Happy New Year, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for my first podcast of 2022. My goodness, it’s going to be a really exciting year.
We have an amazing lineup of special guests and topics, so thank you. I feel like I say thank you so much to all of you, but you really don’t know how much I appreciate you and how thankful I am that you are a part of my life. Even if we’ve never met before.
I want you to know how important you are to me and how much I appreciate the questions and the conversation that you do have with me through emails and your requests. And I’m so loving these new conversations that are happening with some of my guests. I hope you are loving and appreciating them as well.
And to kick off January 2020 two’s first podcast, I’m jumping into again one of our requested topics, which is on how do we translate the play? So hopefully this conversation will give you some tips that you’ll find really useful and help make what can be a kind of a confusing process, something that is a little bit more clear. So translating the play is really important for a handful of reasons. And the two main that I want to talk about are, number one, for our own clinical understanding of what’s going on, and then the second, so that we can communicate back to the parents and the caregivers.
So when we think about translating the play, in order for us to even begin to translate the play, we have to have some sense of what’s actually happening and for us to even put ourselves in the position to really think through what is going on here, right? What exactly are we working on and how are we working on this through play? How are we working on the goals just to be able to conceptualize that is a really big deal for us clinically because it helps us as clinicians be able to understand where the child is in the process. I can’t tell you how many play therapists I have interacted with that say, Lisa, I know we’re doing something, I just don’t know what we’re playing. I know we’re playing something out.
I know it’s important. I can feel it’s important. The child knows it’s important.
I just don’t know what it is. And so for us to even be able to have the conversation with the parents and the caregivers requires us to be able to make sense of what’s going on in the room. So that’s just helpful for us in our own ability to facilitate the process.
And then as I’m talking about our understanding of that, then goes a long way for us to be able to then have conversations with the parents and caregivers, maybe even possibly teachers or whoever it is that we might need to be able to collaborate with to be able to support this particular child. So I want to give you some tips here. Let’s talk a little bit about what are we looking for and how do we make sense of this? So my opinion about this whole thing is that we can’t even start the conversation unless we go back to those dang goals.
And I know on this podcast series I’ve talked about goals many times, but I’m going to talk about it again because play therapists, we’re so resistant to goals sometimes we’re so right brain. We don’t want to track goals, but they’re so important. And the reason why it’s important for translating the play is because the goal is the thing that you’re going to translate the play to.
So let me give you a little bit more context for what I am talking about. If I am in the session with a child, and let’s say that we are playing through an experience related to anxiety and hypervigilance. Now, I could just talk about anxiety and hyper vigilance with the parents and caregivers, but that’s not as meaningful if I don’t connect it back to the goal, why the child was there in the first place.
So let’s say that the goal is that the child is not sleeping well at night or has regressed in some way and wants to be back in their parents and caregivers bed. Well, that’s the reason why the child is there. That’s the buy in, right? That’s the thing that the parents and caregivers are like, I’m willing to bring my kid, I’m willing to pay the money.
This is where I’m invested. And so if we don’t translate the play back to the goals, we actually lose parental buy in. So when you’re translating the play, this is my first tip.
It’s important that whatever is happening in the room, that you are translating it back and connecting it back to the goal that the child is there to be what the clinical goal is in the first place because that is going to have the most meaning and the most relevance to the parent and the caregiver. Not to mention that’s also what you’re tracking to make sure that therapy is successful. You’re tracking the shift and the changes related to the goals.
Now, when we get into goals, we don’t have to get all technical about like 80% of the time or decrease whatever, three out of five or whatever. I’m sort of laughing at myself as I’m throwing out all of these different numbers. It’s not about that.
It’s about getting an overall sense of what is it that we are working towards. And when you’re communicating with the parents and caregivers, you are coming back to that every single conversation over and over and over and over again. There are past episodes where I go into how to set the goals.
So make sure that you go and you check those out. That’s the first thing is we can’t even talk about translating the play until we talk about the goals and what to even translate it towards. All right, now let’s go into the play itself.
Now there’s lot of different opinions about how to go about this or how to make sense of the child’s play and what to share and what not to share. So I’m just giving you one idea. It’s always important that you hear that when I’m offering different ideas and suggestions in this podcast.
