Play Therapy Training - Theory, Principles & Foundations

Explore the essential needs in child education, including balanced nutrition and care, safety, health, and family and school collaboration, to foster true education and positive behaviors through play therapy.

Develop social and emotional skills through self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making, and foster emotional resilience to support children's learning and well-being.

Explore how one-, two-, and three-year-olds develop physical, cognitive, language, and social emotional skills, with practical parenting attitudes and potty training guidance.

Explore how four to six-year-olds advance in motor and cognitive skills, language, self-care, and social rules. Learn parent strategies that emphasize listening, patience, and modeling behaviors.

Define what a toy is and explain choosing age-appropriate, durable, and functional items, emphasize gender neutrality, cost awareness, and outline play therapy toy categories and parental involvement.

Play therapy uses the therapeutic powers of play to help children express feelings, regulate emotions, and grow through non-directive and directive approaches, sandtray work, and cognitive behavioral techniques.

Discover the therapeutic powers of play in therapy, strengthening the therapeutic relationship, enabling self-expression, and promoting emotional balance through direct and indirect learning and cathartic play experiences.

Explore how play therapy helps children express distressing emotions, master trauma, and reduce anxiety and fears in safe, controllable play; develop positive emotions, social skills, secure attachment, and coping strategies.

Explore play develops empathy by helping children understand and share others' feelings via role play. See how play enables creative problem solving skills, emotional flexibility, self-regulation, resilience, and positive self-concept.

Explore how Freud and Jung shaped play therapy through psychodynamic approaches, including object relations, ego psychology, and self psychology. Examine how play expresses unconscious conflicts and enables catharsis.

Explore psychotherapists with a psychodynamic orientation, including helmet's use of symbolic play to reveal transference and child symptoms, Lowenfeld's sand trays and miracle box, and Anna Freud's ego-focused, parent-inclusive approach.

Explore Melanie Klein's psychodynamic view of play as direct expression and free association, tracing early superego development, oedipus complex, and object relations to inform play interpretation and parent guidance.

Explore Jungian analytical play therapy, using archetypes, collective unconscious, and symbolic play to foster ego development, self-healing, and individuation in a safe, non-directive therapeutic space.

Explore Jungian analytical play therapy, emphasizing parental involvement and sandtray symbolism. Guide the child’s individuation through initiation, working, and termination stages with flexible frequency.

Explore psychodynamic play therapy rooted in Freud's psychoanalytic theory and psychosexual stages. Examine how symbolic play reveals unconscious conflicts and guides time-limited, relational intervention.

The lecture shows how psychodynamic play therapy engages parents to uncover past traumas and life challenges shaping the child, guiding healthier parenting and caregiver-child relationships.

Explore dynamic interpretations in psychodynamic play therapy to reveal defense mechanisms, transfers, and repressed emotions through staged, ego-supportive, symbolic play that strengthens coping skills.

Apply Adlerian play therapy's lifestyle assessment from the first contact to understand a child's life tasks, personality priorities, family atmosphere, and false beliefs for insight and change.

Explore cognitive behavioral play therapy, integrating thoughts, emotions, and behaviors through play. Learn ABCD model, operant and classical conditioning, and evidence-based strategies to help children address emotional and behavioral challenges.

Explore the therapist's active, guiding role in cognitive behavioral play therapy. Develop plans with families, identify sustaining factors, apply targeted cognitive and behavioral techniques, and monitor progress toward shared goals.

Explore the four stages of cognitive behavioral play therapy—assessment, introduction and orientation, middle stage, and termination—and how weekly sessions and parental involvement shape progress toward goals.

Learn intervention methods in cognitive behavioral play therapy, including assessment with the Child Behavior Checklist, psychoeducation, cognitive restructuring, modeling, relaxation, problem solving, and positive reinforcement.

Explore cognitive behavioral play therapy through techniques like the puppet interview, sentence completion, wish pool, footprints, and emotion thermometer to help children express feelings, solve problems, and generalize adaptive behaviors.

Center the child's experiences through symbols and metaphors to express emotions. Empower growth by maintaining a safe, child-led space with engaged, non-directive participation.

Explore the five stages of experiential play therapy—from exploration to termination—where the child leads play, the therapist observes and maintains boundaries, and fantasy play helps process trauma and foster growth.

Explore how children express emotional inner worlds through toy metaphors, revealing trauma and unmet needs, and how therapists interpret these symbolic meanings to guide healing through play.

In play therapy, children relive trauma through primitive throat sounds and body postures, signaling deeper issues, while the therapist guides expression and calming phases toward healing.

Filial play therapy engages parents and children aged 3 to 12 in collaborative play across 10–20 sessions to strengthen parent-child bond and improve emotional expression, self-esteem, behavior, and problem solving.

Observe and assess family play in filial play therapy, guiding parents through structuring, empathetic listening, child-centered imaginative play, and boundary setting to support home practice and generalization.

Explore Theraplay, a play-based therapy rooted in attachment theory that engages parents as observers and co-therapists in interactive, reflective sessions to strengthen secure attachment, self-regulation, and social skills.

Theraplay 2 advocates safe, rhythmic play and touch to build secure attachment, emotional self-view, and resilience through structure, attachment, nutrition and care, and challenge.

Explore Theraplay concepts and the Marschak interaction method to guide parent-child play, assess dynamics, and craft strength-based treatment plans in a collaborative, non-competitive setting.