi Spooner: And so then, you just kind of plop parents in the session with no plan, no understanding of what their role is.
• 13:19
  Cathi Spooner: Um, no discussion with them about their role.
• 13:23
  Cathi Spooner: And then what ends up happening is it feels awkward.
• 13:26
  Cathi Spooner: You feel awkward.
• 13:27
  Cathi Spooner: Your imposter syndrome starts going off the chain.
• 13:31
  Cathi Spooner: And a lot of that is, is due to not really, not really having a plan based on, um, your expectations.
• 13:43
  Cathi Spooner: And your expectations are going to be based on how you see parents role in the change process.
• 13:51
  Cathi Spooner: So, so that's why it's important really to, um, have that theoretical model that you're looking at.
• 14:00
  Cathi Spooner: I like using neuroscience and attachment because from the from the research, decades of research have shown us from a neurobiological standpoint and, uh, theoretical, we, we see the, the influence of these family and attachment relationships um, on the ability for children to regulate their emotions for that their beliefs about themselves, who they are, their capability, their self esteem, their self concepts.
• 14:36
  Cathi Spooner: All of those are rooted in these really important relationships for children.
• 14:45
  Cathi Spooner: The next thing is once you, you know, you have your, you have your case conceptualization, and you have your theory lens, you're looking at this from a neuroscience and attachment lens.
• 15:00
  Cathi Spooner: So you understand the role of parents, you understand how to communicate that to them based on these things.
• 15:11
  Cathi Spooner: Underlying all of this is building trust in order to really engage parents.
• 15:19
  Cathi Spooner: You really have to build trust with them.
• 15:22
  Cathi Spooner: And if you've listened to any of my previous live stream episodes or, or replays, then you know that, um, building trust is a really important part of the process.
• 15:38
  Cathi Spooner: Because parents, already feel, most of them, the vast majority of parents bringing their child already feel like failures.
• 15:47
  Cathi Spooner: They're going to be convinced that you think they're a terrible parent.
• 15:52
  Cathi Spooner: You that you're judging their parenting.
• 15:54
  Cathi Spooner: They've heard 97 million trillion things on the internet about what makes a good parent.
• 16:01
  Cathi Spooner: They've seen other people showing up on Instagram and all of that, maybe Tik Tok about their fabulous relationships with their children.
• 16:13
  Cathi Spooner: We know that social media has an influence on creating anxiety and depression in people.
• 16:20
  Cathi Spooner: So they're seeing all these things and being bombarded.
• 16:24
  Cathi Spooner: And hearing 97 million things about, you have to do this to be a good parent, or you have to be this to do a good parent, or if you do this, or if you show up imperfectly, you feel like you've just failed your child, right?
• 16:37
  Cathi Spooner: So building relationship with parents means you're really knowing how to engage that therapeutic use of self.
• 16:50
  Cathi Spooner: Your therapeutic use of self in a professional capacity means you show up authentically and congruently with empathy and unconditional positive regard with parents.
• 17:05
  Cathi Spooner: Now, we have to hold some hard things sometimes, and that doesn't necessarily mean we don't have hard conversations.
• 17:12
  Cathi Spooner: Sometimes we need to have hard conversations.
• 17:15
  Cathi Spooner: If you have built that trust with them, if they believe that you are not judging them, if you believe that you are there to support them, if they believe you are there to support them, then you're going to build that trust.
• 17:31
  Cathi Spooner: And when you build that trust, they're going to be more willing to make the hard changes that you're asking them to make.
• 17:39
  Cathi Spooner: To do that, though, you have to have a consistent and dedicated time to meet with them.
• 17:47
  Cathi Spooner: They are not, you know, some parents, you can do the five minute check ins at the end, or you can, you can do the, um, texting or emails, which I never, never, never recommend those doing therapy via text or email.
• 18:03
  Cathi Spooner: You really need to do it face to face or Zoom if you're, if you're doing them online, do them by Zoom.
• 18:09
  Cathi Spooner: Um, then you really, you need that time to build that trust to be in the room with them so that they can experience you as supporting them in the service of helping their child.
• 18:25
  Cathi Spooner: So that's what makes it different than that, uh, doing individual counseling with parents.
• 18:30
  Cathi Spooner: You're, you're meeting with them.
