190 | Summer Breaks in Child-Centered Play Therapy: Strategies for Continuity

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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. I am answering a question from Ethan in Virginia

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and he wrote in to ask about kids that take breaks for the summer

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and I realized that for most of us,

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the summer is largely winding down and school has either already

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started or will be starting in the next week or two.

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But every single year we're going to face this as CCPTs.

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So I think this is really helpful for us to dive into

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when kids take the summer off and what that looks like,

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what that means, how to handle it, some considerations

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to be mindful of. So let me read a little bit of his email and then we'll unpack it.

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I wanted to ask a question regarding parents requesting that

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a client takes a break of therapy for the summer.

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The reason for the requests usually

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come from scheduling purposes rather than clinical

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So what it might look like is that they will first

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send an email canceling a few days out of the summer.

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And then another email just requesting for them to quote,

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take a break from therapy for the summer because of camps, vacations, sports,

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et cetera.

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And then just to start up again in the fall when school starts.

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I'm curious to know what you think about this

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and how you respond to parents for these requests.

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All right, Ethan, thanks a lot. This is,

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I think probably something that we deal with every single year

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and this is just tricky to navigate.

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So I think this is actually a really helpful question.

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All right, first and foremost,

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we always have to have honest disclosure with parents in situations like this.

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And I think our propensity

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as therapists, social workers, counselors,

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whatever your educational background is,

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is to be accommodating and kind and loving and understanding and validate and

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you know, all things therapeutic.

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But the reality is our one and only job in

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this role is to advocate for kids and their well being

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and as a general rule, taking

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three weeks or more off

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is not therapeutically helpful to kids.

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So look, you know, sometimes you can't help it, you take two weeks off because

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there's camp or there's vacation or someone gets really

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sick and then the whole family gets sick.

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So you miss two weeks.

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So almost any child,

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at least if they're past the first like four or so weeks of therapy,

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almost any child can miss two weeks and not really have that much of a setback.

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But as soon as you hit the third week missed,

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that means a child is going a month

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before they see you again.

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There is therapeutic fallout in that

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there is often emotional and behavioral fallout from that

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so often when parents present this or pose this

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scenario of taking a break for the summer,

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the very first thing that I say is

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ok.

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So I understand why you're letting me know that that

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was like that is what you would like to do.

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I just wanna share some thoughts just so that

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you're aware of what can potentially happen here.

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And then you have very transparent and honest

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disclosure about the fact that

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it may

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have some fallout because kids get used to weekly support,

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they get used to a weekly outlet.

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They get used to the weekly relationship that they have with you.

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They get used to the predictability and the

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consistency of I always have a place where I

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can go to process things and feel better and work through what I need to work through.

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And again, a two week break, not too bad to handle.

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By the time you take a three week break or more,

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it can actually be really difficult for kids to navigate.

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It's basically ripping a relationship away from them, ripping an outlet and

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the environment away from them that allows them to

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deal with the stuff that they've been dealing with.

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So I'm usually very upfront and I just kind of pose the scenario

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I respect,

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you know,

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that your schedule is going to be busy that it's going to

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be hectic over the summer that you guys are traveling a lot,

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et cetera, et cetera.

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I just wanna let you know these are the potential outcomes

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when you take that long of a break.

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So it's just a very transparent discussion.

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All right. Now, when kids take that long of a break,

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there are three options for when they

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are done with their break.

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In other words, let's say summer's over and now it's ready to go back to school.

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So arguably the break that they, you know,

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didn't come to therapy is now coming to an end.

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OK, three options.

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The first

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kids come back,

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they pick right back up where they left off and

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it was almost like you never even had a break.

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In other words,

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they

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thematically go right back to where they were.

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You can see the repetitive nature of their play of what they were doing before,

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emerge in the current session.

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And you can just tell that they kind of hit the pause button

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like, OK, I know where I was in my work. I know what I was doing.

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I know what I still need to work on.

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So we took this break and now I'm ready to get going

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and it actually kind of re energizes them a little bit.

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I would say that's probably not the norm, but that is common.

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So that's one potential outcome.

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Second, potential outcome is

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they need some time to kind of rebuild momentum and recalibrate

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to kind of start over.

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So not that everything that they gained before was lost,

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but some kids can't jump right back in.

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It's almost like they kind of have to get back in a groove.

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So I kind of have to re-establish the relationship.

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I kind of feel the need to be a little more cautious and

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kind of get my feet wet a little bit before I dive in.

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I, I'm a little bit more hesitant, maybe a little bit more guarded. Maybe

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it, it corrects itself quickly

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but there is usually a 1, 2 or 3 week window where they're kind

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of restarting and kind of on boarding themselves back onto the road again.

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And then the third option is they actually don't come back.

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So they tell you that they're going to take quote the summer off.

