164 | Not Everything is a Theme! Landreth Sets the Story Straight

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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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Ok. Y'all, we are diving into the summer series as promised. So for those of you that

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may not be caught up to episodes yet or you just found us. First of all, welcome.

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This is a community where you will

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find all kinds of your people. So

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glad you're here.

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Thanks for coming along on the CCPT journey with us.

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If you have not caught up, I had mentioned in some earlier episodes

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that I sent out an email to all of my newsletter subscribers a while back

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asking what people's opinions were on me starting to cover some seminal texts

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and reading some portions of some of the main books

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and then giving some thoughts and commentary about it.

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And I did not have one person and Holy Moly did I have a lot of responses?

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I don't even know hundreds

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and I did not have one person say that they did not like that idea.

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So we're going to do a summer series. It may continue.

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I don't know, but this is the first week of June.

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So we're at least gonna go through the summer

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and if it's a smashing success, then maybe we'll,

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we'll keep going a little bit longer.

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But

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the, the goal of this,

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let me help you all understand what I would like to see come out of this And then

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obviously, you know, I want feedback from you all as well. But

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here's where I am with this.

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I think

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play therapy as a whole is starting to,

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hm, how do I say this diplomatically,

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play therapy is starting to be convoluted

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by

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eclecticism and not enough adherence to theory

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and child-centered play therapy is not

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well known, well practiced

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and well evangelized.

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So what is happening is people all over the world

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are saying that they are child-centered and they practically speaking,

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have no idea what that is.

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They have no idea what that means. They have no idea what that looks like.

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And to quote my friend Jodi Mullen,

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you can't say your child centered just because a

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child is in the center of your playroom.

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OK. So we cannot

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get away from

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the origins from the classical training

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from the seminal work

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that informed and influenced

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the model.

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And if we do it's no longer child-centered

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likely.

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So

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I'm going to start reading some

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basic

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portions of texts

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that talk about what child

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centeredness truly is, what we need to understand what we should be doing,

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what we shouldn't be doing.

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Just kind of taking us back to the basics with a grounding

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and foundations from Landreth, mostly

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I may throw in some other ones, but Eric has been

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finding pretty much every book article,

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any publication he can get his hands on

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that Landreth has written across, you know, decades

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and we are just going to comb through them

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and find passages and sections that are important

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and

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I'll share them with y'all. So

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happy to hear your thoughts. Love some feedback,

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brenna@thekidcounselor.com. But that's,

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that's what we're hoping to do with this

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because the skills are needed

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and necessary.

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But we also have to understand

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the intentions and why we should be doing things

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and

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much deeper things regarding this theory. And that's what my hope is for this.

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All right. One housekeeping thing before we get into the actual text.

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So I've been mentioning this on the Zoom call in the Collective,

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which if you're unfamiliar with that, we have an online community for CCPTs,

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the CCPT Collective.

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So if you would like to

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hang out with some other like-minded folks and hang out with some CCPT people,

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you can do that at ccptcollective.com, find out all about it.

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It's a really awesome place to be.

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And also in the coaching groups,

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we've been talking about this and people have been like, wait, what?

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So I feel like I need to make my audience aware of this as well.

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So the APT convention every year is in October

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and that is the United States

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APT conference

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and there are international participants that come. But it is our

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it is our United States conference

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every October.

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It moves all across the country

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this year. It is in Atlanta, Georgia.

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So the moral of me telling you this is you all need to plan

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to come to Atlanta in October

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because I am going to be there.

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And so are so many of you all my coaching people, my collective people, some of my

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participants, my team from my center,

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we have so many people planning to come

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and we're gonna do meetups and we're going

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to have dinners and we're going to get together

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and have CCPT take over the conference and it's gonna make me so happy.

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So mark your calendars,

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go to the a4pt.org website so that you can find out details,

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but go ahead and plan to be there. This is gonna be an amazing time

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and there's gonna be all kinds of ways to connect and I'm gonna be there with,

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hopefully, I've, I've put in for a booth.

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So I'm hoping that they approve me for a booth

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and we're gonna be able to just hang out and

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a lot of my a

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lot of my staff and a lot of my participants are saying

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that we all need merchandise to all wear matching shirts and stuff.

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I don't know.

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We'll see anyway. All right, I'm, I'm back on curriculum now.

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So today I'm going to be reading a couple

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of sections out of Innovations in Play Therapy.

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And the subtitle is Issues, Process and Special Populations by Landreth.

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And this was published in 2001. So we're more than 20 years into this book.

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I really encourage you to purchase this book, get it used.

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It is very, very helpful

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about things that traditionally are not discussed in other texts.

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And I actually want to read you something on the back of this

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book because I think that this explains the value of this book.

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It is a unique compilation of discussions

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on current and pressing issues in play therapy

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topics commonly left out of other play therapy resources.

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And this is designed to help play therapists

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fill in the gaps as therapeutic considerations multiply.

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So it really is not so clinical in nature.

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It is more practical application, which is what we're all about. So

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I really do encourage you to consider

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getting this book Innovations in Play Therapy.

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And then the subtitle is Issues,

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Process and Special Populations edited by Landreth.

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OK.

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So now you know where I'm reading from?

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Now, let's talk about what this passage is about and why I'm bringing this up,

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you know, that

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I interact with clinicians all over the world every week.

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And what I've noticed is there's been

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a focus and a prioritization

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of figuring out what is going on in sessions.

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So I have all of these therapists every single week saying,

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well, how would you interpret this?

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And is what theme is this and, and what does this mean? And is this the

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good versus bad theme emerging or is this something else? And,

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and it is important for us to understand what is going on thematically.

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It is important for us to be able to have a sense

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of what the child is addressing and how they're progressing.

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However, my caution is

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we have to be careful about feeling like everything needs to be interpreted

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and everything needs to be codified as a theme.

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And

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I think that Landreth will state it better than I will.

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So I'm just going to read directly from the book

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so that you all have a sense of, of where I'm going with this.

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But I'll certainly share my thoughts as well,

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but I want you to hear directly from Landreth and I'll

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pause as I read so that I can share some thoughts

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and we'll kind of go from there. So I am on page 11 by the way of the book,

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and I'm going to start with this section and then we'll move on to some other ones.

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But here's where he starts this,

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understanding the meaning in children's play is at best a difficult process.

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An Amster in 1982

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insisted that the play activity of children quote

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must be recognized always

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as a complex distorted assortment

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of the child's conscious and unconscious expressions.

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End quote.

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Let me say that again,

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Amster in 1982 insisted that the play activity of children quote

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must be recognized always as a complex distorted

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assortment of the child's conscious and unconscious expressions.

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End quote.

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Equally as important is the observer's knowledge of child development

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and how children of a given age typically play.

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Only then can the observer decide if there is some unique meaning in the child's play

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in assessing play behavior.

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The observer then is constantly comparing what an individual child is doing,

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saying and feeling

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to what is normal for that child's age level of development and environment.

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These comparisons can then provide some clues to what the unique meaning may be.

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All right. So let's unpack this together a little bit here.

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So not only does he acknowledge how difficult the

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process is to understand the meaning in children's play?

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It is, it's hard

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and it never becomes easy

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after you practice it, you get better at it.

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But there is never a point where you go. Oh This is easy. I I have got this. No worries.

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It is always difficult.

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So we can't have an expectation that we're going to get to a point where we can just

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readily and easily identify whatever's going on at any

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given moment with any child in any play session,

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that's not practical.

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So first of all,

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I think we need to have very clear understanding and expectation for ourselves.

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But then

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he goes in to say that

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our knowledge of child development

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and how children of a given age typically play

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is another factor.

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And I know not all of you are necessarily educated in child development.

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Some of you don't have a child development background.

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Some of you all really have no idea of what is

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age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.

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Some of you stumbled into child-centered play therapy.

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Some of you, child-centered play therapy,

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found you and hooked you and never let you go.

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And so now you're playing catch up, right?

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So again, this is not to make you feel inadequate or

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incompetent in this in any way, what I'm trying to address here is

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it's hard to understand the meaning anyway.

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But then we also have to be able to say

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this is just pretty age appropriate behavior.

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This is actually just pretty standard

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for a girl that's five years old.

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This is what a five year old girl would typically play out

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versus.

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Oh OK.

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No, this is actually not aligned with standard typical five year old girl behavior.

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OK. There's something more here.

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So we have to be at least cognizant

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of the fact that

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as we're in a play session,

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our judgment call of this is appropriate and normal behavior

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in play

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versus

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this seems like it doesn't really align

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with child development and play.

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Ok. So that's something to be mindful of.

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All right, let me continue to read

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emotional experiences and happenings that are important

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or have in some way, significantly impacted children

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will often show up as repeated behavior in their play.

