​Playing with kids can be fun, creative, imaginative...
And sometimes- really boring. 
All parents want to see their children happy and playful- but it’s not always easy for adults to join in. 

One of the biggest factors in childhood success is their caregiver’s engagement. So if you want some activities that will engage you both- you’re in the right place.

Every week, here on the blog, you’ll a new list of Play Everyday: a therapy-tested game, art activity or even mindfulness method for each day of the week. Weekends you’re off the hook- I’m more interested in the ways you engage with your kid after work and school end, when it’s all too easy to turn on the tv and tune out. 


To get started, here are a few tips:

Tip #1: If you’d like to make a regular practice out of this list, prepare your kid by telling them. Let them know you want to spend a little more time with them every day and then be consistent with the time of day you begin. 

Tip #2: Pick activities that are right for your kid and match your energy level. Anything else would be a set up for failure. Have some ‘low key’ activities ready in case you’re too wiped to get out the art supplies tonight. 

All of these activities are about having fun and some can be used therapeutically during a difficult moment. So…

Tip #3: It’s important to remain non-judgmental- especially if your child isn’t interested in participating, or if they do it don’t quite get it “right”. If your child is disinterested, try not to feel too rejected or frustrated. Accept their ‘no’ and if possible reflect their disinterest with neutrality and openness: “Ok you’re not so into this. I’d really like to do something fun with you today- how about (fill in the blank with a broad alternative category- ie art, go outside, play a game)?” 

It’s surprising to many parents how vulnerable this kind of open statement can be. But even if your kids further reject your entreaties, you’ve just modeled open communication, vulnerability and self-acceptance of your emotional needs. Well worth your time. 

Tip #4: Try it yourself first. Even if you just read through the activity ahead of time- your kids will be much more engaged if you’ve already done the activity. When you come into this with confidence and can tailor it to your own child’s needs, they notice. 

Tip #5: keep it simple. If it’s stressing you out to go and buy paints or whatever is being asked of you- stop. 

A quick note about using these activities when a kid is losing their shit:
When a kid is tantrumming or having emotional overwhelm the first step is ALWAYS CHECK IN WITH YOURSELF FIRST. It only takes a couple seconds: Are you about to explode? Are you feeling humiliated, ashamed? Are you so fed up and even angry at yourself? Are you this close to leaving this kid in the parking lot and never coming back?? Kids can be… triggering. And your need to feel contained is A NEED. Not an ideal state or preference: you not only deserve but NEED containment. So before reacting, whenever possible: try to contain yourself first. And if you’re not perfect- well, welcome to the club. See my list of parent self-care activities to get started on your containment tool kit. Remember: have fun! 

1. Progressive Relaxation
Start practicing this daily so that the next time your child is overwhelmed or angry you can ask them to walk through this with you. * 

Materials Needed: None. Just a quiet room. 

Introduce the activity along appropriate developmental lines (see below). If your child is open, you may lead according to these steps: 

• Begin by taking 2 deep breathes: in through nose out through mouth

             (smell the roses, blow out the candles)

• Ask your child to make fists. Hold their fists firmly to confirm how strong they are!: “Nice, real strong!” 
• Briefly name that there are so many muscles are in your child’s hands, arms, shoulders, etc. 
• Now, 1 more deep inhale and hold
• Instruct them to let ONLY their fists get tighter and tighter. 
• Keep holding your breath! 
• Now tell them to let that tightness move up through their arm muscles, shoulders, neck and face.
• Scrunch your whole face tight, tighter, tightest… holding, holding, holding! 

Now exhale and let it all go. 

Try it a couple times- make sure they progressively get tighter, not all at once.

Developmental Note:
    Older kids can be informed really directly about the purpose and benefits of this. In fact many of them might be interested to know about this ‘brain hack’. But little ones might need a story. Think about how your child might conceptualize their anger? One little boy I know called it “lightning inside me”. Another might relate to a reference to Star Wars. Modeling this one can be really helpful so give it a try first! 

Progressive relaxation was invented in the 1930’s by Edmund Jacobson and has been proven to regulate the ANS (autonomic nervous system) which is associated with fight-flight-freeze responses and the release of cortisol and adrenaline. Here’s some more scripts if your child enjoys this technique: https://depts.washington.edu/hcsats/PDF/TF-%20CBT/pages/4%20Emotion%20Regulation%20Skills/Client%20Handouts/Relaxation/Relaxation%20Script%20for%20Younger%20Children.pdf


2. Scribble Chase: A great warm up activity to garner engagement and collaborative energy from your kid. 

Materials Needed: 
A piece of paper
2 different colored pens/markers

Adult begins by explaining that the child’s only goal is to keep their pen against the paper without lifting off, following your own pen’s line. Move slowly up and down, then side to side a times. Circles and figure eights can follow. Then- switch roles! Notice if your child wants to go super fast as the leader- this is common. Just lightly reflect that they’re having fun going faster than you. 

After a minute of your child leading, you can stop and ask if they can find any pictures or images in the scribble. Regard the scribble with them. When they find something, encourage them to show you by coloring it in or making the images stand out. You can then ask them to tell you a story about the image. 

A deceptively simple game- but I find it can often reveal all sorts of relational and developmental pieces. This activity is about waking up a kid’s engagement. It’s relational and somatic- which means it’s getting your kid plugged in on a number of levels including kinesthetic, cognitive, creative and relational. 

3. Silly Answer Game: Best with at least three people but can be done with just two. 

Materials: none! 

Begin by introducing the following steps:

•  One person asks the other a question. It can be anything:

              “Why is the sky blue?”
              “What is your favorite food?”
              “Who is Pikachu?”

• The one answering must answer with both a nonsense sound and movement.

• The entire group/other person then mirrors this movement and sound.

This silly little game encourages attachment and connection. Sometimes it’s also a great place for authentic expression. Kids and adults alike can share unnamable negative or ambivalent feelings without ever uttering a word. And then- feel supported through mirroring and validation from the people around them. 

4. Hand Portrait: can be done after a disappointing experience or just a long day. 

Materials:  
paper
colored pens/pencils 
any decorations and glue you may have

Begin: 
Trace both hands on one piece of paper, with some portion of the hands overlapping. You can do this for your child, or perhaps they can show you how well they can do it for themselves. 
    
The inside left hand represents what was hoped for. Your child can write words but it’s often better to just color and decorate. If you have a young child, you can ask them to color things that remind them of feeling happy and hopeful. 

Within the right hand: what was disappointing or difficult.

The overlap: where you got what you needed. Even if it means it eventually ended: it’s important that your child recognize that the disappointing thing is over and that they’re safe now. 
When they’ve completed the activity you can go over it with them, offering empathy and a lot of emphasis on the middle section. 

A lot has been written in the art therapy community about containment activities. If your child is feeling frustrated or disappointed about something, they may need help holding, containing or conceptualizing their experience. It can be helpful for them to use their executive functioning skills to manage difficult feelings; and then find a silver lining without dismissing their authentic experience. This activity also engages bi-neural pathways in the brain, promoting regulation and development out of that rigid black-and-white thinking that so many kids have. 


5. Scavenger Hunt & Art Project: best done outside in a space with trees and rocks, yet also far away from any poison ivy or oak :) 

 Materials: 
 A pre-written list of scavenger hunt items: things you can find in nature
Optional: glue and paper for final art collaboration

Begin by having a list handy and ask the children to find the items.
Something like:

• a little stone, a medium stone
• a leaf with rounded edges
• three twigs of different sizes
• something beautiful
• something strange
• something that makes a fun sound (tapping, swishing, etc)
• Come up with some more! 

I’ve purposely made the list vague- the goal is to have kids using their senses and get away from trying to “do it right”. They’ll be doing it right by showing up with what they consider beautiful. 
    