It really simply is that it’s just an idea and a suggestion. I am not claiming to know better or know the best way. I know a way and I’m offering it to you so that you can consider it and see if it works for you and at minimum for you to think it through because that just helps you get more clear on what’s meaningful for you.
And you all know at this point in this podcast series, if you’ve been following with me, the thing that I’m most invested about is for you to be you in that playroom. That is the greatest gift that you can give your child clients. And so any conversation that we’re having, if it helps you fine tune your own appreciation for yourself or your own understanding of who you are or what your theoretical orientation or practice is, then yahoo.
Because that is really the larger goal for me, for you, is for you to really be able to embrace who you are, be yourself and bring your amazing gifts and talents to the field and to support children in a way that feels really deeply meaningful for you. So, having said that, when we’re translating the play, I tend to not share with the parents and caregivers the details of what goes on in play. And the reason why is because I really want to honor and protect the confidentiality that’s going on in the room with the client.
So how I set this up is this. When I am doing the intake with whoever it is that I’m doing the intake with which the parents or caregivers or whomever I will explain to them that when we meet, and obviously in this, I’m assuming that I’m translating the play in sessions when they’re not a part of the sessions. This is a different conversation when they’re actually in the room because they’re in the play and they’re seeing it and they have more of a felt sense and understanding naturally of what’s going on because they’re involved in the play itself.
So this part of the conversation is if I happen to have a session where it’s just myself and the child and it’s just the two of us. So when I am having that intake, I will explain to the parents and caregiver that when we meet and when I say we when I meet with them and we have a conversation about what’s happening clinically, I will explain to them that the piece that I’m going to be sharing with them is how their child is perceiving themselves, how their child is perceiving the events that have taken place in their life, and the other thing that the child is perceiving and working through. And then I’m really going to emphasize how the child is feeling about that because at the end of the day that’s the most important part.
I want them to know how their child is doing from an emotional perspective. Are they feeling secure or insecure about themselves? Are they doubting themselves? Are they believing in themselves? Are they judging themselves? Are they proud of themselves according to the things that have happened in their life? Are they feeling like are they feeling anxious about life? Are they feeling trusting about life? Are they feeling insecure about life? Are they feeling controlled by life? Are they feeling and I’m giving you these as some examples of what I feel is important to share in the conversation. So I have an agreement up front already with the parents and caregivers about when we speak, what exactly are we going to be talking about? And I think that’s really important because a lot of times parents think that what they need to know is what the child played with.
And I think that’s just because they don’t know what else to ask or that it’s an assumption there. And what I explain to the parents and caregivers is that the child is going to bring to life their emotional world in whatever way they need to. And that could be through play, it could be through stories, it could be through conversation and the child can do it through a variety of play.
And so just knowing, for example, we played with trucks or we played in the sand tray or we did art or whatever, that’s not really helping them understand what’s going on. Because if a child’s feeling anxious as an example, well, the child can explore that through the tray. They can explore that through art.
They could explore that through puppets. They could explore that using dinosaurs, using farm animals, using there isn’t a play that the child can’t explore that with. And so the play itself is not the most important part.
I’m not going to say how the child plays. That’s not the important part either. What arises as a result of the play is the most important part.
And again, that goes back to those feelings and their child’s perception on themselves and life and what’s happened and all of that. So I set the stage already when I have the intake. So now it’s my job, as I am with this child, to really beholding that question.
So what is going on on an emotional level, not to get caught in having to analyze the play, not getting caught in trying to figure out the details of, well, what does the castle mean? Or what does the dragon mean? Or that, in my perception, is not the relevant part, again, but how did the child play with the castle? And what were those feelings that arose as a result of how they played with it? And how did the child play with the dragon? And what were those feelings that arose as a result of how they played with it? Because it’s the feelings that arose as a result of how they played with it. That’s the part that you’re going to translate over back to the parents and the caregivers. Again, not the overall type of play or what they played with.
I know some play therapists like to talk about or like to translate in terms of themes. I think that that can be helpful. But again, just a theme without not being connected to a goal can sometimes feel a little like, okay, so there’s that theme, but what’s the meaning of the theme? Why is that theme even relevant? Why are we working on that theme? I think that those pieces really need to be part of the overall conversation when we’re translating the play.
