241 | Short on Time, Big on Impact: CCPT for Kids with Communication Barriers

In this episode of the Play Therapy Podcast, I answer a question from Ailene in North Carolina, a clinical counseling student working with a partially deaf child who speaks Spanish. Ailene is concerned about having only eight sessions to help the child, who experiences anxiety and frustration due to communication barriers. I discuss how children with physical or developmental differences often struggle with self-worth and confidence, and how child-centered play therapy (CCPT) is well-suited to address these emotional challenges, even in a short timeframe.

I offer encouragement, emphasizing that the therapeutic relationship is impactful regardless of the number of sessions or the therapist's experience level. I also share ideas on advocating for more sessions and thinking creatively to secure additional support for the child. Ultimately, even a few CCPT sessions can be a gift, providing a safe space where the child feels understood, accepted, and loved.

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If you would like to ask me questions directly, check out www.ccptcollective.com, where I host two weekly Zoom calls filled with advanced CCPT case studies and session reviews, as well as member Q&A. You can take advantage of the two-week free trial to see if the CCPT Collective is right for you.

Ask Me Questions: Call ‪[phone]‬, or email: [e-mail]
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APT Approved Play Therapy CE courses: https://childcenteredtraining.com
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Common References:
Cochran, N., Nordling, W., & Cochran, J. (2010). Child-Centered Play Therapy (1st ed.). Wiley.
VanFleet, R., Sywulak, A. E., & Sniscak, C. C. (2010). Child-centered play therapy. Guilford Press.
Landreth, G.L. (2023). Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship (4th ed.). Routledge.
Bratton, S. C., Landreth, G. L., Kellam, T., & Blackard, S. R. (2006). Child parent relationship therapy (CPRT) treatment manual: A 10-session filial therapy model for training parents. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Benedict, Helen. Themes in Play Therapy. Used with permission to Heartland Play Therapy Institute.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr
Brenna Hicks. Your source for centered and focused play therapy coaching.
Hi, I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.
This is the Play Therapy Podcast where you get a master class in child centered,
play therapy
and practical support and application for your
work with children and their families.
In today's episode. I am answering a question from Ailene in North Carolina

(00:23):
and her question is about
a client who is partially deaf
and speaks a different language. So, really interesting scenario.
And Ailene, thank you so much for
sharing this and, and processing this with us. I'm really excited to dive into this.
So I'm going to read parts of her email and then we'll dive in.
Hi, Doctor Hicks. I'm a clinical counseling student, by the way, it's so funny.

(00:46):
I'm going on a tangent here for a second.
But it's so funny when people refer to me as Doctor Hicks because no
one even at my practice calls me that like I'm Miss Brenna everywhere.
And so I still find it so weird when like I hear Doctor Hicks,
it doesn't really register that.
That's to me. So anyway, you all please feel free to just say hi, Brenna.
When you email me, I appreciate the respect that Doctor Hicks, you know, has, but

(01:10):
I'm really ok with Brenna. Ok. I'm back on track.
I'm a clinical counseling student who is doing my internship.
I appreciate your podcast. I've learned a lot by listening to them in my
internship. I was assigned the case of a partially deaf girl.
I only have eight sessions to work with her.
So far,
the girl shows symptoms of anxiety caused by
the frustration that people do not understand her.
She's a girl who comes from central America and

(01:32):
the little amounts of language she has is Spanish.
My first language is Spanish, meaning Ailene's first language.
However,
my biggest concern is that my little experience working with play
therapy and I will only have eight therapy sessions with her.
I know it's a complicated case, but I appreciate any advice.
All right. So Ailene, thank you for this.
It's really interesting.

(01:54):
I'm going to kind of give big picture thoughts
and then I'll more specifically answer your question.
It's very interesting to me that any time a child has
a physiological
or physical
issue.
In other words, they have congenital issues, they have developmental issues,
they have medical issues,
they have been diagnosed with

(02:16):
illnesses, they've had surgeries, they have vision problems, hearing problems,
speech problems,
they were born prematurely and they're very small for their age.
You name it. If there is something about their physical person
that is different
from their peers.

(02:37):
It's almost always a ticket to behavioral
and emotional and mental health struggles.
And here's my hypothesis.
This is just uh over 20 years of observing. I don't know that
I can give you any details to back this up from data. But here are my thoughts.
Kids know that they're different.
Kids know that they struggle where other kids don't

(03:01):
and kids know that their experiences are not universal
and their natural instinct is to say
I'm screwed up,
I'm broken.
There's something wrong with me.
I'm a failure. I can't do things. I'm bad at that. I'm stupid.
Fill in the blank, very negative critical self dialogue

(03:25):
and therefore their identity, their worth, their confidence, their esteem.
It's next to nothing.
I would argue that her anxiety caused by
the frustration that people do not understand her
is very, very accurate there
because
she knows that not only is she partially deaf,

(03:45):
but if you've ever interacted with someone who is deaf, their speech is different
because they can't hear
themselves
and they can't hear others.
So they learn language but it is a different form of speaking.
So
then you add on the layer that she comes
from Central America and her native language is Spanish.

(04:07):
She's now living in an English speaking country.
It's just layer upon layer upon layer of I'm different
and to a child different is bad,
different is always bad.
They're very black and white, they're very concrete thinkers.
That's why they play out good versus bad so frequently in the playroom

(04:27):
because they have to resolve the fact that you are good and bad as a human.
You can't be one extreme or the other. There's always a blend of both.
So I am capable and I'm incapable. I'm smart and I'm not smart.
I'm needing power and I don't always need power. I'm good and I'm bad.

(04:49):
This is what kids wrestle with in the playroom
because the dichotomy of life is very confusing to kids
that don't have abstract reasoning.
So that's kind of big picture thoughts based on this specific child.
And then now we'll talk through your specific question. Ailene,
anxiety,
really common presentation in a situation like this.

(05:13):
And the best case scenario is that CCPT is really,
really well suited for highly anxious kids.
So even in eight sessions, there will likely be a reduction of anxiety to a degree
which is going to be very helpful for her
and then her,
the small language she does have, she does have is Spanish but you speak Spanish.

(05:35):
So there's the connection, although I've said this before,
but I think it's helpful to point out
there is a study coming out of UNT dissertation research
that shows that the therapist and the child do not even have
to speak the same language for CCPT to be effective.
So even Ailene, if you didn't speak Spanish,

(05:55):
that would not be a deal breaker here because the relationship trumps everything.
And then your concern is that your little experience working with play therapy?
Well,
if you
express the be-with attitudes,
if you say you can play with all the toys in most of the ways that you'd like

(06:17):
in Spanish, of course,
I was gonna say in Spanish and then I'm like,
the rest of my audience will have no idea what I'm saying.
So
you, you can play with all the toys in most of the ways that you'd like.
And
then you give the permission
and the freedom and the autonomy
that the CCPT playroom affords,
you provide the security and the safety and the

(06:38):
unconditional acceptance that your relationship with the child affords
and even in only eight sessions,
that child will experience something that
she likely has never experienced before,
which is I'm completely at peace. I'm completely loved. I'm completely accepted.
I can do what I need to do. I can become a better version of myself.

(07:00):
That's the goal.
And
when we have a scenario like this, we know we only have eight sessions.
We know it's not enough,
but this is what I've settled on.
And I was actually talking about this on one of my coaching calls a little while ago.
It used to really bother me if I knew that
I was going to have a very short amount of time with kids and or for whatever reason.

(07:22):
I only got a short amount of time with them. Meaning going in, I didn't know. But,
you know,
we're eight weeks in and all of a sudden the family calls
me and says my husband just took a job in California.
We're gonna be moving in two weeks
and I'm like, oh my gosh, I only get 10 weeks with this kid
or, you know, sorry, we're,
we're no longer able to continue because violin practice conflicts or whatever.

(07:45):
So
when you all of a sudden lose opportunity to work with a child that used to really,
really get under my skin, not that I was angry just that I felt so bad
that that child did not get to
have the full amount of sessions that we know are usually needed.

(08:05):
But here's an encouragement Ailene and to all of you,
I have often reframed that for myself and said,
even if I only had one hour with that child,
it was a gift
to me.
It was a gift to the child
and it was a gift that I hope that that child will carry with them,

(08:27):
man. This one time
I went to this playroom and I was with this lady
and it was so much fun and I got to do whatever I wanted
and she was so loving and she was so understanding and she understood
how I felt and she gave me choices and she encouraged me.
Now, is she gonna use those words no,

(08:47):
but
there is an experience
of a child being in a child-centered
playroom with a child-centered play therapist.
And so even only eight sessions,
that is a gift to her
and it allows her to start to work on some of the things that she needs to work on.
Will she address all of them to their
end? No,

(09:08):
but she'll address what she needs to, to a degree
and she will be better for it.
I might argue, I'm kind of now not answering your question anymore.
I'm kind of just talking out loud.
I might argue
to your
internship site to, I, I don't really know what the scenario is.
I'm not sure if it's a private practice or an agency or an organization or I,

(09:31):
I don't really know what the structure is,
but
I might argue for more sessions.
I might see if mom or dad or caregiver is willing to continue to bring her to you
and
use insurance or pay out of pocket or I, I don't really know what the options are but
it only,

(09:52):
you know, you can only be told, no, never hurts to ask.
So, in advocacy for her,
you could probably present a case that she needs more than eight sessions and,
you know, maybe you only get four more, but 12 is better than eight.
So that's just my thought. I, I would advocate for more and see what can happen there.
Maybe you could get a grant, maybe someone could sponsor her, maybe

(10:16):
the local community.
I, I think,
I mean, I don't know what the acronym is but
it's like the American
Association for Deaf and hard of hearing or whatever.
I don't know what the acronym is and what the association is called. But
see if there's a local branch and someone could, you know,
provide the funds to allow her to continue to have services.

(10:39):
You can think outside the box and see what you can make,
happen to give her some more sessions.
And that is true for all of us. I, I'm, I'm kind of,
I guess pep talking right now, but
don't ever take no for an answer at first
go.
So someone says you can only do this or you're not allowed to do this or, you know,

(10:59):
this is not gonna be OK and you're gonna have to do this
while we respect authority. And we understand that there's a hierarchy
where we are unless we run our own business.
I think that our job requires us to advocate even if it goes against
what we've been told.
And if the answer is still no. And you've tried everything that you can think of,

(11:23):
then you go home and you go to bed and you know that you've
done everything you could and it didn't work out how you wanted it.
But if you do nothing, you'll never know.
So don't let
bureaucracy or politics or the the hierarchy or you being an intern or you not
being licensed or you being new to the field or whatever our hang ups are.
Don't let those get in the way

(11:44):
because
we are there and we have one reason
which is to make sure that that child has what she needs.
So sometimes we advocate
on her behalf and sometimes that opens doors
and then we're really excited about the possibilities.
So
there was your pep talk for the day.
All right, I love you all. Ailene. Thank you so much for the question.

(12:06):
We'll talk again soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr
Brenna Hicks for more episodes and resources.
Please go to www.playtherapypodcast.com.