This live, online training hosted by North Dakota Association for Play Therapy will use the polyvagal theory to equip you to educate parents about what is underneath their children’s behaviors, actions and needs. It will address the most common states of nervous system dysregulation and skills that we can use to help children regulate through each state. It will lay out a model of structuring parent sessions to allow for this education and parental support, creating a partnership between therapist and parent making successful healing more likely.

This live, online training will lay out the unique stages of Somatic Experiential Play Therapy, as well as highlight the types of responses that are most helpful in each stage. This will help equip you, the therapist, to understand how to best support and challenge the nervous systems of children in the playroom based on what their capacity is at each unique stage of therapy.

This training will focus on the many facets of integrating parents into the play process. We will cover how to sell play therapy as a viable modality, how to talk about the child’s play with parents in order to increase buy in and support, and how to explain to parents their role in the change process in a way that results in therapeutic partnership.

This training will dive into the world of play based metaphor. We will work on interpreting the most common symbolic play into themes and discuss how to deepen these themes with our own responsive play. The training will feature a discussion on how to use board games in a thematic way in the playroom.