Once the child/children have collected these things, ask them to make something together out of their materials. Join them by starting a mandala, a fairy cottage or even making a face out of the objects. Extra points if you can each take turns arranging objects. If not- so be it!

This activity gets kids engaged with nature as well as their prefrontal and limbic brain systems. The scavenging allows them to feel accomplishment and mastery while also sharing their ideas of what ‘beautiful’ and ‘strange’ look and feel like- what a self-esteem booster! And finally, the art component encourages cooperation and creativity. 

“Can we do the sunshine thing again?”
It was a warm morning in early October in a hallway of the public elementary school where I worked as a counselor. Even as I turned to respond to the small voice, I knew who it would be. For several weeks I had been working with a very smart and very angry little girl, who had a propensity for hurling both insults and books at her teacher. Now shy and quieted, she stood before me requesting a guided meditation activity I had only just introduced to her. I smiled and led her into the sensory garden just outside the door.

    Like almost all guided meditations, our sessions began with an invitation to notice her breathing. As she breathed in, I asked her to simply notice: notice the feeling of fresh morning air; notice how it feels as it travels from nose to throat to belly, then back out again. This simple noticing of breath forms the basis of mindful meditation. It also soothes the vagus nerve, a nerve responsible for fight-flight-freeze responses, emotional regulation and self-soothing. Breathing slowly, especially elongating the out breath, is a simple way for any of us to get out of the emotionally-drenched narratives we hold onto when upset, and get into the safety of a grounded and embodied here-and-now experience. With some children, I use games to help them stay aware of their breathing. Others require little to no guidance.

With this particular girl, I often used guided imagery to help her self-soothe: the fresh morning air can be imagined as blue light, traveling down into her belly, a place she had previously named as the location of her anger. Soothing, cool blue light in, carrying hot, red anger out. In and out, in and out.  Visualization has well-documented effects on our blood pressure and decrease stress, so much so, that medical doctors often prescribe it prior to a major surgery. After years of using this technique, I’m still amazed at how much we can achieve by simply using our imaginations!

After several moments of this visualization, I asked my client to focus on the physical feeling of her feet on the ground, her bottom in her chair, her hands in her lap.  Here, I am asking this student to take a step outside of her inner world and back into the physical world. Awareness of our physical sensations can be a major resource in managing emotional overwhelm, and kids can especially feel a sense of control over confusing internal experiences.
In our final mindfulness activity, I included nature to help us connect more deeply with the sensations provided by the outside world, while staying anchored in the safety of her body. In this fast-moving, sensory-overload world, connecting with the outside world (i.e. a loud and smelly cafeteria) isn’t always optimal. The world we live in often trains us to shut down. That’s why I use nature whenever I can.

    “Let yourself notice the warmth of the sun on your skin.” (Here I may ask her where she can feel the warmth of the sun.)
    “Notice how the sunlight looks through your eyelids.” (I might have her turn slowly to notice the difference in brightness depending on which way she’s facing.)

​After a moment, I asked her to use her growing sensory awareness to find the sun’s location without opening her eyes.  Smiling, she confidently pointed up at the rising sun. Using her body to stay tuned into the external world can be applied to many different natural stimuli:
    “What direction is the wind blowing?”
    “Can you name three different sounds you are hearing right now?”
    “How does the ground under your feet feel?”
  
The sensory garden was full of plants with different textures, tastes and smells. At different points throughout the school year, this child would come and silently experience these plants, using her sensing body to soothe her anger. Eventually, she was able to simply imagine the smells of, for example, lavender, while in her classroom.
On this particular day, still early in the therapeutic relationship, she was able to simply use her own body’s sensations and imagination to self-soothe. At the close of our exercise, a deep sigh told me that this child was feeling ready to go back to her classroom.  She had opened the door to self-understanding a little bit more that morning.

