The Family Express - E22. Integrating EFFT and Play Therapy

Oct 22 2024 35 mins 1

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Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin and Ronda Evans where our destination is resilient and connected families. Our guest today is Liliana Baylon, Ph. D. and we discuss integrating play therapy into EFFT when there are families with kids under the age of 12. All Aboard !

1:00. Play is the way that a baby/infant explores and experiences the world around them. Play and fun is a central need for infants/children. Children communicate using their body and then they rely on the adult to organize their experience and body expression using language.

5:00. Their body expression and play communicates something of their experience, and through play we can create an open channel where we can engage with them about their experience and help them.

6:30. Play therapy intervention: Create a playful game from using a light switch to help a child express themselves non-verbally.

7:30. Hot potato play therapy intervention: whoever catches the hot potato needs to add something to the current topic of conversation.

10:30. Bringing playfulness to the conversation helps inoculate the conversation and reduces the emotional intensity.

11:30. Play therapy intervention: Using any turn-taking game to take turns sharing something helps to reduce the risk and the emotional intensity. Challenge yourself: how can I use this game in a family session to facilitate family connecting and talking?

15:30. Liliana tells a story of how she uses a game called “Sabo” with her own adolescent family relatives to facilitate a conversation about their language, tradition, change and loss in a playful, safe container of the game.

18:50. As a family therapist, understand the reason/clinical rationale for why you’re incorporating that particular play intervention with a particular family.

20:00. Kathryn tells a story of how she challenged herself to use limited play therapy tools and interventions with a family with young children to see how far she could go with conversation only.

25:00. Track which topics increase distress/stress/arousal in the session, and does the parent attune to the distress, and how does each parent respond to the distress signal?

25:30. Liliana suggests having play dough and scented markers and fidgets available for arousal regulation.

26:50. Understand the benefits of play therapy tools such as play dough (tactile) to include this in your session note such as using play dough for co-regulation.

Thank you for listening!

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.