Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

How To Talk to Parents About Difficult Issues in Play Therapy

• Cathi Spooner, LCSW, RPT-S • Episode 84

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When I talk with play therapists about reasons they avoid having difficult conversations with parents/caregivers, here's the most common worry they tell me 👇


“What if I say something and they pull their kid from play therapy?”


It can feel awful when parents terminate play therapy before real change can happen.


We feel like giant failures and then start listing all the ways we failed the child (and ourselves).

So, this fear is real.  


Sometimes parents do pull their child from play therapy prematurely and it does feel awful.


Play therapists often avoid hard conversations—like naming the parent’s role in a child’s symptoms—because they don’t want to rupture the relationship or risk the parent pulling their child from play therapy.  


 If we look a little deeper into this fear, what’s really beneath the surface?


 It’s often rooted in people-pleasing, imposter syndrome, or fear of being seen as “too much” or “not helpful enough.”  (Ouch!)


So let’s talk about it.  Let’s dive right in and have a conversation so you can move beyond your fear and have those hard conversations so your clients can get real healing.


Join me for this week's podcast! I’ll share four tips to help you overcome your fear and take charge with compassion and kindness to have difficult conversations and reduce the likelihood parents will pull their child from play therapy.



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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. We'll explore all things play therapy to elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play. 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. 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. Hey there. Welcome to this week's episode of Next Level Play Therapy, and today I wanna talk about a topic that comes up a lot. And I remember struggling with this topic when I was brand new to the mental health profession and play therapy. It's one that comes up a lot in my consultation program and my brand new membership I am comes up there too, which is how do I talk to parents about difficult conversations without resulting in them pulling their child from treatment. Because one of the reasons I find play therapists avoid having difficult conversations is that they're afraid to make parents mad, and then the parents will get mad and then they'll pull their child from treatment. And that's, that's a possibility. I don't wanna say that it isn't. I will say that there are some things that you can do to reduce the likelihood that will happen. And also increase the likelihood that you'll be able to help parents make the shifts that you need them to make for their child. And when I say you need them to make, what I mean by that is you've done your clinical case conceptualization. Looked at your play therapy model and you've gathered all the information. So based on all of these factors and how you are putting all the pieces together in the puzzle, AKA, your case conceptualization, then you'll have a clinical recommendation and you'll back it and you'll be able to back it up. So. Your job then becomes kind of a leadership role, I would say, in helping parents know what's gonna help their child to get better. And that's, that's your clinical expertise. So here's the thing, whether or not you feel like you have clinical expertise as a play therapist, you do have clinical expertise from a, from a parent standpoint, right? You are the one that went to graduate school. You are the one that accomplish all of the tasks in order to graduate from graduate school. You are the one that's now working in a place, an agency, or or even private practice. You are the one doing those things. This is your day to day experience. It's not theirs. This is not their day-to-day experience. So whether or not you feel like you are an expert. You are an expert. Our, and we can all continue to learn, right? We're all lifeline, lifelong learners. So what's the reason then that you avoid having difficult conversations? It's usually because imposter syndrome has gotten activated. Imposter syndrome being, inside you're, you're convinced any day now parents are, or caregivers. I use those terms interchangeably.'Cause not all children live with their biological parents or adopted parents. So their caregivers, right? Not all. Um, oh my goodness. I just lost my train of thought. Alrighty. Back on track. So, um. The imposter syndrome has everything to do with your fear that the parents or caregivers are gonna figure out you don't know what you're talking about, and they're that you're a big giant fraud and they're gonna pull their, their child from, from play therapy. Or, you know, people pleasing tendencies. I consider myself an ongoing, uh, person who is recovering from people pleasing deep roots, right? Deep roots takes. But um, we get into the helping profession 'cause we wanna help and we want things to go, um, get better. And that means we wanna help people and we like to get along and we, we don't like conflict. Those, those are all the positive things about the roots. Well, not the roots, but the, the people pleasing is that we wanna get along. The problem is it's just gonna make things worse. We, we can't make people happy all the time. And, you're the expert. So sometimes you have to say things that parents or caregivers are not going to enjoy hearing and, and a fear of feeling like you're too much or you're not enough, right? All of these insecurities that crop up when we have to have difficult conversations with parents or caregivers. And so today what I wanna talk about is, what can you do to have difficult conversations with parents and increase the likelihood that it's actually gonna move the needle, so to speak, to create some needed shifts in the child's environment that'll kind of unblock things and allow progress to be made. So that is what we are talking about today. I'm gonna share some tips, actually, I'm gonna share four tips with you today about how to have those difficult conversations and have them