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Let me read that again,

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emotional experiences and happenings that are important or have in some way,

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significantly impacted children will often show up

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as repeated behavior in their play.

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This is why we talk all the time about the repetitive nature of sessions.

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They will play the same toy, they will play the same

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play,

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they will play the same theme. Why?

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Because that is the way that they make sense of what's going on.

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All right,

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to continue a theme is the recurrence of

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certain events or topics in the child's play,

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either within a play experience such as during a play therapy session

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or across several play experiences or sessions.

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A key point here. Listen, y'all, this is,

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this is your big aha moment.

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A key point here is the recurrence of the play after some lapse of time

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or an intervening period of play in

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which the theme is not played out.

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That is extremely important for us to understand

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because

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we often will see behavior in a playroom

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and we immediately want to jump to what theme it is.

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So as soon as a child buries something in the sand

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we immediately codify that as permanence theme.

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Ok, we have to be very careful with that

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for a theme to occur.

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It has to recur

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in the child's play

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either within a play session

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or across several play sessions.

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So if a child comes in and

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swipes sand shelves,

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we might immediately start to go. Oh, ok. Here's a theme.

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If that child never swipes another shelf,

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the rest of that session or the rest of their work with you,

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it wasn't a theme.

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So my caution is we're not jumping to try to put thematic constructs on everything.

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If it is not repetitive in nature,

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if it doesn't repeat itself within a session or between

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sessions and we see it reemerge from week to week,

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it is not considered a theme.

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OK. So then Landreth shares an example.

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So four year old

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Sean's 20 minute play with a rubber snake would

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not be considered a theme even though that is

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considered to be an unusually long time for a child of that age to engage in such play.

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Although the play may be significant,

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the expression must occur more than once or twice to be considered a theme.

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All right.

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So be mindful

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that

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as we are watching and observing what

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is happening in play,

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we have to keep in mind that just because it shows

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up once we're not working to come up with the theme.

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Now, if we recognize that as a potential start of a theme,

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then we would document that in our notes with a question mark.

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I do this all the time.

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So if a child starts something

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that seems to have a thematic element to it,

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in other words,

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they're setting up a battle scene and they say this

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is the good team and this is the bad team.

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I will write

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good versus bad question mark

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and then guess what?

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I wait for the rest of that session to unfold.

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And if once the child sets up the battle scene and there's good versus bad

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and then they moved to

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cooking food

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and

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the bad people don't get to eat.

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But the good people get to have their choice of the menu

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and then they move to school and the good kids get to go

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to recess and the bad kids have to sit inside at their desks.

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We know then it is a theme

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because good versus bad occurred multiple times across that session.

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We can see the consistency

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or if it only emerges one time that week.

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But then the following week, good versus bad comes up again

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and then the third week, good versus bad comes up again,

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then we know at that point it is clearly a theme.

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OK? Hope that's helpful.

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And then let me share this as well.

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I continue in the book, the theme may not always be readily recognizable

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because what is being played, the activity or the toys being played with

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May be different each time.

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But the theme of the play or the underlying meaning of the play is the same.

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Let me say that again,

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the theme may not always be readily recognizable because what is being played,

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the activity or the toys being played with may be different each time.

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But the theme of the play or the underlying meaning of the play is the same.

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That is what we're trying to

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key into.

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We want to make sure that we understand that even

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though it may shift the toys may be different,

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the activities may be different if the meaning of the play underlying it

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or theme is still there.

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That's what we're trying to make sure that we're aware of.

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OK?

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And then one last section that

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I want to share with you that I think is really helpful.

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He moves into briefly talking about symbols and I'm not

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going to get into that a whole lot right now.

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But

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I just want to make you aware of this.

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So oftentimes, I think we're jumping to try to say that everything is a theme often.

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What's happening in play is symbolic. Kids are using symbols to represent things.

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It doesn't necessarily get categorized as thematic play.

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Sometimes it is symbolic play.

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So I'm going to give some examples of what that may look like

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because I think that it's important for you to kind of hear from him what

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he defines that as

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Kaplan and Kaplan in 1983

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have concluded that there are some patterns

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of play that have fairly universal meaning

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and may indicate the type of problems that underlie a child's disturbance.

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They suggested that children who tend to be meticulously clean

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and avoid dirty or messy play,

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00:19:19,500 --> 00:19:22,300
who arrange toys only in neat patterns

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and whose drawings often require the use of a ruler.

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00:19:26,829 --> 00:19:29,000
He's legit describing me y'all anyway,

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00:19:30,219 --> 00:19:34,469
maybe not the messy part but the arranging and making drawings perfect.

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00:19:34,479 --> 00:19:35,520
So me when I was a kid

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may indicate a rigidity

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that is seriously limiting their development.

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Also,

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children who either keep up a constant chatter

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or play silently for long periods of time may be hiding their feelings,

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constant regression to earlier levels of maturity and compulsion

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to use materials such as sand and water,

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which may have cleansing. Symbolism may signify unresolved conflict.

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OK?

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00:20:07,800 --> 00:20:08,979
And he goes on and I,

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I don't wanna make this too muddy because I'm trying to make it clear that we don't

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00:20:12,729 --> 00:20:14,439
wanna make everything a theme and I don't wanna

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00:20:14,449 --> 00:20:16,280
kind of make this confusing with the symbols.

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But

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I read that paragraph specifically because so many of you have asked,

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00:20:21,140 --> 00:20:23,520
well, what about the kid that just talks the whole time?

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Or what about the kid that doesn't say a word to me the whole time?

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00:20:25,969 --> 00:20:28,119
Or what about the kid that refuses to touch sand

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00:20:28,130 --> 00:20:31,380
or is constantly cleaning things or is constantly organizing things?

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OK?

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This is symbolic and significant

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because it's indicating

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the problems that are underlying their struggles.

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00:20:41,890 --> 00:20:44,979
Now, can we say that those are themes? No,

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00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:50,260
when, when I am coaching you all, I'm typically telling you,

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00:20:50,270 --> 00:20:52,680
let's identify the underlying root cause.

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00:20:52,689 --> 00:20:56,939
That's what this is intended to do here. What is the underlying root cause?

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00:20:57,229 --> 00:21:02,260
For one, it's rigidity for the other. It's hiding of feelings for the other.

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It's unresolved conflict.

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So this is where the themes are no longer necessarily what we're looking for.

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00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:11,979
We're looking for root cause root issue and this,

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00:21:11,989 --> 00:21:14,569
their type of play is symbolic of that.

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00:21:16,030 --> 00:21:18,260
OK. So I'm hopeful that that

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00:21:18,989 --> 00:21:21,900
is going to kind of influence your interpretation

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00:21:21,910 --> 00:21:23,420
of what's going on in play sessions.

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00:21:23,650 --> 00:21:26,209
And I'm hopeful that this is encouraging to you

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00:21:26,790 --> 00:21:27,469
and

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00:21:27,619 --> 00:21:30,969
that this kind of gives you some direction as you're taking notes,

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00:21:30,979 --> 00:21:33,439
as you're documenting, as you're sitting down with parents.

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00:21:33,750 --> 00:21:34,969
We want to

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00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:38,640
be careful that we don't jump the gun and

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00:21:38,650 --> 00:21:41,439
say everything falls under these categories of themes.

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00:21:41,510 --> 00:21:42,300
It doesn't,

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00:21:42,550 --> 00:21:44,420
we do need to be aware of themes,

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00:21:44,430 --> 00:21:47,550
but we have to understand that they have to be repetitive in nature.

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And then sometimes there's just symbolic play that is not thematic in nature.

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So hope that that helps you.

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I would love to hear from you as we go through this summer series,

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00:21:57,660 --> 00:22:00,489
we're going to be reading through lots of texts, not just this book,

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00:22:00,500 --> 00:22:02,319
we're going to get into the Art of the Relationship

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00:22:02,420 --> 00:22:05,839
and we're going to get into some of the other classic works. So

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I'm thinking this is going to actually be a really fun thing to do.

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Questions will still be on Thursdays.

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So just be aware that if you have any questions

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00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:16,239
that you have a burning desire to ask me,

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00:22:16,459 --> 00:22:19,209
you can email me brenna@thekidcounselor.com.

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00:22:19,219 --> 00:22:25,150
You can also leave a message on our voicemail number which is 813-812-5525.

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And I would be happy to answer your questions on Thursdays. So

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love y'all. Grateful to hang out with you each week. Thanks for your time.

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We'll talk again soon. Bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr

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00:22:38,199 --> 00:22:41,319
Brenna Hicks for more episodes and resources.

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Please go to www.playtherapypodcast.com.