• 18:32
  Cathi Spooner: The whole focus is what's going to help their child.
• 18:36
  Cathi Spooner: make the necessary changes and get the healing that they need.
• 18:39
  Cathi Spooner: That's the focus.
• 18:40
  Cathi Spooner: That's where you're still keeping child as the client.
• 18:47
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so you really need to build trust and then once you, so now you have your theory model.
• 18:56
  Cathi Spooner: You, you understand the role of parents.
• 18:59
  Cathi Spooner: You're using your neuroscience and attachment lens.
• 19:03
  Cathi Spooner: Um, you've built that trust.
• 19:06
  Cathi Spooner: Part of knowing how to engage parents is, um, really understanding their capacity.
• 19:17
  Cathi Spooner: So what are their strengths?
• 19:18
  Cathi Spooner: You want to focus on those.
• 19:20
  Cathi Spooner: Also, where areas that they can use more support.
• 19:25
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, who of us doesn't need support?
• 19:27
  Cathi Spooner: When my kids were little, it was nice getting support.
• 19:30
  Cathi Spooner: I, you know, parenting is hard.
• 19:32
  Cathi Spooner: I didn't always do it perfectly.
• 19:35
  Cathi Spooner: Once I, you know, you build that trust, then you also are helping them make the changes that they need to make, but you first have to know what they are.
• 19:46
  Cathi Spooner: And in order to do that, you need to have them in the room.
• 19:49
  Cathi Spooner: I think one of the best ways to do that, to get a sense of parenting strengths and, um, where they may need support is to get them in the therapy room with you, with their child, to at least use, um, the play therapy sessions with the child and their parent.
• 20:15
  Cathi Spooner: And then also to get a better sense of how both if you if they're with both parents are in the home, get both parents in there with the family, get them in there with the siblings.
• 20:30
  Cathi Spooner: Um, you'll get a sense of how they're managing the dynamics in the home.
• 20:36
  Cathi Spooner: You'll see it in real time.
• 20:39
  Cathi Spooner: You won't have to rely on self report because I don't know about you.
• 20:43
  Cathi Spooner: How many times have you had this happen where you're, you're meeting with your client, you're doing your individual counseling sessions, you're meeting with parents and what parents are reporting doesn't seem to be lining up with what's going on.
• 21:02
  Cathi Spooner: And that doesn't mean, um, that they're not, you know, that they're lying.
• 21:06
  Cathi Spooner: I don't need to suggest that at all, but they don't know.
• 21:10
  Cathi Spooner: They're not trained like we're trained.
• 21:14
  Cathi Spooner: They don't know.
• 21:15
  Cathi Spooner: That's why they're coming to you.
• 21:17
  Cathi Spooner: They need you to know.
• 21:18
  Cathi Spooner: They're reporting to you what they know.
• 21:21
  Cathi Spooner: They're reporting to you what is their perspective, how they're perceiving things.
• 21:29
  Cathi Spooner: So unless you get them in there, in the session, then you don't really have a chance to see using your clinical lens to understand what's going on.
• 21:42
  Cathi Spooner: And so in my mind, really the best way to assess that parenting capacity, where their strengths are, because you really want to focus on those, and where they need extra support is to get them in the play therapy room and to integrate them in the play therapy process.
• 22:06
  Cathi Spooner: You'll have more, especially with the more challenging parents, you'll have more luck with that when you've built trust to get them in there.
• 22:14
  Cathi Spooner: But the other thing is you need to have a framework.
• 22:17
  Cathi Spooner: You need to have a model in which helps you know what to do in the sessions.
• 22:26
  Cathi Spooner: That's one of the reasons that I created my Attachment Focused Family Play Therapy model.
• 22:33
  Cathi Spooner: My, I, I say my default, so I'm a licensed clinical social worker.
• 22:38
  Cathi Spooner: Um, And I got my, I got my master's degree back in the early nineties and my whole focus since grad school, like when I learned about family systems theory in graduate school, like a million years ago, I was like a new convert to Jesus, man.
• 22:56
  Cathi Spooner: I, I learned about this family therapy, I was like spreading the gospel of family therapy.
• 23:04
  Cathi Spooner: I thought it was the best thing I had ever heard of.
• 23:07
  Cathi Spooner: Now, mind you, this was really back in the early nineties.
