CCPT Skills for Quiet Sessions: Narrative Summary & Commentary Explained

In this episode, I talk about how to use narrative summary and narrative commentary in Child-Centered Play Therapy sessions—especially when you're working with a child who is quiet, repetitive, or nonverbal in their play. I explain why relying only on tracking behavior can feel robotic or monotonous, and how adding a layer of insight, reflection, and light commentary can create more flow and ease in your sessions—while staying fully adherent to the model.

I also introduce the concept using a baseball analogy: just like a sports broadcast has a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator, CCPT sessions benefit from both action tracking and reflective commentary. Narrative summary and commentary allow us to bring warmth, perspective, and relational depth into moments where it might otherwise feel like we have “nothing to say.” If you’ve ever felt stuck repeating the same responses or struggled to engage during silent sessions, this episode will give you a new way to stay present, connected, and confidently child-centered.

PlayTherapyNow.com is my HUB for everything I do! playtherapynow.com. Sign up for my email newsletter, stay ahead with the latest CCPT CEU courses, personalized coaching opportunities and other opportunities you need to thrive in your CCPT practice. If you click one link in these show notes, this is the one to click!

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]
Brenna's CCPT Hub: https://www.playtherapynow.com
CCPT Collective (online community exclusively for CCPTs): https://www.ccptcollective.com
Podcast HQ: https://www.playtherapypodcast.com
APT Approved Play Therapy CE courses: https://childcenteredtraining.com
Twitter: @thekidcounselor https://twitter.com/thekidcounselor
Facebook: https://facebook.com/playtherapypodcast

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,

(00:21):
we are going to talk about narrative summary.
And narrative commentary.
It's kind of just a topical episode instead of part of a series.
We did a palate cleanse last time,
this time I'm just bringing it up because
it's come up so often
and I talk about it so often,
I decided it was probably going to need to be a podcast episode.

(00:43):
So
we're gonna dive into
providing narrative commentary,
narrative summary,
in play sessions,
what that looks like,
considerations,
how to implement.
Etc.
Before I do,
a huge thank you to each of you who attended the live episode 300th
episode.
What a huge accomplishment we celebrated together.

(01:06):
This is all of our celebration and win,
not mine,
and it was so amazing.
We recorded that on Friday.
We posted the episode
on Saturday and that Saturday when that 300th episode was posted.
It was the 3 year anniversary of the start of the podcast.

(01:27):
So on the 3 year anniversary,
we published the 300th episode,
really cool,
the way everything lined up.
And I'm just really grateful to each and every one of you.
Thank you for those of you who are able to attend and hang out with me.
It was about an hour and a half.
Lots of Q&A,
lots of discussion,
and it was just lovely to have faces and names and conversation.

(01:49):
So I appreciate y'all.
OK,
so let's talk about narrative summary,
narrative commentary.
Why am I bringing this up?
Well,
a lot of reasons,
I suppose,
but probably the number one is
pretty consistently,
I get questions and posts in the collective and people wondering
what do you do and say.

(02:09):
To remain adherent to CCPT when the child is quiet.
And
it's kind of funny to me because I know everyone has their thing,
right?
Every CCPT has their thing that is tricky.
The thing that challenges them,
their thing that kind of bothers them a little bit,
that they struggle with,
whatever.
So I think a lot of people struggle with silence.

(02:32):
I personally don't,
but I think that is a really difficult thing for a
lot of CCPTs because I'm asked about it all the time.
And here's what
ends up happening
if we think about the reflective responses.
We can always offer one of the three.
We can either reflect content,
whatever the child is saying to us,

(02:52):
we say back
in paraphrased form.
If you say it exactly,
you're going to get yelled at for being a robot and copying,
so that that's just your public service announcement for the day.
Don't,
if the kid says,
I'm going to build a tower,
don't you dare say you're gonna build a tower
because that gets irritating to a child real fast,
and they'll call you out.
But we're going to reflect the content of what the child says.

(03:15):
However,
that's eliminated when a child is quiet.
Then we have the option of reflecting feelings.
If the child is quiet
and playing something repetitively,
for example,
there's probably not a lot of emotion to identify.
Therefore,
we don't really have the opportunity to reflect feeling in that moment either.
So you have a quiet child that's not emoting.