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But then school starts up and you reach out and they ignore you

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and then you try to get them on the schedule again and they don't respond

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and they say, or if they do respond, they're like, 00 my gosh, it's back to school.

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It's so hectic. We're gonna have to give it a few weeks

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and it's a blow off. After a blow off.

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And then here's why that's really unfortunate and dangerous

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because then the child never got closure.

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There was no termination, there was no countdown, there was no closure,

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there was no healthy goodbye, worked into that.

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And that is almost worst case scenario for a CCPT relationship to end like that.

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So I typically also walk through those scenarios

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with parents when they pose something like this.

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OK? So I just wanna let you know

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if this happens and we do take this break,

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there are going to be three potential scenarios that unfold when summer is over.

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And I basically tell them how important it is that if you take a summer break,

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you cannot just fall off the face of the earth

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and never bring your kid back to me again.

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You know, there are some imperatives that we, we try to be pretty

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permissive and you know,

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adherent to CCPT where we don't try to govern things. But in

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this scenario,

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the there's kind of a very hard line drawn in the

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sand that says if you choose to take this summer break,

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you choose to commit to bring your child back to me

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when school starts because I have to have proper closure.

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And if you can get their commitment,

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then you know that one of the first two scenarios will happen,

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the child just dives right back in or it takes a

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little while to kind of build up some momentum again.

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OK.

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And here's typically what I suggest if a parent is like, yes, we still,

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after this discussion,

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we still wanna take the summer off or we still want to try to take a break.

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I try my best to convince a parent to just do reduced frequency over the summer.

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In other words, we don't take the whole 2.5 months off.

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So if they say, hey, we just really can't come weekly. It's just too hectic.

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We're gonna be out of town, we're gonna be out of the country.

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We're gonna be at camps, we're gonna be traveling,

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we're gonna be having friends and family come visit,

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whatever, whatever

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in Florida, it's always, we go to the beach condo, right? So

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everyone's always at the beach.

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Here's what I typically say.

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Ok, I, I understand it's not going to be feasible for you to be here every week,

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but I really don't feel good therapeutically about taking the whole summer off.

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Can you agree to once every two weeks or at the bare minimum,

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at least once a month for the rest of the summer?

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So, we have a little bit of consistency. We can preserve momentum and relationship

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and then we're not kind of starting

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with, you know,

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brand new. Let's start this whole thing over again, come September.

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So you can usually convince parents

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that they will come less frequently.

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I've had a lot of success with kids coming once a month over the summer

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and that's at least predictable. It's stable.

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Children will know you're gonna get to see Miss Brenna once a month.

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So it's not unknown.

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It's not unclear like you're gonna go once a month

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over the summer and then when school starts back up,

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you're going to be able to go back on your normal schedule.

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And then my final thought,

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speaking about when school starts back up,

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this is another thing that I typically share with parents

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because they

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trust us to give clinical and professional opinion when they pose scenarios.

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So when they say, hey, I really think that we're gonna take the summer off,

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they are essentially saying what are your thoughts

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and they trust you.

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And so it's our job to give them honest appraisal of the situation.

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And what I typically say is

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I would like to go monthly instead of taking the whole summer off.

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And I do not think you should wait until school starts

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before you get the child back in because the transition back

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to school can actually be very stressful and emotional and overwhelming.

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So I think it would actually be much more

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beneficial for your child to come back before school starts

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so that we have the stability, the outlet, the relationship,

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the therapeutic component

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of their world

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back in swing before they go back to school.

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In other words, if a child goes back to school for two weeks and then comes to see you,

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they did not have the therapeutic support while making that transition.

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And the transition back to school is tricky for a lot of kids to navigate.

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So a child that is used to

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the therapeutic weekly appointments, it would be far better for them

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to have that in place before school goes back.

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So that if there are any issues or hiccups,

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they know that they're going to be coming to see you during that time

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and they can work through things in the playroom with you.

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So that's one final thought that I typically share with parents as well.

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So Ethan, thanks so much for the question. I hope that you find that helpful.

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And obviously, as summer is closing,

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file this away for next

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May or so, when people are going to start asking you to take the summer off,

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you'll have some intentional responses.

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Actually, you should have a script worked up

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for those of you that are not in my coaching program. We talk about scripts ad nauseam

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and you should have a script so that you

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have already crafted exactly what you're going to say and

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then you use it over and over and over again.

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So you only have to do the work once.

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So go ahead and make all of this into a script and file it away for yourself.

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So that come next May,

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you just pull out your script and you know exactly what

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you're going to say to parents when they pose this scenario,

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there's a little pro tip from the coaching.

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All right, y'all, if you want to reach out to me,

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please do brenna@thekidcounselor.com.

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You can leave me a voicemail with a question at 813-812-5525.

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And I hope you have a lovely week. We'll talk again soon. Love you all so much. 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.