204 | Aggression Isn't Always Anger: Decoding Aggressive Play in Child-Centered Play 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 a master class in child-centered,

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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 continuing in the session savvy series

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and we are going to talk through

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the fact that oftentimes aggression is connected to anger

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in the responses that we provide to a child,

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but that is not an assumption that we should be making. So we have to be really careful

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about

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the notion that if a child is behaving or playing aggressively

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that anger is at the root of it. So we're going to unpack that together

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before we do that.

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I wanted to thank you all so much for all of the texts and emails and messages

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and all of you that reached out to check in with us about the storm. Thank you for

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just being mindful that Helene was hitting Florida and,

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and many of you knew I was on a cruise.

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So a

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lot of you were checking to see if our cruise was going to be ok.

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And if our house was ok and if we were safe and if there was damage,

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so lots of folks in our community have had to deal with quite a bit.

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A lot of them still don't have power

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and this is almost a week later at this point

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and a lot of them

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had significant damage.

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A lot of flooding, a lot of people lost everything, especially toward the coast,

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everything was completely flooded and ruined.

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But we thankfully were inland enough that we didn't have any issues.

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And so thank you so much for all of you that were concerned and prayed

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for us and reached out and let us know that you were thinking of us.

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That really meant a lot

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and also noteworthy.

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Thank you for giving me a week off of podcasting.

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I know many of you were like, oh my gosh, what's going on?

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There were no podcasts this week,

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I was on a boat.

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Actually, I was corrected this week by the cruise director. It is a ship.

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So I was on a ship this week and I was not able to do podcasts because I

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didn't have reliable internet and it was hard to

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do the things that we would normally do.

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But I just want to let you know that we had a lovely time.

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Thanks for your grace in giving me a week off of the episodes.

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Thank you for checking in. That really meant a lot

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OK, so let's talk through

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anger, not being the root of aggressive play.

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So what often will happen is

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a therapist will watch the child

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start hitting Bobo for example.

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And so

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child is just punching, kicking, hitting, smacking all of that on Bobo.

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And because we've trained ourselves ideally

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to make sure that we reflect feelings,

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we tend to say,

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oh, you're so angry, you're hitting him.

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All right. So here's where Session Savvy needs to be in our brains

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unless the child is verbally

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or emotionally indicating anger

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just because they're hitting something

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just because they're kicking something

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just because they're throwing something.

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It does not mean that they are angry

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does not mean that it's rooted in anger at all.

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So we have to be really intentional about

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recognizing aggressive play and aggressive behavior as just that

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if it's a power and control issue,

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they're thrilled that they get to have control and power over Bobo.

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If it is the release of anxiety, they are relieved

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that they get to get all of this pent up angst

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that they've been holding on to out

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if it is

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a

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pendulum swing

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where they have felt

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that they never have anyone that listens to anything they say.

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And so now they're going to order Bobo around

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and if it doesn't do exactly what it's told to do, then there are consequences.

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So it can be to enact justice.

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They would feel very validated

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that they got to make sure that justice was served because they didn't do what

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the Bobo didn't do what it was told to do.

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So notice that there can be all kinds of root

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causes in aggressive play and aggressive behavior in the playroom.

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And so what I see on videos a lot as I'm

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watching play sessions is we default to saying you're so angry,

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you're so mad.

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And unless the child says something to indicate that

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or it's very clear from their non verbals,

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their facial expression, their tone of voice,

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we know 100% that they're angry.

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We do not want to draw that conclusion.

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So the goal for that kind of scenario is to either just track behavior.

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If we're not confident in reflecting the feeling,

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then we would stop at just tracking the behavior. So you're hitting him really hard.

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Oh You kicked him, you got him, you knocked him over,

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that's very safe.

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One of the three reflective responses, we can always lead with that

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or we give ourselves a moment and we truly assess

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what's the root of this.

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If it's power and control,

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we're going to acknowledge something completely different than if it's

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release of anxiety

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than if it's good versus bad play

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than if it's dictatorial power grab.

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Is it

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justice insatiable need for justice.

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Now, verbal aggression,

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there's a similar track here because often kids,

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whether they're being physically aggressive toward Bobo or not,

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usually if they're doing physical aggression,

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they then can move into verbal aggression.

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So

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we also don't want to assume there's anger in that.

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So the kid saying you're an idiot, you're so stupid.

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You can't even fight, you don't even know what to do.

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You have no idea. You're just gonna have to lay there. Yeah, that's what I said.

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Don't get back up.

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All right.

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It sounds angry

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but we can't make the assumption that it's rooted in that

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this could be role reversal.

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Those are the kinds of things that that child

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hears all the time from someone in their life

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or it's good versus bad

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and the bad guy needs to be told off.

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So there's always

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more going on

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than just anger even though it's easy to connect aggression and anger.

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But as a CCPT, our goal is to identify the root issue number one

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and then recognize what kind of emotion is being expressed.

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So that's our challenge.

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That's our goal to make sure that as we are watching aggressive play,

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we don't default to. You're so mad, you're so upset, you're so angry.

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Let's spend a minute, give ourselves a beat

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and dive into.

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Where is this coming from? What theme am I seeing?

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What is the root issue that I know this child is dealing with?

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Where are they in the process?

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There's all of these considerations that should be swirling through our

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heads which will lead us to a much more accurate feeling reflection

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in that scenario.

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So I hope that that is helpful.

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And thank you very much.

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A lot of you have really given me some feedback about this Session Savvy series.

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So I'm glad that it's helpful and I'm glad that you're enjoying it.

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And we probably have, I don't know, five or so more that will go through. And a

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lot of you are actually really transparent, emailing me saying,

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yeah, I feel like you did that episode for me because I do that all the time.

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I promise you, I'm not singling out any specific person. This is a collective.

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I see it all the time with all kinds of people. But

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if you feel like I'm talking directly to you,

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then that means that you're aware and you're working on that.

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So I'm happy to hear that.

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All right y'all, I love you. We will talk again soon. Bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr

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Brenna Hicks. For more episodes and resources.

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Please go to www.playtherapypodcast.com.