be therapeutic in nature so that you are going to increase the likelihood that parents will keep their child in treatment and they'll actually partner with you and, and, and, and then you won't feel like you have to avoid conversations or feel like you're always kind of at odds with each other and feeling, and you are constantly feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, and anxious about what to do and kind of wishing you had chosen a different profession. Right. So here's the thing, you got into this profession 'cause you wanna make a difference. You want to help children heal. And you matter. Your voice, your version of play therapist is needed. So the goal of today is to give you some support to be your best version of play therapist and help you have those difficult conversations. Alrighty, so let's get started. Oh, and I forgot to say for those of you who are joining me live today, I would love to know who's here, what population are you working with? Uh, what play therapy model are you using?'Cause we're gonna talk a little bit about that today. And, um, what are your struggles working with children? So I, I'm Cathi Spooner. I go live every week and talk about all things play therapy. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a registered play therapist here in the United States, currently living on the West Coast. So go ahead and post your name in the comments if you're watching the replay. I would still love to hear with from you post your name, post your comments, where are you from, population, all the things, your struggles. And then for those of you who are listening on the podcast episode, feel free to send me a, a message on Instagram at Renewing Hearts training. I would love to hear from you. Send me a message those of you watching on, um, Facebook and LinkedIn. I still would love to hear a few from you. I love getting the, the messages and having conversations about play therapy. And if you find this informa, uh, information helpful, please feel free to share it across your social media platforms. If you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button notification Bell so you'll know when I go live every week on Wednesdays usually. All right, so point. Today we are talking about how to talk to parents about difficult issues in play therapy. I would add, help them stay engaged and make the shifts that you need them to make. So here on Instagram, we have Katie from Ireland. Hey, welcome. I'm working with children ages four to 12. I work three days in a community project, social work, referrals, and community. Uh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Thanks. Um, all righty. Katie says, non-directive play therapy. Yeah. I use child-centered play therapy too. As pro I would say my, my foundation for the younger kids. I've had to get honest myself recently and say that I'm probably more of an integrative play therapist 'cause I don't, strictly use child-centered play therapy when they're older. I like shifting over a little bit. Um, but I love child-centered play therapy for the little ones. All right. And this comes up a lot with, um, especially with the Child-Centered Play Therapy model. How do you have those conversations? Um, and that's gonna, and and the how, what you say and how you integrate that or kind of conceptualize their role it's gonna be a little different based on your play therapy model, and that's what we're gonna talk about a little bit today. But the first thing that needs to happen is you have to identify what your expectations are. This is such a game changer. What, what are your expectations for how parents will be involved? And what I find is most of us don't really figure this out until we're frustrated and wishing we could only work with the child, and we're avoiding having conversations predominantly because I think you haven't first identified what your expectations are. What is that gonna look like? Uh, how are you going to work with the child? How often are you gonna see the child? How long are your sessions? Why are you choosing the frequency that you're choosing? Especially when you're doing, your expectation is weekly play therapy sessions, which I'm a firm believer when you're working with children and adolescents because of developmental issues, the sessions need to be weekly. So why is that? Especially when parents maybe are pushing back. And they just wanna do every other week, especially from the beginning. And you're working with a 6-year-old or a 7-year-old, or even a 10-year-old. I would even say, uh, um, an adolescent. So how, how are you gonna have that conversations about why you are gonna hold firm on weekly sessions. What are your expectations about meeting with parents? How often are you gonna meet with them? This, these are all the things that are gonna be important to figure out from the beginning, I, I what I figured this out, like I'm gonna tell a little story on myself so I remember. Okay. First, before I tell a story on myself, I have to be, um, full disclosure here. So my dog Luna, is now in the office with me.'Cause my husband has gone off to work and she likes to be with her parents. And so Luna is now in my office and she is on the floor making all kinds of moaning, moaning sounds. She's probably gonna roll around in the background a little bit, so if you hear any really strange noises in the background, it's just my dog, Luna. She's in the office with me here. If you've listened to any of my past livestream episodes. You know, l Luna is a frequent visitor. Every once in a while you'll see her little tail in the background. If you're watching on YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn, sometimes you'll see her little black and white tail in the background. I call those Luna sightings. So here's, here's a story, and this to me is where I got crystal clear about what I'm gonna say, and I call this, I had to get honest with myself. So I, you know, as play therapists, we, we wanna be helpful and we, we wanna help parents and be supportive. So we accommodate. So, I, I can't tell you how many times this happened to me early on, and I, I remember a. Uh, situation. Years and years and years ago there was, um, a little kid coming in. I