(03:36):
Now all of a sudden we're left with just tracking behavior.
And that also becomes very laborious and monotonous very quickly,
because how many times,
if a child is coloring a paper,
how many times can you say
you changed to that color,
you colored that there.
You switched to that side of the paper,

(03:58):
you picked up that colored pencil.
I mean,
holy Moses,
it just,
it's like,
please can we do something else?
And I think that's why it's so uncomfortable and I think that's
why it's so difficult because if we're left with just tracking behavior.
It makes it very tricky
to not feel like it is just the most repetitive,

(04:19):
irritating kind of dialogue.
The child's not engaging verbally,
the child's not engaging emotionally.
Therefore,
all we're left with
is say what we see them doing,
and they start to just want you to stop talking.
So then,
this is where narrative summary,
narrative commentary comes in.

(04:39):
This goes beyond
just the tracking of behavior.
And if you integrate both together
in fluid conversation,
it makes it flow.
There's fluidity
to the interaction so that it's not just
one track to the next to the next.

(05:00):
Here's my baseball analogy,
and this is actually why I'm doing this podcast
episode because I was on a coaching call this week
and somebody asked about
if you're just tracking behavior,
that becomes really
boring
and I said,
well,
that's when you have to use narrative commentary and the
baseball analogy popped into my head about the color commentators.

(05:21):
So if you're not a baseball fan,
just go with me.
I promise you'll,
you'll understand this.
So when you watch a baseball game.
By the way,
the Tampa Bay Rays
team
for the broadcast of Dwayne Stats and Brian Anderson,
they are constantly rated top tier broadcast
and commentators across all of the majors.

(05:43):
So we have an amazing
commentator duo for the Rays.
If you've never watched a Rays game,
you should.
They are top tier
commentators.
They're fantastic to listen to.
So,
here's what happens.
You have
the main commentator.
In our case,
it's Dwayne Stats.
The role of the main commentator
is to describe the action.

(06:06):
So the entire focus
of the main commentator in our case,
Dwayne,
is to help someone that is not at the game,
understand what is happening.
You can liken that to tracking behavior.
I hope you're seeing where this is going,
because they are describing action.
When I'm not at the game,
Duane is going to tell me what's happening in the game.

(06:29):
However,
there is never just one commentator on a broadcast.
Why?
Because the other one is the color commentator.
Now here's the disclaimer.
This is very much a United States phrase.
So for those of you international listeners,
hello and welcome,
by the way.
I know you're all over the world.
Glad you're here.
You have no idea what a color commentator is.

(06:50):
In other countries,
they typically call them summarizers or commentators.
So I just want to let you know
that color commentator is kind of unique to the states as far as a term.
And I find it very ironic that
they call them in other countries summarizers and
commentators because we're talking about narrative summary and narrative
comments.

(07:11):
So,
so fascinating how this is all tying together,
it's divine intervention.
The color commentator,
the whole purpose
of having
two people
because you have the guy that describes the action or the girl,
I suppose,
usually male,
you have the guy describing the action
and then you have the guy providing color commentary.
What does that mean?

(07:32):
They provide humor and insight.
So one's describing the action,
and then one is kind of talking in general
with humor and insight.
This is exactly what narrative commentary and narrative summary is.
So rather than just going,
you switched to that color,
you picked up the pencil,
you're coloring there,

(07:53):
you shaded that in,
you drew that,
you moved to that corner of the paper.
OK,
that's describing action,
tracking behavior in its purest form.
If you want to add
some bigger picture insight,
you can do the narrative summary,
narrative commentary.
You're working on filling up the entire paper.
You're making sure that you're not just using a few colors,

(08:16):
you're making sure that you're using lots of colors.
Here's what you're doing.
You're giving some perspective,
you're giving some insight,
and often you can do it in a very lighthearted way.
Now you're not intentionally trying to be funny,
let's be very clear,
that would be agenda driven and that is not CCPT.
So you're not trying to be funny,

