239 | The Power of "Yet": A Simple Word That Changes Reflective Responding in Child-Centered Play Therapy

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You're listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr

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Brenna Hicks. Your source for centered and focused play therapy coaching.

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Hi, I'm Dr

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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. I am going to process

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a, I

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guess what I consider to be a pro tip with you all.

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And it has come out of quite a few videos that I've been reviewing

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and some conversations I've been having

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with coaching participants and Collective members.

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And I realized that this is probably not in text or curriculum anywhere,

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but I think this one word makes a huge difference in our sessions.

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So that's where we're going. However, before we get there,

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I wanna give you a couple of housekeeping updates. So the first is

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that we are doing a live podcast event on January 3rd at 2 p.m. Eastern.

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So if you would like to sign up for that, I would love to have you on the live call.

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It will be

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a true podcast. So I will do my podcast live

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and then I will have Q and A

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non

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Collective members, non coaching participants get priority for Q and A.

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So if you have never interacted with me personally,

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I would love to have you on the call.

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The link will be in the show notes

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and it will be a Zoom call.

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So make sure that you have a Zoom account in order to participate.

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So January 3rd at 2 p.m. Eastern

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also

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in the Collective, this is just really kind of,

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I want to share something with you all, in the Collective every month, we have a theme.

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And as a result of me speaking in Australia,

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I came back and changed December's theme

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and it is now about articulation in 2025

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and making sure that we are setting ourselves up for success

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to better articulate

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all the things that we do.

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And that has been a really interesting

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discussion on our first week in the Collective call in December.

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So just wanted to let you all know that I will probably be

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diving into some specificity of some of the things that we process together

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in the podcast as well because I know that my audience is broad

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and I know that although there is some carry over and some overlap,

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there are podcast listeners that are not part of the Collective and coaching. So

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I wanna make sure that

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all of my people are getting the same information.

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So I'll probably in the New Year start bringing in some of that information as well.

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And finally,

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I wanted to

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just tell you that we are about midway through December

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as of this episode and

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the emails that I have gotten from you all

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the things that you have shared with me this year,

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the stories you've told the successes and wins that we've celebrated together,

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the struggles that we've walked through together.

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This has been by far

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the most

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rich and rewarding and fulfilling professional year of my entire life.

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I was actually talking to Eric about this. A couple of nights ago,

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I

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had no way to predict or know

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what

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this was going to look like several years ago when I started this podcast.

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And I just want you all to know how deeply

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appreciative and grateful and thankful I am for you all.

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This has been

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a dream come true professionally for me.

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And I'm just really thankful that you all reach out and that you share things with me

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and you let me walk this professional journey

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with you and sometimes the personal journey too.

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So

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I've had several of you in various communications.

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Tell me that you consider me to be your friend and you feel

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like you know me so well because you listen to me so often.

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And that is my favorite part of what I do.

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I, it's my favorite element of being a podcast host

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is that we feel like we're friends and

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I mean that truly so just wanted to say thank you as we're drawing 2024 to a close,

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really, really appreciative and excited for what's to come in 2025.

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Ok. So now we're on to the pro tip.

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I wanted to throw out a word, but I'm going to tease the the reasoning first.

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Here's what often happens.

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We are trained to never do for a child that which they can do for themselves.

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We are trained to return responsibility

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and we are trained to esteem build and encourage

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in the playroom.

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So with that,

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we have these approaches, skill based clinical approaches

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to interacting,

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but here's what can happen.

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A child is struggling in the playroom.

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It doesn't matter with what

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and our responses because we are adherent to

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the model and we're esteem building and encouraging

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and returning responsibility and not doing for a

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child that which they can do for themselves.

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It can come across as dismissive

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and disconnected

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to what is happening. So let me make sense of what I mean.

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The child has been struggling and struggling and struggling to

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tie their shoes or

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get the tower not to fall over or hit the bull's eye

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with the velcro

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whatever the scenario is,

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they are in the throes of frustration

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and defeat

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and they feel incompetent.

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So with that scenario,

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when we say,

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oh, you're working really hard, you'll get it,

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you can do it,

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you know what to do,

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you're capable of that you can do hard things.

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All of those are true and helpful and adherent.