think he was like six maybe, and parent worked full time, so another family member was helping out, and so the other family member would bring the, the child every week, and then I would, I would try and contact the parent. Hey, we need to schedule a parent session, and I could never get them. I felt like I was chasing them down and they would say, yeah, I'll call you back, and I would never get a call back. How many of this, how does this sound familiar to anybody? Right. So I remember, getting frustrated. And so the family member bringing the child in, I said, Hey, I need to talk to parent. And can you let them know they need to gimme a call back? And you know, family member's like, yeah, so busy. They're, they're, you know, working full time and what's going on and, and I had evening and weekends hours, like, how much more accommodating can I make things And, that was my thought, right? Uh, me being a little snarky in my head, I kept it inside my head 'cause I didn't wanna be rude with my snarkiness. Um, and then it just wasn't, I, it just wasn't happening. And then we were kind of stalling out in play therapy. There were some things going on and I really needed parent to come in. And I got the parent to come in once and I, you know, did my best rapport building and then came time I needed to schedule again. Same thing. I feel like I'm chasing them down and they're avoiding my calls and not returning calls. Or I get them in their busy and they're busy and they say they'll call me back and never call me back. I found myself getting so irritated and so frustrated. And I, I and I, you know, and then we, we think, oh, this parent doesn't care. And they just, they just wanna do drop off. They want me to fix their kid. All the things we say right when we're frustrated. And I thought to myself, well, you know what, hold on here, Cathi Spooner. And so I had a little chit chat with myself and I, I call it my, getting honest with myself. And I, I kind of took a step back and I thought, well, why is this person avoiding me? Like, why are they not coming in? And then I, I realized, you know what? I never communicated what my expectations were. I never said, hey, this is how it works. And, here's why it works. And so I thought, well, I have to own some of this because I never communicated it. I never said what my expectations were. I just expected them to naturally figure it out, read my mind possibly to know what, what, how this was gonna work. And so I, you know, and I thought about it and I thought, you know what? This is, another analogy that I use to kind of explain this a little bit and kind of highlight my point is for those of you who have ever been married or in a long-term relationship living together, and you're with your partner and you know it's all awesome, in the beginning, you're so excited, and then at some point in time you find yourself getting irritated and you're like, what the heck is going on? Why is this person doing that? Or why is this person not doing that? Oh, they don't care. They're just, you know, selfish or you know, all the things we say. And then we, you know, take a step back and realize, oh, you know what, I, we never really talked about this and I haven't had this conversation with my partner. I'm just expecting my partner to read my mind. And then, uh, but I, I'm kind of being unfair. If I don't have the conversation. The situation may not change, but you won't know unless you have the conversation. And that's, that's in my mind, that's true also with the therapeutic relationship. It might not change in the case that I'm talking about, it didn't. And w when I had the hard conversation with compassion and kindness, but also backing it up with some boundaries around, yeah, it's not gonna work. Here's why. And spelling out well, like, we're not making progress. Here's what's going on. Here's what needs to happen. Your role is really important. Um, my job is to support you as my, you know, all the things. They stopped coming, right? Sometimes that happens. I would say over my experience over the last 30, 30 plus years, when I've had that conversation from the get-go about, here are the expectations. Here's how I work. Here's your role, here's my role. From the very first phone call and then I re reiterate it and go over it even more in depth in that very first phone call than what I find as parents now they understand. And so now we can work on that partnership building that partnership for the child with, with parents and myself or caregivers and myself kind of working collaboratively together and having hard conversations. Sometimes I get feedback, right? And I think, oh, okay, yeah, you're right about that. And we do the repair work, right? Sometimes I have to challenge them a little bit and it's hard, right? And we, we do that repair work, so it's not gonna happen. If you don't identify your expectations. You have to be very clear with yourself first about what your expectations are and why, and then what I tell myself when things happen later on down the road, and I have to hold boundaries around that, when I have to put my big girl pants on. That's what I say to myself and do my job with compassion. Also, also clinical reasoning, right? I can lay it out the reason for it. Then at least I will have laid the groundwork about why things are the way they are. What are the expectations? What's their role? What is the parent's role in the play therapy process? So, oops, I, the second thing is you have to communicate that you wanna communicate that to parents or caregivers from that very first phone call. And then again, in that very first session. You wanna explain what your expectations are for how often you'll meet with the child. Length of, you know, how long the sessions last, how often are you gonna meet with parents? I never recommend those five minute check-ins at the end. They're never five minutes and they really don't move the needle. Maybe with the easy parents, but they're not gonna move the needle, so to speak, to get parents to engage in a deeper way that they're partnering with you. For, especially with parents who are, have some more challenges that they have to overcome. Um, so you, you wanna be real clear about that. You