150 | Mastering Limit Setting in Child-Centered Play Therapy: A Deep Dive

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You're listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.

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Your source for centered and focused play therapy coaching.

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Hi, I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.

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This is the Play Therapy Podcast where you get

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a master class in child-centered Play therapy

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and practical support and application for your

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work with children and their families.

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I know last week I mentioned we were moving into a new section of the curriculum

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and that's true. But I'm pausing

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the curriculum.

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I'm doing a two part pause. Ok.

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So thanks for bearing with my

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whims.

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Here's why I'm on a whim though.

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It really is important and it's purposeful even though it seems random.

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We are currently talking about choice giving in the CCPT Collective,

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the online community for child center play therapists.

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So, April is choice giving month.

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So we've been processing that quite a bit.

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And then in the Play Therapy Professional Program,

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we have been talking about limit setting this week.

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And one of the things that I've noticed is that

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the limit setting process is really tripping up a lot of therapists

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and it's tripping them up in a lot of

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different ways and it's not always consistently difficult,

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but there are some components that I want to spend two weeks diving into

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and really equipping you all with

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a deeper

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limit setting dive

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because I don't want

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us to just know how to set limits. In other words,

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we reflect the feeling we provide the neutral limit and we give alternatives.

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I wanna take it beyond that

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because I don't think that we are effectively

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and easily setting limits right now based on the videos that I've been watching

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and the conversations that I've been having with

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clinicians in the collective and in the certification program.

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And when I notice that it's a struggle, I feel like it's my job to

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try to help with that. So we're gonna take a two week pause on the curriculum

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to address this deeper dive on limit setting and

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then we'll be back to regular new content.

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I promise.

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But here's what's going on,

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in my opinion.

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I don't know that it's necessarily universally true,

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but this is what I'm seeing anyway,

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limit setting is quite difficult. And I think the reason why

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is because

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it requires three skills,

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you have to be able to reflect the feeling,

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you have to be able to neutrally communicate a limit

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and then you have to be able to provide choices.

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So you're essentially fusing three skills into one

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process.

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And if any one of those three skills is not as well

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honed as one of the others,

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you might feel like that creates a hiccup for you.

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So I think that's one consideration.

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The second consideration is

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limits are often not necessary in sessions.

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So there are some kids with whom you will probably never need to set a limit.

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There are some kids that you would rarely need to set a limit.

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And then we do get the

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here and their kids that require a lot of limits.

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But compared to the other skills, for example,

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we can reflect feelings with every child that walks through the room.

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We can encourage every child that walks through the room.

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We can provide choices to every child that walks through the room.

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The other three will be much more commonly used.

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And therefore,

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we will be more proficient at those just for repetition and consistency sake.

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Limit setting is the least used of the pillars.

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So therefore, I think

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we need to practice it more because we don't get every session every day,

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opportunities to do it.

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And then finally, my thought is

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limit setting. The process is fast.

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In other words, on the fly, in the moment,

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you have to be able to

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quickly get out

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the acknowledgement of the feeling,

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the neutral limit provide the choices all in

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one fell swoop in a daisy chain together.

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And before the child actually does the thing that you're setting the limit on.

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So often there's a sense of urgency,

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right? The child is darting for the door

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and you have a very short amount of time to try to get that

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limit set before they open the handle and run out into the hallway.

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So sometimes the urgency

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and the immediate need to be able to say that quickly creates the, oh my gosh,

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how am I supposed to get this out?

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I'm saying the wrong thing. No, that didn't work.

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Oh, I forgot to reflect the feeling, et cetera, et cetera.

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So when we see

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the complexity of this,

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I think it's first of all,

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understandable why this is something that is a little bit trickier to deal with.

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But also I think that's the evidence of why it's not being done effectively.

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So when we're role playing and when we're watching videos,

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I'm seeing a lot of therapists really struggle with the limit setting process

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and that can be any of those three components, right?

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Sometimes it's struggle with reflection of feeling,

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sometimes it struggle with setting up the neutral limit,

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sometimes it's struggling with giving the choices.

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So we're going to kind of look through that a little bit in these next,

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in this episode and in the next one.

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So next week, we're going to actually talk through

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how you make sure that you are doing those three steps effectively.

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But today, I want to give you some encouragement about

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what you might do

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to really start working on this skill.

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We talked about this in the CCPT Collective.

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And then I think we also might have talked about it on

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a couple of my coaching calls too in the last few weeks,

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the Chinese proverb says

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you need 10,000 hours to master

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whatever that is to be considered a master of something,

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you need 10,000 hours of practice.

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So if any of you are over that 10,000 hour mark,

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good for you. You're probably a veteran and you probably

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will just hear this as a reinforcement of what you're already doing.

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But if you haven't hit 10,000 hours of play sessions yet,

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that's not 10,000 hours of training,

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that's not 10,000 hours of knowledge or education.

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That's 10,000 hours in a playroom with a child doing child-centered play therapy.

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If you're not there yet,

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then you still have more work to do

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and that's an encouragement, not a criticism, right? So I'm not saying,

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you know, look, you're not good enough yet. That's not what I mean.

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I'm saying that means that you still have a lot more practice and you will get there.

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So here's what I think is the easiest way to really kind of start to address this

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work on empowerment choices first.

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And why am I talking about the choice giving part?

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Because that's usually the biggest struggle and

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we'll actually talk through the reflecting, feeling part of it next time.

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So

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just hold on, we'll get there if that's one of your struggles.

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But I think that where there's often difficulty is in the choice giving piece

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because we either give a choice that doesn't work. We give a choice.

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That doesn't make sense.