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But the child will often get really irritated and push back

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against those phrases. Why?

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Because their reality is they can't,

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they have been trying,

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they have been failing,

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they have not done anything.

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They

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continue to work at it and they feel defeated and incapable and incompetent

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and our phrases can be received as dismissive and disconnected.

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Like, do you even see what's going on here?

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Why are you telling me? I can do this? I can't do this and kids will often say that

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no, I can't

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or I actually had one quite

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precocious and eloquent child who said,

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yeah, you keep saying that and I keep trying and it's not working

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and I was like fair enough.

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OK? So here's the pro tip.

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You incorporate the word yet.

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So let's look at what this would

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practically speaking, look like.

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Oh,

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you're working so hard,

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you're gonna get it.

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You keep trying.

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You just haven't figured it out yet

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or

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oh, you haven't quite gotten it to stack yet.

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If we throw the word yet in

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regardless of what the child chooses to do.

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In other words,

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they can choose to keep trying,

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they can choose to give up

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or they can choose to figure it out.

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And sometimes that's not a choice. Sometimes that's just the outcome

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but really three outcomes there, they keep trying, they give up or they get it.

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But look at how even if they give up

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our phrase still applies.

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Oh, you haven't quite figured out how to do that yet,

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but you will.

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Oh, you're frustrated because you haven't been able to stack those yet.

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There's an implication with that word.

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And the implication is even if you feel defeated right now,

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even if you feel that this is a terrible, horrible, no, good, bad day right now,

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even if you don't think you will ever figure this out,

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it's just not yet.

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And that is a

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little bit of

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NLP. That is a little bit neuro linguistic programming. That is a little bit of

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getting them thinking about the outcome.

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It's a little bit predictive.

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There's all kinds of things there, but essentially what you're doing is two things.

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One making sure the child doesn't feel like you are oblivious to the struggle

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because when a kid has tried 17 times to do something and you say

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you can do it,

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we mean well,

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but the child's like, clearly I can't,

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right.

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So not only does it acknowledge the struggle,

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but it also instills

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the belief in the child that we know that they're capable.

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And even if in this moment,

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we haven't been able to do what we're trying to do,

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it will happen at some point.

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And the beauty of CCPT

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is when kids have unfinished work, they circle back to it.

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So even when a child chooses to give up,

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even when a child chooses to say I don't want to do

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this anymore or I can't do this or this isn't worth it.

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I've, I've had kids, I was talking about this on one of the coaching calls.

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I've had kids say

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I'm wasting so much of my play time

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and I think it's so hilarious that when they feel like they're

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trying to accomplish something that doesn't feel like play to them.

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And so they put that in a different category and then they're finally like,

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I've wasted so much of my play time. Now I have to stop this so I can go play.

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I love that

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when a child is saying, you know what I'm done,

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they will circle back because they know that it's unfinished work

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and that is how kids self-actualize because when you give up,

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you're not the best version of yourself.

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And so there's a compulsion

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to come back and try again

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because kids believe that they are in fact capable

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at the higher level, the self actualized

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child

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is capable

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is competent.

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So they want to become that person and they keep working at it. So when we say yet,

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there's an expectation and an implication

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that they will get there,

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but it helps them not feel frustrated and misunderstood

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in the moment.

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So

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pro tip,

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I had pop into my brain last week as I was on a coaching call and I made a little note.

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So here we are talking about it. I hope that, that's helpful for you.

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I hope that you incorporate that in your sessions

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and then it will mitigate some of that contentious back and forth

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when we are trying to instill

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confidence and capability in kids and they're in the moment

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where they completely disagree with you yet is the buffer.

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All right, I love y'all.

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If you want to reach out to me, brenna@thekidcounselor.com,

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I'd love to hear from you.

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I'm going to probably next week read some stories,

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some listener stories that have reached out

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just to encourage you and to share in some of the excitement that I get to receive.

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And I want to pass some of that on to you.

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Just some

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success stories, some celebration stories,

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some journey into being a play therapist stories.

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I've been kind of stockpiling emails and I want to share some of those with you.

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So we'll be processing that probably next week.

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In the meantime, I hope that you have a great week. We'll talk again soon. Bye.

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

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For more episodes and resources.

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Please go to www.playtherapypodcast.com.