141 | Understanding Children's Battle Scenes: Insights into Repetitive Play in Therapy

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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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In today's episode, we are talking through a question that Ariana

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called in actually to the call in number.

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So I will actually let you listen to the call so that you can hear her question.

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But her question is talking about massive battle and fight scenes

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when clients continually will do that same play from week to week.

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And just my thoughts on what that looks like and how to make sense of that.

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So I'll let you go ahead and listen to her question and then share some thoughts.

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Hi. My name is Ariana

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calling in from Atlanta. I'm an early career

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therapist with kids.

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Finishing up my internship with the group that does play therapy and

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I was wondering if you could talk about themes of battles and fights.

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but like big

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scenes of big fights and battles. I have clients

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who over and over again will set up these battle scenes in the sand tray.

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often with the large animals and I have another client who

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will sometimes do this with the place soldier if he's a little older

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and then

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almost every session, they'll act out these battles and with varying degrees of

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aggression, have the figures fighting each other and dying.

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With some

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nuance with our variation with what actually

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will go on between the characters,

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but there's always a fight and there's always a battle

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and all of the characters die.

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Thank you so much.

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I really enjoy your podcast and my team

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of other interns are really enjoying it as well.

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Thank you.

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All right. So it's always fascinating when

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we see consistent play,

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week to week to week in a child and we talk about that, right?

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So one of the things that we document

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is the repetition.

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So sometimes it's the repetition of the use of a specific toy.

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Sometimes it's the repetition of a theme

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or sometimes it's the repetition of play or any combination of all three of those.

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So Ariana, thank you so much for the call. Thank you for presenting this.

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And this is always interesting because these are the types of clients

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and the types of cases where we often see

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shifts in very meaningful ways because when we see a

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child do the same thing repetitively every single week,

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when they finally are able to make a shift,

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it's super obvious to us

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and it's readily observable.

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So,

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if it's been pretty consistent several weeks in a

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row and all of a sudden something changes,

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that variation is much more noticeable and pronounced

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because there's been consistency in the theme.

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So let's talk about different ways to interpret this.

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And obviously Ariana, your examples were that sometimes it's the large animals,

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sometimes it's soldiers

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and the battles have varying degrees of aggression,

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but they are constantly fighting and then there's death at the end.

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Well, it's interesting to pay attention to

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what is happening in that play narrative. Even if the child is not talking,

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I want to make it clear narrative doesn't always have to be verbal.

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You still want to be very aware of what's happening

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and what is being created.

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So a child is 100% working through things, making sense of things,

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processing things,

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healing as he or she is continuing the same battle every single week.

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So it's up to us then

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to be a little bit interpretive.

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And I, I use that word carefully and loosely because

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I don't want to

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give off the impression that

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we have to as a child-centered play therapist

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interpret what's happening in the child's play. We don't

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remember.

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We use themes because it helps us articulate to parents in consultations.

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We watch shifts in play because it helps us see where the child is.

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We monitor things to see stages and phases

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to watch the acquisition of the universal outcomes.

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There are things that we monitor and we pay attention to,

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but we don't have to interpret or analyze what's going on. Sometimes we can't.

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Sometimes as child-centered play therapist, we have no idea

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what a child is making sense of why they're playing something out.

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There's nothing we can connect it to.

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There's nothing that makes sense based on history that we know of

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and the child just does it and they're working on something and it's

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important to them even when we don't have any context for it.

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So I wanna be careful to make sure when I say

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we're interpreting and analyzing what's happening.

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It's not because we have to put a label on it.

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It's just to keep our finger on the pulse of what's happening.

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So often I'm gonna go through five options of

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what we'll often see in battle and fight scenes and

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then maybe that will help you narrow it down.

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And all of us as listeners, we might have a better handle on

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what it can mean as a child is playing out a massive battle scene, week to week.

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So the easiest one to go to is power and control,

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right? Because when you have two teams, two sides

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battling each other,

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almost always one has power or control over the other or

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at least one is trying to have power and control.

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So typically we can very readily pick out power and control because

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usually one side has the advantage or in some way, has more leverage than the other.

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I can't tell Ariana in your call. If you

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mentioned that both sides, everyone dies or if it's just one side, they die.

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So I'm not really sure.

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But if you can clearly see that one side

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has the advantage or leverage or is somehow given

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any sense of control over the other, that's an easy thing to sort out.

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Another option is dominance

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often when there are battle scenes,

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that is the way that a child communicates need for dominance

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or creation of dominance.

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In other words,

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one side, one team

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is dominating the battle

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and

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it kind of sways everything in their favor.

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So if you need absolute authority and absolute dominance,

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it's very closely tied to power control as you can see.

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But you would definitely have the sense of one dominating the other.

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So that's another option to consider.

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Often battle scenes are means to an end

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and you may not see that yet. But let me help you understand what I mean by that,

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a battle

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fight, any kind of conflict between two sides, two people, two sets,

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there's usually

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a shift that takes place at some point

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where that was the means to a new end.

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So maybe a hero emerges,

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maybe all of a sudden someone survives,

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maybe someone comes back from the dead and they weren't actually killed at all.

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Maybe they decide they're not going to fight anymore. And they join

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the same side,

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maybe there's a traitor and they expose the traitor.

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If you wait and you give it time,

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you will almost always see something unfold as a means to an end.

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So the consistent battling and fighting

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lends itself toward a shift that's meaningful and therapeutic.

