Play Strategies for the Clinic and Classroom
Training Description: This two-day workshop is devoted to the discovery of play in concept, practice and strategy as an invaluable intervention medium for mental health clinicians, consultants, educators and therapists from across disciplines.
Day 1:
The first half of the first day is devoted to the nature of play and an overview of the typical stages of play in the first five years. The core features of sensorimotor, functional and symbolic play are identified. Particular attention is paid to play as an action arena that promotes the development of self-regulation without the need for an imposed task! Specific regulatory functions of play are identified and explicated including: play as regulatory practice, play as novelty and investigation and play as roles and rules.
Play is in and of itself self-curative. However, within the context of open-ended play, specific strategies can be artfully embedded to quicken the process and serve specific aims including “teaching” parents in dyadic play therapy, The second half of the morning explores the factors that promote change and awaken development as play strategies and tactics, among them: using displacement, destroy-repair play, changing passive to active, promoting projection, using affect to motivate play, using semi-structured games, playful obstruction and playing dumb, using sensory materials and games, the classic squiggle game, play as desensitization through graded exposure, play as practice, talking to children through meaningful interpretation.
The afternoon of the first day is devoted to application and begins with viewing a session of psycho dynamic play therapy which will then be deconstructed and analyzed for what strategies were used and what strategies might have been used. Active audience participation will be encouraged. The next part of the workshop will be devoted to participant case presentations, discussion, deconstruction and analysis, problem solving, reflection and translating concepts, insights and formulations into practical play strategies for clinic, classroom and parents.
Day 2:
The morning of the second day will be devoted to special issues in children’s play, including play with children who are pre-symbolic or who need support and scaffolding to use pretend and symbolic play, as well as the definition and manifestation of, and strategies for intervention with, traumatic play.
The afternoon of the second day will again be devoted to participants’ case presentations.
Day one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0Ie2P9w2I
Day two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqitzUpnRn4