In Praise of Play Therapy
This stuff is just too important for me to sit on it. It’s long, but I got to get it out there.
After a rough week of Bran getting a concussion and nursing him through it, I’m here to drop my 2 cents about kids and processing accidents, events, and relationships. I know, believe me: I know, getting a concussion while playing with your safe, loving mom and sister does not equate with so much trauma kids endure. And, it was cool to watch the things we hope to build and foster in kids with more significant, less supported traumatic experiences unfold in my pretty well, healthily attached kid.
As I understand it, the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that helps us prioritize, organize, and execute in our lives, the part that makes sense of the inputs we receive, does not have full coverage of myelin until a person is in their twenties. Myelination is the process of neurons being coated with an insulation of fat, like the rubber coating on a telephone cord. The coating helps information travel faster. Kids literally receive the more “primitive” brain’s (downstairs brain in Siegel language. Google it!) and the memory/associative brain’s opinions and suggestions much faster than whatever their underdeveloped (though age-appropriate) part of the brain can deliver.*
All that to say, cognitive approaches may not work best in helping children realize and learn to manage their feelings and impulses. We could explain them TO DEATH and they still may not get it. Certainly, naming and explaining can help, but without some way, relational or creative, for them to get used to the (technically) unnecessary fire alarms that go off in their heads, we can’t make meaningful, PRACTICAL progress as quickly.
One of my sons and I spent nearly a year of weekly visits to a therapist who talked and taught his ear off. My kid would sit, stone still, dead-faced the whole time and give monosyllabic answers. He hated going and truly got nothing out of it in terms of therapeutic improvement. The only time he came alive was in the last 2 or 3 minutes of the session when the therapist and he played a bean bag toss game together. Kiddo responded, even in that very stressful environment for him, to connection through play! I kept this in mind when looking for the next helper for us.
About 6 months to a year later, we began play therapy with a wonderful, highly-qualified therapist. The goal of play therapy, in my own words, is to create an environment and a relationship in which a child can relax enough to access and work through their experiences and feelings in their strongest language: creative play. The magic of it, to me, is that the process itself helps to heal and support development in the child. The child gets to “relive” difficult feelings and events through his play or storytelling in a non-threatening context in which he has control. So, he can practice moving through the whole story or memory and be supported in seeing it through to the end. Over time, traumatic experiences lose their dominance in the brain as the brain grows and forms new connections. The child can move from: ‘'Stop! I don’t want to talk about it!” and feeling frozen in scary memories, scary feelings, or hurtful self-talk to:
Speaking about things when he is ready
Realizing that life goes on and not everyone or every trigger leads to real danger
Feeling agency and strength of their own to resolve problems
It was difficult (very difficult!) for me to adjust my expectation that I would get to see cognitive interpretation of the kid’s changes and healing. I wanted a, “Mom, I get it now that what happened wasn’t my fault” or a, “Wow, I’m really going to use these tools I learned to reframe my experiences and decisions moving forward.” THAT SHIZ AIN’T NEVER GONNA BE SAID! Maybe I didn’t want those exact, ridiculous words, but I did want some kind of apparent “learning” as we think of it as adults. I wanted my child, with an under-developed (again, age appropriate) prefrontal cortex to make me and MY fully developed PFC feel better by giving me words and logic. What an important shift to instead expect my calm amygdala and my warm behavior to help regulate his stressed brain and build his sense of safety from deep inside his own mind. I may never hear a logical articulation or see CBT type practice and responses to stressors. It would be reassuring to me, but it is NOT NECESSARY FOR A CHILD TO THRIVE.
Within a year, my son was doing so well that he no longer needed to see the play therapist, and I had learned a ton. I have been able to continue creating a play-therapy-like context in our home and interactions for continued healing and development for him and also my other kids! Shifting from a fear-based (in me) system of obedience and respect (but only for grownups) focused parenting to parenting focused on healthy brain development, grace, and relationship was very counter-intuitive.
When you look at it in black and white like this, it seems so obvious. Of course we want a home focused on healthy development and relationships! But what happens when focusing on healthy development means over-looking disobedience to get to the root of the problem (like not correcting disrespectful talk BEFORE you come close, physically and emotionally) makes you look and feel like you're letting your children “walk all over you?” It gets really hard! Because child care that is about children rather than about caregiver dignity, authority, and power, about the adult’s status and glory rather than the child’s development and safety, has yet to become a cultural norm. It’s coming, I hope, but right now it’s not typical. (Especially in religious places and homes... More on that to come in a separate post. All this tracks beautifully with the Gospel, but like grace itself, it can punch a bit of offense to the senses.)
So, I’ll speak for myself here, I can fall on a frustrating middle ground, one where I give my children what they truly need part of the time, sometimes struggle to maintain boundaries, and routinely blow-up when my own sense of embarrassment or entitlement leads to a place of resentment or rage or my lack of self-confidence causes me to make fear-based, rather than love-based decisions. Those things still happen, but I’m learning all the time. Thankfully, repentance, recovery, repair, renewal, and good old fashion apologies go a LONG way in child development.
I’ll tell ya, though, those patterns that were entrenched in our brains from our own childhoods and experiences come up ALL the time. This isn’t news, of course. The unresolved fears and screwed up messages in our own minds come up when our children trigger them. Personally, I get very distressed when my children draw ‘'too much’' attention to themselves or talk back to me. It isn’t because I’m disappointed or embarrassed; it’s because I feel threatened.
Growing up in a ballet school run by a hot-tempered, insulting, shaming woman, I learned to keep my problems to myself and to never speak up for myself. The ballet world in general trained me to keep even very real, even pressing opinions, problems, and injuries to myself. To act out or ask for help meant inviting derision, abuse, loss of privilege, or outright rejection. Now, when my kids are unabashedly airing their grievances, crying over the troubles or injuries, or advocating for themselves (albeit rudely or immaturely), I start to panic. Everything in my body and mind tells me DANGER! DANGER! Then, in my panicked state (though there is no real threat of danger) I lose some cognitive function (all those wonderful parenting tips and techniques fly right out my ear!) and my primary objective is to do whatever I can to MAKE IT STOP! I react with the same kind of technique that turned me into an afraid child in the first place: insults, demands, and yelling.
I’m an adult now (sometimes), so I have been able to learn that I have these reactions, move through the feelings I could not adequately process as a child, make choices about how I want to respond instead, and practice those responses. The therapist that bored my son to tears probably would have been a fine therapist for me with all his cognitive behavioral therapeutic techniques and tools. And my ballet example is just one influence. We’re all a mesh (and possibly a mess) of experiences, decisions, and learning. I’m grateful everyday that we adults can still learn!
Anyway, I write all this to say: when we pursue reasons for and solutions to our own destructive behaviors, we are potentially keeping the children in our care and influence from passing on those same harmful tendencies. When my kids insult each other, it stings for two reasons: 1) the offense and pain for the kids and 2) the knowledge that I helped pass down that painful and pain-causing behavior. But my dance teachers and directors never came to find me and apologize when they hurt me or for creating a dangerous environment. Think about a person in your past who hurt you. Can you imagine what a HUGE difference apologies and admission of fault from them would have made in your personal development?! Pretty wild, right?
All of these things have preoccupied my thoughts for years now. How do I give my kids what I think I needed? How do I make choices that are different than what is ingrained in me? How will I see the wrong turns I make? Then there are the adjustments. Learn something new: adjust. See yourself in a new way: adjust. See the kid in a new way: adjust. There is so much we will eventually get right, and SO MUCH we get wrong in the process.
A friend shared with me about using an analogy, an object lesson, to explain the effect of unkind words. She crumpled a piece of paper, not too hard, not too dramatically, and then she pointed out. “See? Even when I try to smooth it out, once those words have been said, can the paper really ever be the same?” I think this is an excellent way to explain the concept to a kid. It’s visual, emotional, memorable, and comes with a verbal explanation to which they can easily bridge from the feeling part of their brain.
Her story made me think of origami puzzles.
Back at the start of the pandemic, I bought a lot of brain food type distractions and fidgets. The origami puzzles have different colored squares on them. When the page is all folded and complete, one side will have a 5x5 white grid and the other a 5x5 black grid. I took to them like a housewife to wine: “that’ll work.” I have generally good spatial reasoning, and I love me a handicraft.
Side note: We have been working with a group that specializes in helping families full of gifted (which also means special needs) people. Our therapist has been honing in on my need for true, restorative breaks and (that stupid frackin’ term) “self-care.” I recently explained that the origami puzzles were good self-care. They put me into a state of “flow.” K. She understood, and then she said, “Ok, besides origami puzzles…”
I’m at the bottom of the stack of origami puzzles. So they are really freaking hard now. They are level RED. Sometimes I get them right, but unlike all the other colors, sometimes I just can’t do it. Babies? They exhaust us, but their problems are relatively simple to solve. That’s the green level (and, YES, sometimes a baby will take you straight to yellow or even orange! I know.). Then you get them in school. Here come the yellow and orange problems. Teen and beyond: you’ve got red level origami puzzles. When your child operates outside the socially known and accepted norms, you might get to red WAY sooner.
To solve a red level origami puzzle, I first take a good hard look. I’ve learned not to dive in too quickly. I’ve also learned where there HAS TO BE a fold. That area, I know, has got to give. But at the red level, things aren’t always what they seem. An unexpected fold might just be the key to hiding all that paper that has to go somewhere! So, I try and try and try and try. Often there will be a fold that I keep trying, and I keep seeing that it’s NOT the solution. Yet I still go back to it. Maybe NOW, I think. And often: NO. When I finally solve a red level puzzle, it is often riddled with the marks of all the folds I tried that didn’t work. But, in the end, it’s whole. Sometimes, the places I folded and forced too much as I wrestled through will tear. That area of the finished piece will ALWAYS be marked; it will ALWAYS be weaker.
Just like I will ALWAYS dive under a cover of insults when I feel threatened. Gosh darn it, though, I’m a grown person who knows where we keep the tape!!!! If you have an area that needs healing and attention, go out and find the support you need.
When Bran was initially injured all he could say, in screaming, breathless sobs, was, “I wanna go home! I wanna go home!” All we could do was acknowledge the statement. And then I proceeded to manage the heck out of that emergency.
When the dust was settled and he was in a comfortable familiar place, no threats, I invited him to remember what happened. He couldn’t remember much (concussion!!), but he did say, “I just wanted to go home so I wouldn’t get bonked again.” In his panic state, he was trying to scream to me: “Get me away from that danger!” We have wooden swings that might clock you in the face and throw you to the concrete on Whidbey, not in Seattle. No amount of explaining, or commanding, or teaching (“Now, son, I know what’s best, so quit saying that. It makes no sense to put your sad, hurt body in the car for an hour + at rush hour!”) would have helped him calm down or understand what he himself even was really asking for.
Then, later in the day in my newly appointed quest: keep five year old away from activity and screens (😳😱🙄), he took a long, bath bomb bath with all his cups and pipettes. He also had a suds sponge (I call them “turkey bag” sponges) and, literally, old plastic trash, like that little tab piece you pull off the mouth of the almond milk box (No! Of course I don’t know why!). I was trying to do laundry, so I kept popping in and out. He called, “Look, Mom! I made an Ivo!” And, sure enough, sunglasses (again, why are they in the bath toys?) on a turkey bag sponge looks like a very cool older brother of his. We laughed together, and I said, “well, baby, we know that concrete didn’t knock out your great personality!” Then I went back to the laundry room.
I heard him calling for me, and as I came up the stairs I heard him say to Brendan, “No! I need to show mom!” He had the almond milk tab thing on the sponge-Ivo and said, “This is me now! With a band-aid.”
I understood right away. At the urgent care, they had to pull off the bandaid from his bloody forehead. It was all stuck in his hair, and he was very distressed by it. “Oh, wow,” I said. “I bet that is going to be hard to get off.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Now he’s in barfing!” The tab was thrown repeatedly into the water.
“He’s really feeling sad and yucky,” I said.
“Yeah, he has to go to the hospital.”
“That sounds really new and serious. Is he going to be ok?”
“They put stickers on him.” The tab was pushed against the sponge body a few times.
“How new and weird!”
Bran clutched the sponge to himself. “He’s done now, though.”
“Oh good. How does it end?”
“I got to sleep in your bed.”
“Yep, that’s right. After all that crazy stuff, it was just you, me, and daddy all safe and cozy in a bed. I love you so much.”
“And I love you.”
I promise this all actually happened. I wouldn’t fake you out! Believe me too that the next day, or maybe a couple days later, I heard him muttering a bit to himself.
“Whatcha talking about, Babe?”
“Oh, I was just saying to God that I didn’t break my head and die.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t!”
“Yeah. I was telling Him.”
“Were you telling Him ‘thank you?’”
“Yeah.”
PLAY THERAPY. Maybe it’s origami puzzles. Maybe it’s a bath sponge. Whatever it is, I try to move slowly enough to see it happening in my kids and in myself. It’s one of those things that feels like the simple drawing of a cube popping out on you. Once you see the front as the back, the direction changes. Your approach can ALWAYS CHANGE. To dither over things is to cry over spilled milk. Just do what you know is right, no matter what it says about the you that came before. CERTAINLY! Ask questions. Read it again. Try it out. And, for Heaven’s sake, apologize and repair whenever, wherever you can.
I’m happy to talk or write more about any of this, and I’m easy to find and contact. Please reach out!
*I’m not properly citing my sources. Most of my education has come from the many Siegel and Payne books, Decoding Boys by Natterson, Beyond Logic, Consequences, and Control by Forbes and Post, trainings generated from the Karen Purvis Institute for Child Development, my observation and experience with my 4 children (ages 5 to almost 13), and many, many hours of working with family and child therapists and psychologists.