wanna explain your play therapy model and how it works. You wanna explain what play therapy's gonna look like, including confidentiality, privacy. You're gonna explain all those things. You're not gonna do that if you are not really clear first. The next thing you wanna do is think about your case conceptualization. So this is point number three. Um, what, what theoretical model are you using for play therapy, because that's gonna influence your case conceptualization, which is a really fancy word, term for, um, identifying or making sense of what's at the root of the behavior, what's underlying the problem that's going on, and what are the patterns for the child that are sustaining it? What are the patterns going on in the child's system, including family system? What are those family relationship interaction patterns? What are the attachment qualities, right? But also what, what's going on in their environment overall? School, um, places of worship, religious traditions, all, you know, out any sports or different things. All of these things are part of the child's life. These are all part of the child's day-to-day environment. So you want to be very clear first on understanding and identifying what are at the roots of the problem. What are the beha, what's sustaining it? And part of that means you're gonna look at the role of parents in maybe unknowingly sustaining or. Maintaining same word, um, the problem and, and, you need to look at that. That's part of your case conceptualization. You're gonna formulate that from the very first diagnostic intake, psychosocial assessment process. You're gonna gather all the details. All the history, and then you're gonna formulate your case conceptualization. That's going to be influenced by your play therapy model. That's gonna help you figure out, get your initial working hypothesis right, AKA case conceptualization. Then the first 90 days, you're gonna get a little more clear on that as you get to know clients and parents, and then that's gonna adjust throughout the treatment process. It is gonna help you under identify the role of the parent in the change process. Also, that's going to be influenced by your play therapy model. Child-Centered Play Therapy is going to integrate parents differently than other play therapy models like Adlerian Play Therapy, Gestalt Play Therapy, Integrative play therapy. I have an attachment based family play therapy model that I use. All of these models are going to influence how parents are involved and why? And what that's gonna look like at each stage of the change process. These are all things you're gonna kind of be explaining to parents, but it's also where you're gonna get your clinical reasoning for why you're making the recommendations that you're making. So you wanna be clear about those things. I use, this is point number four I, I love using neuroscience and attachment theory. I feel like you can use neuroscience and attachment theory to kind of make sense of all, all of the play therapy models. You can look at it that way, kind of integrate that in there. I see child-centered play therapy as a heavily attachment based model between the therapist and the child, and then Filial or child-parent relationship therapy. They're both kind of the same thing, um, as a version, that model would then integrate the parents into the session, right? But it's gonna do certain things. It's gonna teach them skills. So from a neuroscience and attachment lens, parents are what I call that therapeutic agents of change for their child. Parents are the ones that are in their day-to-day life. You are only with that child. Maybe 45 to 60 minutes a week. The rest, all those other hours, it's the parent or the caregiver. It's the parent. You are not the one going to the school having to talk. Well, maybe, maybe you are, especially if you're in the school. But traditionally, you know, typically not traditionally, but typically, the parent's role is kind of to advocate for their child, right? And as play therapists, we want to empower them to advocate for their child in the school system. We can, you know, we can support them with that. School guidance counselors are perfect for that. If you can partner up with school guidance counselors, they or school social workers, they can do an amazing job helping to take the skills that the child is learning and play therapy sessions into their everyday lives. But parents need to be critical in that role because parents or caregivers are gonna be with that child the rest of that child's life. And so that's why we're looking at parents as the therapeutic agent of change. And when you look at it that way, then you conceptualize the role of parents as much, much more critical for long and deep healing for the child. Because you are not going to be with that child for the rest of that child's life. Their family members are, their caregivers, their parents are gonna be there. So when we can conceptualize the role of parents, then now we, we elevate it to a much higher level of importance, which means we are gonna, um, focus on helping parents engage and becoming your partner in the change process. The thing is, when you've communicated all of this, or a version of this, hi Katie, um, Katie's logging off. Um, when you've communicated all of this, then you can, when you have to go and hold boundaries, you would've already have had the conversation. And these are, I always look at neuroscience and attachment as a good way to use that lens for my role. My role for supporting parents, I'm gonna come alongside of them and support them. Parenting is hard. I did not have easy kids. I had the neuro, you know, I had some neurotypical kids. We had some back. Back then we didn't talk about it as much as we did now. Also, generational histories of blah that my husband and I had to come over. That's my official, that's my official clinical term. Generational histories of bleh, uh, attachment, all the things, right? So, so it's hard being a parent. And being, being able to support parents I think is key. And we can do that and still have difficult conversations because we're gonna come at it from using kind of that neuroscience and attachment lens of the way in which we approach parents all and all of these things, right? And that's one of the things, I think that's a skill we don't talk about very much in play therapy. Like most of the courses focus on, uh, individual play therapy. We don't focus a lot on working with parents, which is one of the reasons I came up with a course, which I'm gonna talk a little bit about. It's called Getting Grounded Partnering with Parents in Play Therapy. It is very comprehensive, uses a neuroscience and attachment lens to conceptualize what's going on and why parents are, are important and how to kind of look at things clinically, especially when you're working with challenging parents. Like there's a whole couple of modules on you know, how to work with some of the challenging parents, what to do, what do you need to do when you're working with parents in high conflict, divorced family situations. So. I think neuroscience and attachment has is a great way to be able to conceptualize that role, and then it's gonna help us figure out what strategies we're gonna use. So that is it for today's episode. Today we're talking about how to talk to parents about difficult issues in play therapy. I'm gonna do a quick recap. First thing is you have we have to get honest with yourself. Take a step back. I call this brutal honesty, self-honesty time, and maybe a little bit of courage, but figure out what are your expectations and why? Because this is also where you're gonna look at your theory model to kind of conceptualize why you're expecting parents to participate the way that you're expecting them to participate. And then you, second thing is you need to communicate that to parents from day one from that first phone call when they are calling to schedule an appointment or, and also at that very first diagnostic intake with the psychosocial assessment where you're gathering all the information and now you're also going to be explaining, here are the ex, here are my expectations. Here's, here's the reason for those, here's how it's gonna help your child. All the things you want to make sure that you're communicating those. And then part of what you need to be thinking about is what does your case conceptualization say that's gonna be influenced by your theory model because when you go to, uh, explain your clinical reasons for why your expectations are there, you're looking at your case conceptualization and then especially down the road, if you're kind of having to challenge a little bit, then you wanna be able to think about your case conceptualization and the role of parents in this process so that you can lay out your clinical information, your clinical facts. I don't know if I like that word, but it's good for now about why you are making the recommendations that you're making. And then I like to help with that case conceptualization. I like to look at things from a neuroscience and attachment lens, um, because that's gonna help me really, really conceptualize the role of parents as critical therapeutic agents of change for their, for their child. Like they, they are key for making this change happen, and they're all, that's also gonna help me use that lens for building that therapeutic rapport with parents and why I need to do that and what is that gonna look like in the sessions? So that is it for today. And um, I did wanna let you know I have a course, it's an online self-paced course. You can take it in your time zone when it's convenient for you. There are several modules in there of prerecorded videos. There's some guides and some kind of checklists and workbooks so you can take the information you're learning and figure out how you're gonna apply that. Um, it uses a neuroscience and attachment lens. I, I go over all the things in this course. We do the case conceptualization, we go over the practical things to help you figure out what are your expectations and why. We talk about what do you do when you have really challenging parents and you really want to try to engage them and help them make the shifts that that their child needs them to make. And then also, I included in there some practical suggestions and tips. What are some things you most definitely have to do? All the mistakes I see play therapists make when they're working with children in high conflict, divorced family situations, like I see these over and over and over and over and over. So I put a whole module in there, don't do this and here's why. Do this instead. Make sure you do this instead. So. It right now, I'm, I, I have a, um, a discount for the course for a very short period of time. If you purchase the course now, you can get, get it for 40, do, uh, $40 off. So you will definitely want to register and enroll in the course, while you can get it, I figure we're heading back into, back, back to school time and your, your caseloads are gonna start getting full again. Might as well start the school year off prepared and with some, um, skills in your toolbox to help you work more effectively with parents and caregivers. So it is $40 off now. You're definitely gonna wanna register for it. While you can get it at this price. You're gonna want to hop over to my website at rh play therapy training.com. That's RH play therapy training.com. Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training. Um, it, the course is called Getting Grounded Partnering with Parents in Play Therapy. So that's Getting Grounded Partnering with Parents in Play Therapy. Hop over to my website at rh play therapy training.com and register today. And I will see you next week. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy. I hope you found the discussion valuable and gain new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information. Remember, play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth. 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 in relationships. If you have any questions or topics, suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you. Connect with me on social media. And visit my website at Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training to stay updated on upcoming episodes, trainings, and resources. Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy. Until next time, keep playing, learning and growing.