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We start the choice and then we realize, oh no, I shouldn't have said that, that,

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that can't be an option.

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Then we have to try to finagle our way out of it.

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There's a lot of difficulty with the choice, giving piece of limit setting.

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So

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practice when you're not setting a limit

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and the way that you do that is empowerment choices,

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your goal should be

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to give kids in the playroom as many empowerment choices as you can

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so that you're getting the wording

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so that there is an ease,

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there is a flow, there's a comfort

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of the skill.

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You can choose A or you can choose B which do you choose?

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That gives you the repetition

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of giving choices

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when it's not tied to a limit?

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Because the pressure is far less in an empowerment choice

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you're giving it just for the sake of

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allowing the child to have a choice.

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There's no urgency, there's no behavior issue, there's no, oh my gosh.

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I have to try to make sure that this limit gets set before something bad happens.

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That's when it really gets

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sticky in the room, right?

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So if we can empower choice give,

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that allows the child

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to feel empowered, which we have very positive outcomes in that scenario.

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But also you get practice and rehearsal,

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just providing choices,

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the more comfortable you are with the choice

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giving piece the easier limit setting will come.

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So therefore,

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as you have worked out, all of your kinks and your tweaks and all of that,

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you just continue to use empowerment choices in the playroom as much as possible.

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When that is second nature,

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then you start to transition that skill to the

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enforcement choices which will always tie into limit setting

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because let's face it

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when we set a limit.

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If the choices that we provide

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are not ideal, the whole limit setting process is undermined.

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And what I mean by ideal is there's a lot of considerations.

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Are they enforceable? Can they be consistent?

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Do they make sense for what's going on?

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Do they meet the child's original need or desire?

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Are you accepting of those choices? Is the child accepting of those choices?

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There's a lot of factors involved and if you're going, oh my word,

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I've never thought that all of those factors should be considered in choice giving.

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That's probably why it's hard for you.

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Therefore, as we are practicing,

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it's just about the repetition of feeling comfortable with the words first,

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then we can start adding in all of these more extensive advanced considerations.

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And the last thing that we wanna do

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is

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just try to wing a choice

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when that happens, everything falls apart.

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And the more we can be intentional and thoughtful and purposeful with our choices,

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the more effectively we will set limits when we need to.

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But there's a lot of precursory work that has to happen first.

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So here's what I would encourage you to do this week

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because next week, obviously, I'll do part two of this

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and we'll talk more about limit setting.

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So you can kind of wait until you've heard

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that episode to really practice some other things.

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But this week specifically,

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I challenge you

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to focus on empowerment choices

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with your own children. If they're still in the house

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with clients

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at your office or your center or wherever you work

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as many opportunities as you can to work on giving choices,

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you can choose A or you can choose B which do you choose?

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And yes, you have to say, choose three times.

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It's not, you can do this, you can do this, you can have this, you can have that.

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You can pick this, you can pick that.

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That's not a choice.

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A choice is very clearly a choice when the word choose is included.

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So you can choose A or you can choose B and then you follow it up with,

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which do you choose?

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If you say that as many times as humanly possible? This week,

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you will have rehearsed that to where that will become second nature

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and you at least will have the wording of the choices down.

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Then we start thinking through what the actual choices

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need to be when it's tied into a limit.

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So I hope that you find that helpful.

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I hope that that gives you a little goal for the week

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and it will only serve you as you really start to hone the limit setting because

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reflecting feeling is a precursor and choice giving is a precursor.

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And then they come together to form the limit setting.

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And if any of those are not where they should be, it makes limit setting very,

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very challenging.

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All righty. So part two coming next.

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But if you would like to connect with me, I would love to hear from you,

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brenna@thekidcounselor.com.

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You can email me questions

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a hello,

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a challenge. Whatever you'd like to say, I would love to hear from you.

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I love when y'all reach out to me,

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if you would like to subscribe to my email newsletter,

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I would love to have you on board with that.

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We send out an email once a week. So you will not be bombarded in your inbox. I promise.

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But I always just make you aware of what's happening

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and how you can connect with me in that newsletter.

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So that's at www.playtherapynow.com.

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And you'll find out about training opportunities there about the CCPT Collective,

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about the Play Therapy Professional certification, et cetera, et cetera.

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So all the stuff that's going on around here

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be in the know, you don't want to be in the dark because

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you know how much I care about you. So you have to stay connected so that you

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keep in touch with me.

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You can also call in a question if you would like 813-812-5525. That's in the States.

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If you'd like to leave a message for me,

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I will be able to answer your question from that number as well.

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All right, y'all, I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

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I actually had a really, really awesome weekend.

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I was able to synchronize swim at Mar-A-Lago,

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which is President Trump's Club and home in Florida.

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So last minute invitation to go swim there and

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they were doing an event and I was able to swim with four

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other women and we did synchronized swimming at the Mar-A-Lago pool.

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So really cool experience.

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And that was my excitement for the weekend.

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So I hope that something was exciting for you this weekend too.

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Or at least that there was something that made you smile because I think sometimes

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we

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need to be reminded of how amazing this world is. And

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you know, being a children's therapist can be draining, it can be defeating,

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it can be overwhelming.

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And that's why you're here, right?

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For support and encouragement and uplift and refresh and all of those things.

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But sometimes it's nice to have something that makes us smile.

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So I hope that you were able to smile this weekend.

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If not smile right now,

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it releases all kinds of feel,

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good hormones and endorphins and things and So even if you're not happy,

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it will make you happy.

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That's the beauty of a smile. So

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there's your PSA for the day. Alright.

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Love you all. We'll talk again soon. Bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.

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For more episodes and resources.

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Please go to www.PlayTherapyPodcast.com.