What You'll Learn During Your Two Days in Anaheim
Take your practice to the next level! Here's what you'll learn at the amazing DoubleTree Suites Anaheim Resort.
Understanding Big Behaviors Through a Relational Lens
- Big behaviors as communication
- Regulation before reasoning
- Needs beneath the behavior
- Developmental areas of dysregulation
- Physiological/Somatic
- Emotional
- Cognitive
- Relational/Attachment
- Sensory Processing
- Developmental Trauma and Adversity
- TraumaPlay® foundations
- Regulation
- Connection
- Felt Safety
- Co-Regulation
- Bottom-Up Brain Development
- Right Brain Before Left Brain
- Cross-Hemispheric Integration
- Regulation → Connection → Learning
- Cultural Considerations, Biases, Risks, and Limitations of Play Therapy
Becoming a Safe Boss
Building Safety Through Structure, Boundaries, and Need Meeting
- Attachment styles and paradigm shifts
- Repair over perfection
- Co-regulation versus behavior management
Safe Boss Interventions
- Safe Boss, Boundaries, and VR Headsets
- The Three Roots of Discipline
- Trust vs. Control Foundation
- The Choosing Mind Concept
- Learning to Self-Soothe
- Coregulation for Caregivers
- The SOOTHE Strategies
- Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
- Bottom-Up Boardgames
- Two Choices
- Lowering the Ladder
- Setting the Bar
- Rerouting
- Becoming a Safe Boss: Increasing Trust Through Need Meeting
- Triune Brain Handout
- Strong Eyes
Becoming a Nurturer
Strengthening Attachment and Co-Regulation
- Understanding attachment stories
- Recognizing triggers and overwhelm
- Building reflective capacity
- Family rituals of connection
- Emotional safety and family resilience
Nurturer Interventions — Delighting-In Games to Enhance Attachment Including:
- Airplane Love Notes
- Love Links
- Comfort Creatures
- Love Connectors
- Superhero Dyads
- Nurture Nooks
- Delighting-In Dice
- Stick Together Squigz
- Joey Jumps
- Meet in the Middle
- Sweet Dreams Lotion Potion
Making a Meaningful Goodbye
Facilitating Therapeutic Closure
- Graduation Caps
- Treatment Takeaways
- Family Flowerpot
- Parent Prizes
- Love Letters for Later
Understanding the Child's Internal World
Stress Response System
- WOT R You Doing?
- Who Is Amy G. Dala?
- What Is Amy G. Saying Now?
- Soothing Amy G.
- Head of a Pin
- Polyvagal Zoo
- Farmers and the Fainting Goat
- Sleuth the Sloth
Emotional Literacy
- Color Your Heart
- Mood Manicure
- Feelings Soup
- Sands of Time
Self-Regulation
- Hum Bugs
- Still-the-Struggle Socks
- Zip-but Don't Flip
- A Mindful Meal
- Finessing the Feel
- Yoga Tunes
Impulse Control and Anger Management
- Troubling Task Timer
- Count the Cost
- Anger Buttons
- Under the Eruption
- Alibaba and His Bucking Camel
- Are You Ready for the Boom?
Cognitive Flexibility
- Inner Critic/Inner Kindness
- Lose the Bruise
- Pick It Up or Lay It Down
- Recycler and the Shredder
- Rigid Rob/Flexible Fred
- Mistake Snake
Becoming a Storykeeper
Holding Hard Stories and Building Coherent Narratives
- Creating coherent narratives
- Helping caregivers hold hard stories
- Trauma-informed narrative development
- Increasing caregiver reflective functioning
Storykeeper Interventions
- Puzzles with Parents
- Excavating Hard Things
- Secret Book Safes
- Threading the Needle Backwards
- Scary Stories vs. Nurturing Narrations
- Bring It in the Room
- Narrative Dominoes
- Rupture and Repair
- At Arm's Length
Somatic Storykeeping
- Homunculus
- Monster Ears
- Walk It Through
- See No Evil, Hear No Evil
- Sand in My Eyes
- Google Eye Hop
Supporting Caregiver Reflection and Regulation
- Working with Negative Activation of the Caregiver
- Coregulation Through Chemistry
- Neurochemical Boxing Match
- Cortisol Cues
- Oxytocin Offerings
- Child's Felt Sense of Parental ANS States
- Mindful Mantras
- Threat Level Assessment
- When Parts of the Parent Trigger Parts of the Child, and Vice Versa
- Reflective Attachment Work Exercise
- Parts Work: Parental Protector Parts
- Parts Playground/Community Courtyard
Objectives
- Identify three ways trauma, adversity, and attachment disruptions contribute to challenging behaviors in children and adolescents.
- Differentiate between behavior management approaches and healing-centered, trauma-informed interventions when responding to dysregulated behaviors.
- Apply five play therapy-based strategies that increase felt safety, co-regulation, and trust within the parent-child relationship.
- Identify four caregiver factors that influence a child's regulation, attachment security, and behavioral functioning.
- Choose five play therapy interventions that support the development of coherent narratives and trauma-informed story processing.
- Utilize five play therapy interventions designed to increase caregiver reflective functioning and enhance parent-child co-regulation.
- Identify four play therapy areas of developmental derailment that can lead to dysregulation.
- Apply five play therapy interventions to enhance the quality of attachment in parent/child dyads.
- Identify three play therapy metaphors to enhance psychoeducation for clients related to stress response systems.
- Choose five play therapy interventions for identifying and shifting cognitive distortions.
- Utilize five play therapy-based clinical strategies for working with impulse control and anger management.
- Utilize five play therapy interventions for increasing self-regulation.