(08:36):
but a color commentator in baseball provides humor and insight.
It's often more lighthearted dialogue
than
the main commentator.
Why?
Because the main commentator is describing the action on the field.
When you start doing the narrative summary and the narrative commentary,
all of a sudden
there's some objectivity,
there's some insight,

(08:56):
there's bigger picture,
often it's more lighthearted.
And this is where your personality
is a little bit more
on display
because it's conversational,
it's interactive,
it's dialogue driven
we're not just stringing a skill with a skill with a skill
we're gonna track behavior

(09:17):
and then we're gonna provide some narrative summary.
We're gonna track behavior and then
we're gonna provide some narrative commentary.
And this is so useful
when a child is quietly playing
and doing a repetitive,
consistent type of play.
They're moving cars 1 inch at a time across the floor for the entire hour.

(09:40):
They're stacking blocks in a tower nonstop for the entire hour.
They're shooting at a target with the crossbow nonstop for an hour.
Saying nothing
You don't see a whole lot of emotion.
It's just repetitive behavior.
You get stuck in only having one reflective response option

(10:02):
unless you start working in narrative summary,
narrative commentary.
So when you do that,
it flows.
Oh,
OK,
so now you're gonna set up on the other side of the room before you shoot the target.
Notice how different that is than
you're shooting again.
You can bring in

(10:23):
just a natural flow
to the whole process
and it gets you out of saying,
I just feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over and over again.
And the kid gets annoyed.
I get annoyed,
neither one of us like it,
but I don't know what else to do.
And I know,
and you all quote me all the time,
and for better or worse,
that's why I'm,
I try to be so careful with my words.

(10:45):
I don't want them to be misconstrued.
You all quote me and come back to me and say,
and I know that I can't do my job if I don't talk.
Yes,
100%.
We cannot do our job if we don't talk.
So then the pressure is,
well,
I have to say something.
You moved that
you picked that up,
you set that down,
you put the cap on,
you laid it down,

(11:06):
you straightened them,
you,
oh my gosh,
we need some alternatives.
That's where this comes in.
So I hope my baseball analogy helps.
By the way,
next time you watch a baseball game,
you're going to
readily identify the main commentator and the color commentator,
I guarantee you,
and you're gonna think about this episode,
so you are welcome for that.
I hope that this gives you some.

(11:29):
Thought
into how you can make your sessions flow,
feel at ease,
feel conversational.
The purpose is relationship.
And while just
just tracking behavior with that reflective response,
it's not going to rupture the relationship by any means,
it's adherent and it's necessary.

(11:49):
So there's not going to be any fallout from that,
but the relationship is going to
feel more easy
and more natural and more genuine
when you work in some of this narrative commentary and narrative summary.
So I hope that that is helpful.
I hope that gives you some thoughts and ideas on what to do.
If you want to reach out to me,

(12:10):
please do [e-mail].
And I just wanna give you a little update.
The CPRT
training course through Corwell
is officially edited and ready to go.
So we are actively getting everything over to Joseph and Kate at Corwell,
and we should be able to launch that this month.

(12:31):
So this is for those of you that are going to listen to this later,
this is May of 2025.
So we are hoping to have that completely ready
and CEU
certification
prepared
for the end of May of 2025.
So I,
I know many,
many of you have been waiting for that.
And I apologize for how long it's taken.
It's a lot of hours of content and editing videos is a very slow and tedious process,

(12:55):
but we have finally gotten there.
We're really excited about that and
so many of you are wanting to add parent coaching to
your suite of services,
and CPRT is going to be such a helpful addition to your practice.
And if you are a facilitator of that curriculum,
it gives you the foundation.
So that you can really be effective in helping parents implement

(13:18):
CCPT with their own children and obviously conduct play sessions in their homes,
which is really meaningful
and so much research proves how effective that program is.
So,
really looking forward to that for you all.
Can't wait to officially launch,
but it will be this month,
so I wanted to let you all know about that.
I love y'all.
Have a great week.
We'll talk soon.
Bye.

(13:39):
Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr.
Brenna Hicks.
For more episodes and resources,
please go to www.playtherapypodcast.com.