Description

Handouts

Outline

Why Play Therapy Works

• Therapeutic power of play
• Facilities communication
• Fosters emotional wellness
• Enhances social relationships
• Increases personal strengths

Assessment and Diagnosis

• Common myths of behavior disorders
• Systemic assessment of emotional and behavioral distress
  • School, home, and community relationships
  • Impact of inconsistent and harsh parenting/relationships practices
• Race, gender, ethnicity, culture issues and bias
• Trauma assessment

TREATING DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR DISORDERS
Oppositional Defiant Disorder

• Recurrent behavioral and relational patterns
• Impact on the family system
• Shame and vulnerability (in the family) – The Kryptonite!
  • Cycle of disconnect, rejection, and attachment ruptures
• Environmental risk factors

Play Therapy Interventions to Combat Negative Behaviors

• Play-based regulation and co-regulation techniques
  • Calm down jars
  • Lemon squeezies
  • Blast It!
  • Guided imagery
• Repair and enhance relationships
  • Shame shields
  • Feeling monsters

Conduct Disorder Treatment

• Misdiagnosis and misunderstandings
  • Gender and racial bias in diagnosis
• Trauma history of the child
• Impact of trauma on brain development and maladaptive coping response
• Patterns of engagement in the home, school, and community
• Impact on family relationships

Trauma Treatment

• Etiology of trauma in disruptive behavior disorders
• Impact on neurological functioning and development
• PTSD – the most overlooked diagnosis contributing to Disruptive Behavior Disorders (DBD)
• Assess for attachment ruptures and relational trauma
• Shame-based punitive parenting
• Repair and restore safety in the home

Play Therapy Interventions to Address Underlying Trauma

• Increase emotional intelligence and understand trauma symptoms
  • Bound and rebound
  • Sandtray
  • Expressive arts in play
• Repair and rebuild relationships
  • Nurturing spoons
  • Volcano inside of me

Play-Based Interventions to Promote Parent/Child Attachment

• Building bridges of connection and communication
• Create emotional safety
• My safe place
• Telling my story
• My many colors of me

Inviting the Parent in the Playroom

• Help the parent become a resource to their child
• Decrease shame and vulnerability in the relationship
• Improve healthy attachment-seeking behaviors
• Repair attachment wounds and ruptures
• Teach positive parenting strategies

Faculty

Clair Mellenthin, LCSW, RPT-S

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Clair Mellenthin, LCSW, RPT-S, is a Registered Play Therapist Supervisor and is the past president of the Utah Association for Play Therapy. Throughout her career, she has focused on providing therapy to children, teens, and their families. Clair is the director of Child and Adolescent Services at Wasatch Family Therapy. She is a sought-after supervisor, training graduate students and interns in play therapy, and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Southern California MSW program. Clair is the author of Play Therapy: Engaging & Powerful Techniques for the Treatment of Childhood Disorders (PESI, 2018) and My Many Colors of Me Workbook. (Self-Published, 2013). In addition to being an experienced play therapist and professor, she frequently presents professional play therapy and family therapy trainings and appears on local and national TV and radio as an expert on children and family issues.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Clair Mellenthin is the clinical director at Wasatch Family Therapy. She is the author of My Many Colors of Me Workbook; she maintains intellectual property rights and receives royalties. Ms. Mellenthin receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.
Non-financial: Clair Mellenthin is the president of the Utah Association for Play Therapy.