• 23:11
  Cathi Spooner: So back then it was kind of the new thing.
• 23:14
  Cathi Spooner: And a lot of the graduate programs didn't even integrate.
• 23:18
  Cathi Spooner: You didn't really even get family systems work like we do now.
• 23:22
  Cathi Spooner: It's not nearly as integrated as it is now.
• 23:25
  Cathi Spooner: And my whole program, my whole, um, specialization or concentration clinical work was learning family systems theory.
• 23:34
  Cathi Spooner: Well, then fast forward several years later and learning about attachment theory.
• 23:40
  Cathi Spooner: Oh my goodness.
• 23:41
  Cathi Spooner: Attachment theory, neuroscience, family systems.
• 23:45
  Cathi Spooner: I was in heaven, clinical theoretical heaven.
• 23:49
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so to me it makes so much sense to integrate parents in there.
• 23:57
  Cathi Spooner: And so I'm, I'm a big, um, proponent of that getting, getting them in there.
• 24:05
  Cathi Spooner: But we need a framework, like we need a framework that helps us know what to do in sessions, how to pick the interventions?
• 24:14
  Cathi Spooner: How do you know which stage of change they're in?
• 24:17
  Cathi Spooner: How do you access those therapeutic powers of play?
• 24:20
  Cathi Spooner: How do you deal with all of those different ages and developmental stages?
• 24:26
  Cathi Spooner: Like what if you have a six year old and a 10 year old and a 16 year old in the session?
• 24:32
  Cathi Spooner: How do you keep them all engaged?
• 24:34
  Cathi Spooner: Well, your, your model is going to help you figure that out.
• 24:38
  Cathi Spooner: And to me, that's the beauty of play therapy.
• 24:41
  Cathi Spooner: Play therapy means you can use those therapeutic powers of play and get, get everybody engaged that way and trust that with parents will help them get engaged because it's, um, sometimes parents are a little uncomfortable doing something other than talking.
• 25:00
  Cathi Spooner: They might, uh, be a little uncomfortable using the play process, but the best way to do that is get them all in there and having a theory model to do that, um, understanding and assessing, helping you understand strengths and areas where they need more support is really important.
• 25:22
  Cathi Spooner: And then the final thing that I wanted to share, I've kind of already started sharing that, which is using a family systems lens to, um, family play therapy lens to facilitate that engagement and change.
• 25:41
  Cathi Spooner: So I, I kind of already started talking about that a little bit.
• 25:45
  Cathi Spooner: You have that framework that's going to guide you through the change process.
• 25:50
  Cathi Spooner: It's going to help you understand and clearly communicate how to what the parents role is and what they're going to be doing, what you are going to be doing it.
• 26:04
  Cathi Spooner: The having that mot that family play therapy allows you to see in real time what is going on.
• 26:13
  Cathi Spooner: And allows parents to be able to practice some of those attachment focused parenting skills that you're going to teach them.
• 26:23
  Cathi Spooner: They can use those in real time and get support with you.
• 26:27
  Cathi Spooner: Um, in my attachment focused family play therapy model, there's also a whole structure of when you're meeting with parent, just parents alone, how you're partnering with them through the change process.
• 26:43
  Cathi Spooner: And building that rapport with them in addition to what you're doing in those family play therapy sessions.
• 26:51
  Cathi Spooner: And you get to see in real time what's going on in the family, all those family patterns, the relationship patterns, and you're creating and you're using and implementing the interventions, those play therapy activities in real time with family members, helping them to make that shift to create that secure attachment environment that creates support and resiliency for clients.
• 27:28
  Cathi Spooner: And why would you not want to promote healing within the whole family system?
• 27:34
  Cathi Spooner: That's kind of how I look at it.
• 27:36
  Cathi Spooner: You build a support network for your clients with their siblings and with their parents.
• 27:44
  Cathi Spooner: So that is it for today.
• 27:47
  Cathi Spooner: So let me do a quick recap.
• 27:50
  Cathi Spooner: So, um, Really engaging parents in play therapy can be difficult, especially if you aren't clear yourself about what, how parents are going to be involved in the change process.
• 28:06
  Cathi Spooner: And to me, using an attachment and neuroscience lens helps me to conceptualize how children can benefit by having their parents.
• 28:18
  Cathi Spooner: in the play therapy process.
• 28:20
  Cathi Spooner: And because now you understand the role of parents and you can communicate that to parents from the very beginning, rather than just kind of having them in session and winging it and not really knowing what to do.
• 28:37
  Cathi Spooner: And then you're imposter syndrome kicks in.
• 28:40
  Cathi Spooner: Parents are kind of confused and it just doesn't feel very good.
• 28:45
  Cathi Spooner: Um, I have been there and I, I have found when I have a model to use, then I feel more confident and I have a better idea how to help my clients.
• 28:59
  Cathi Spooner: So that always makes me feel better.
• 29:02
  Cathi Spooner: Right?
• 29:02
  Cathi Spooner: Because we want to make a change.
• 29:04
  Cathi Spooner: That's why we got into this profession.
• 29:06
  Cathi Spooner: We want to make a difference, which means we need to really have that grounding in a theoretical model that's going to guide us through and help us understand who needs to be in the session and who may be not be in the session.
• 29:24
  Cathi Spooner: And the, the second thing is really the glue to making this all work is building rapport with parents.
• 29:35
  Cathi Spooner: Building rapport with parents means that you need to build trust with them, that therapeutic use of self where you're demonstrating unconditional positive regard and empathy.
• 29:50
  Cathi Spooner: And again, that doesn't mean you don't have hard conversations and it doesn't mean that you're not going to challenge.
• 29:57
  Cathi Spooner: Once you've established that trust and once parents have, um, experienced you as seeing them and actually hearing them and not judging them, then they will make those changes.
• 30:13
  Cathi Spooner: Then you can have those hard conversations, but not before them.
• 30:17
  Cathi Spooner: They have to trust you first or It's not very likely they're going to make those changes you're asking them to make.
• 30:26
  Cathi Spooner: And then once we had, so we have that theoretical model, we understand the role of parents, we have that, um, understanding of how to identify and understand what the problem is and identifying those patterns that are sustaining it.
• 30:44
  Cathi Spooner: We've built trust and now we also want to assess parenting abilities, parenting strengths, and where they need additional support.
• 30:57
  Cathi Spooner: And my, my belief is the best way to do that is to get them in the room with the child.
• 31:06
  Cathi Spooner: Um, have a plan, have a framework that you're using that helps you understand it's grounded in theory, and then helps you understand what you're supposed to be doing in those sessions.
• 31:18
  Cathi Spooner: And how are you working with parents to really to really understand and assess strengths and areas of need I think you really need to get them in the in the playroom with you because then you're seeing for yourself.
• 31:35
  Cathi Spooner: You're using your clinical expertise and training and understanding and not relying on them and their perception because they're not trained like you are.
• 31:47
  Cathi Spooner: They're coming because they need you to figure it out.
• 31:51
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and then the final thing is that I believe using a family play therapy model will help to engage parents in a really deep way to really help them engage in a meaningful way in the change process where they feel supported as your partner in the change process.
• 32:18
  Cathi Spooner: And you have a plan, you have a framework, you know what to do in each phase of the change process.
• 32:29
  Cathi Spooner: You know how to help parents learn some attachment based parenting skills.
• 32:36
  Cathi Spooner: You have that relationship with them to help them use and use those skills and practice those skills and get feedback from you of what's going well and working collaboratively.
• 32:49
  Cathi Spooner: My mouth's not working.
• 32:52
  Cathi Spooner: Working collaboratively with them in that healing process.
• 32:58
  Cathi Spooner: So, uh, that is it for this week and I will see you next week.
• 33:04
  Cathi Spooner: Bye for now.
• 33:08
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy.
• 33:13
  Cathi Spooner: I hope you found the discussion valuable and gained new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal.
• 33:22
  Cathi Spooner: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
• 33:28
  Cathi Spooner: Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information.
• 33:33
  Cathi Spooner: Remember, play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth.
• 33:38
  Cathi Spooner: Whether you're a new play therapist or experienced, I encourage you to continue your learning journey to unlock the potential of play in your own work and relationships.
• 33:50
  Cathi Spooner: If you have any questions, or topics, suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you.
• 33:57
  Cathi Spooner: Connect with me on social media, and visit my website at Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training to stay updated and on upcoming episodes, trainings, and resources.
• 34:09
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 34:13
  Cathi Spooner: Until next time, keep playing, learning, and growing.