So I’m really pointing to the second thing that I really want you to hone in on from my perspective, which is to let go a little bit more of analyzing the play and trying to figure out who is who and what is what, because children can make anything be anything and we don’t ultimately have to know. But even when we don’t know what the play actually is, the literal part of the play, we have direct access to the felt sense in the room, and we have direct access to the feelings that are arising in the room. And we have direct access to what it is that the child is trying to work through from an emotional perspective.
And that, again, is the most important part of translating the play. The other thing that I will share is that it’s really important that when we are sharing and translating the play that we’re doing it from a congruent place. So what I mean by that is being able to share one thing that you feel really confident and certain about is more important than sharing five guesses.
Sometimes because there’s this feeling of I want to tell the parents something, or I want to share something. Sometimes we guess, I think it’s this, or I think it’s this, or I think it’s this. And what I have found to be more valuable is okay.
Is there one part of the play that you do feel quite certain about? Well, yes, there’s anxiety. Great talk about the anxiety. If there is a feeling of overwhelm and a feeling of like it gets too much, great talk about that.
If there is a felt sense of gosh, no matter how hard I try, just can’t get it right. And there’s so much pressure to get it right and do it well. Great talk about that piece.
Because when you are talking and translating the play back over to parents and caregivers, they’re actually tuning into you and they’re tuning into your own authenticity and congruency. And so when you can talk about one thing and really one thing along with some support on how the parents and caregivers could support their child with that one thing can be an absolute game changer. It can be huge.
And yes, there may be like five things going on, but that’s okay. The things that are a little bit more nebulous that the child’s working on that we don’t quite understand, that’s what supervision is for. That’s why having another set of eyes on the case can be really helpful.
One of the things I encourage therapists to do when they feel really confused by the play, go back and read your case notes out loud. We don’t often do that. Like, go to their very beginning, say the goal out loud and then read your case notes.
And sometimes just hearing yourself say it back, putting yourself back into the all right, and then we did that in the play and oh, that was the feeling. And then we did that, and then it shifted here, then that got integrated and oh, and then there was a new level of play. Sometimes just saying it out loud and saying it back can really help gain clarity and insight.
Or again, like in supervision, sharing that to your supervisor so someone else can potentially hear what the patterns are or get curious with you about what’s being worked on if you’re really finding yourself in a place of confusion. So the biggest piece is here. You got to have the goals, everyone, because you got to know what you’re linking it to.
It’s important that we don’t get caught in the trying to analyze and we really stay in the felt sense. And that’s really been the part that we’re sharing and when we’re translating so that we do protect the child’s confidentiality around what exactly they did play with and then this deeper piece of if we are really confused about the play. There are ways to be able to gain a little bit more understanding and a little bit more clarity, to be able to support a larger understanding of what’s going on.
At the end of the day, the parents and caregivers are looking for this one thing. They’re basically saying, what are you working on and how is it related to the goals? I mean, it really comes down to that, right? Help me understand how what you’re working on is going to support the reason why I brought my child to see you. Help me understand that.
I’m going to give you one last little tip here before I wrap up. If you find yourself again in that place of confusion, because I am going to name it is hard to go from a right brain process and then translate it over into left brain to be able then to talk about it. And sometimes it does take a little bit of time to be able to reflect and think about and understand what was going on in the session.
It’s okay to give yourself time when you’re giving feedback to parents and caregivers or you’re having check ins, it’s also okay to have some sessions that are just about them. So, as your child is here working with me, how are you today? Let’s talk about you. How can I support you? Let me check in with you.
What do you need? How are you doing these days? Maybe there are some pieces that you’re working on around teaching them, around how to regulate or how to attune to their child or how to set boundaries. And maybe you take the time to work on that and you give yourself a little bit of space to be able to think about, okay, what is it? What are we actually working on in the session? And what do I actually want to say about that? So give yourself a little bit of grace. Give yourself some time, get the support that you need and trust also that the more that you’re able to communicate with the parents and help them understand what is significant about what their child is working on and helping them feel like they can be a part of that if they want to be a part of the healing of that, that you’re doing a really amazing job and it’s good enough.
So on that note, I’m going to end with a reminder that you are the most important toy in that playroom. Take care of yourself. I look forward to the next time that we get to spend some time together.