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It could sometimes be, everyone has to die

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many, many, many weeks in a row.

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And then for the first time ever, an army medic shows up and starts healing people.

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So rescue,

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saving protection,

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hero, all of those can sometimes be the end

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that we finally get to over time.

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So means to an end is definitely consideration as well.

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Also, sometimes it's just about destruction.

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And as I mentioned,

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I can't tell if you were implying that everybody in the

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whole battle dies or just everyone on one side dies.

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But if it is everyone in the whole battle dies,

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so both sides are completely obliterated and wiped out.

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It could very much be a destruction theme.

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So the battle really is not so much about the battle.

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It's that the battle is what creates the destruction,

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decimation and destruction is very powerful in play therapy.

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So if everything gets destroyed, everything gets ruined,

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everything gets wiped out.

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That destruction piece

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is a very powerful component of a child's work

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because what do you do when everything gets destroyed or

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ruined or you know, is in some state of upheaval,

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you either start from scratch or you rebuild it or

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you fix it or you repair it or something,

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right?

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So that goes back to means to an end as you can see.

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And you mentioned Ariana that sometimes there's varying degrees of aggression.

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So my fifth thought is often battle and fight scenes are really just

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the way that a child demonstrates aggression in third person.

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So rather than being first person aggressive where the child comes into the room and

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punches Bobo, for example,

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they can create a battle in the sand or a battle

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scene that allows characters to be aggressive toward each other.

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And we can still count that as aggressive play

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even though it's characters instead of the child, him or herself.

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So those are five thoughts that I had when I was, you know, listening to your question

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and keep in mind kind of as a related aside,

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often when a child consistently plays out the same kind of scenario as this

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battles, fights,

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you know, it's, it's almost the same kind of dialogue every single week.

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I often will map that as perpetual

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fill in the blank.

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So that might be perpetual danger

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if one side is always without weapons, for example,

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or always under attack, for example, perpetual danger,

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I might mark it as perpetual conflict.

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So every single time the child plays, there's a massive conflict

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and it sounds as though that's the case in your scenario, Ariana

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or perpetual chaos.

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If everything is completely chaotic in this battle.

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Perpetual chaos is a noteworthy element as well.

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So just to kind of keep in mind when you see that repetitive nature

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and there's no resolution yet

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because it's one thing if we're seeing this battle every single week,

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but there are shifts,

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if everything is consistent and there's not really much

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change and there isn't really much improvement or,

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you know, movement growth, anything,

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I typically mark that in my notes as perpetual whatever.

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And that's very reflective of how the child feels and where the child is

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often that is

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outwardly reflective of internal feelings.

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So if a child feels that their world is perpetually chaotic,

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they recreate that in their play.

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If they feel that there's perpetual conflict in their life,

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they create that in play.

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If there's perpetual danger,

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perpetual peril,

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they will recreate that in play.

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Now, that's not to say that the child is stuck.

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It's not to say the child can't get out of that.

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We just have to be patient because the child will keep it there

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until they feel that they have the internal fortitude

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and they're willing and able

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to shift it to rewrite their narrative.

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That's what the child-centered process affords, right?

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They can rewrite their story, they can rewrite their narrative,

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they can change the ending.

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But often that takes a while because if

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the child still feels those things internally,

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they're not ready

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to enact change yet.

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So Ariana thank you so much for calling in Thank you for the question.

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And I'm so grateful that you spent the time to share your thoughts with us.

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I hope that everyone found that helpful. And as always,

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we

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are in the business of seeing

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the value of letting kids do exactly what they need to do.

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So if it's a battle scene every single week,

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we give them the space and the freedom and the relationship in which to do that.

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If it's

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pummeling Bobo every single week,

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we give them the space and freedom and relationship.

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If it's not speaking a word to us for an entire hour, week after week after week,

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we talked about that in the Collective this week. What do, what do we do when a child

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says nothing in the entire session?

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Even though it's not a selective mutism issue, it's not an inability to speak.

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How do we handle that?

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We handle it the same way we handle any child with unconditional love,

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unconditional acceptance

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to be with attitudes

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which are what

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give me five.

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There you go. I'm here. I hear you. I understand. I care and I delight in you.

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And

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the end goal

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is that the child

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has

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the time, the tools and the opportunity to do the work that they need to do

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within the therapeutic relationship within the therapeutic environment.

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So Ariana keep letting your little ones do battle scenes because they're

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working and you're providing the space in which they can work.

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So I hope that you're proud of that and I hope that encourages you

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if you have a question,

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if you would like me to answer something you've been thinking about,

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I would love to hear from you.

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So you can either email me at brenna@thekidcounselor.com

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or you can call 813-812-5525.

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I look forward to hearing from you all. I'm so grateful for you.

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Thank you for your feedback on the story on Nathan's story.

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So many of you have said how impactful that was and how meaningful that was

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and that was what my hope was. It certainly impacted me. So

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if you have a story,

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I know I'm kind of throwing you a new curveball here. But

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if you have a story, I would love to hear it.

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So shoot me an email,

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call me and give me your phone number and I'll call you whatever you think is helpful.

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I would love to hear your stories.

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I'd love to share more of those, maybe like a monthly feature

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of how CCPT has changed you and,

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and the impact that it's had on your life and your career

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and

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your world. So if you would like to share one of your

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child-centered stories, I'd love to hear it

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so you can reach me those same ways to do that as well.

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All right, y'all hope you have a great week. Thanks for being with me. Love you. 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