    Anger, sadness and other difficult emotions can easily overwhelm a triggered child or teen.  In my sessions, I try to follow a direct path that leads the client out of chaotic, often fear-filled emotions and thoughts and into the slow, calming dimension of sensory experience.  This journey is not meant to replace or avoid the difficult emotions- indeed, the client discussed above required more depth and empathy than simple mindfulness could provide. Instead, we used those exercises to create a necessary base camp  of calm from which to venture forth and explore the rocky terrain of shame, sadness and anger.
​
  Nature plays a key role in this work:  study after study shows us that natural, “non-human” settings soothe our weary, twenty-first century nervous systems. Because the truth is, our nervous systems aren’t made by or for the twenty-first century. Our bodies, brain and sensory-systems included, evolved to interface with the natural world and are largely the same systems that our ancient ancestors used to thrive in the natural world.
Noticing our bodies and selecting “wholesome” sensory input such as sunshine or wind and birdsong, is inherently comforting and relaxing for human beings. Practicing this skill can lead to deeper experiences of self-knowledge and self-soothing when we hit rough moments. The little girl I worked with had never been camping and was not aware of the regional park system in the Bay Area. She had little common knowledge of nature and almost no experience with it. But day after day she requested time in the school’s sensory garden, time in which she could engage with her senses and nature  and “do the sunshine thing again.” Whether you’re 8 or 80, tuning into your body and it’s connection to nature is one of the simplest and most effective ways to feel good about where you are.

​

What is play therapy?
Rather than use words, children use play to act out their emotions, past experiences, hopes and fears. Therefore therapists working with young people usually use some type of play therapy to help their clients manage difficult emotions and behaviors. There are several forms that play therapy can take but child-centered play therapy is non-directive, allowing the child the be the source of direction and growth. In this style of treatment, the therapist follows the lead of the child using empathy, reflection, unconditional positive regard and attachment principles to create an environment of acceptance and safety. Within this therapeutic context, children have the opportunity to express their anger, hostility, longing and loneliness and receive acceptance, encouragement and recognition. Most play therapists regard behavioral problems in children as failed attempts by the child to make their needs known. Within the therapeutic room, these maladaptive attempts to be true to themselves are accepted and eventually transformed through the play and the relationship with the therapist. A similar process can be seen in adult talk therapy, by which self-expression and examination lead to understanding, acceptance and transformation. 

Does my child need play therapy?
If you’re interested in play therapy, chances are you have a child in your life you’re seeking help for. Play therapy might be right for your child if they’re suffering from emotional distress, caught in a negative behavioral cycle, are suffering from low self-esteem or if you’re anticipating emotional distress from an upcoming disruption (i.e. divorce). While many parents understand that their child is in distress, it can be difficult to know how to handle difficult behavior, depression, anger and hostility, anxiety or hyperactivity or withdrawal from normal behaviors. Often, parents are not completely sure why their child needs therapy and that’s ok- play therapy is as diagnostic as it is curative. Play therapy offers children a safe container for emotional distress and help kids develop a strong sense of self-esteem, the opportunity to learn positive communication skills and the chance for creative self-expression. For a more personalized assessment, please feel free to contact me. 

 What psychological traditions did it arise from? 
Anna Freud and Melanie Klein were some of the earliest thinkers in the child psychology domain. Freud believed that play could reveal a child’s unconscious mind and create a mutual understanding between adult and child. Klein also viewed play as a sort of substitute for adult verbalizing. It was Virginia Axline that emphasized the importance of the therapist-child relationship, pointing out the imperative of giving a child “freedom and room to state himself in his own terms”.

What kinds of tools does it employ? 
Play therapy uses a wide variety of toys and art supplies including: dolls, puppets, toy food, doctors kits, costumes, trucks and trains, blocks, clay, paint, markers and other art supplies. One child may use art materials to convey his need for boundaries where another child may use dolls to express rage towards family members. Truthfully, one of the best parts of my job is that every child is unique and plays in highly individualistic ways. In play therapy, a child is given free reign to pick up and play with whatever they are drawn to. Some of the richest therapeutic moments occur when a child invites the therapist to play, assigning a puppet or toy to interact with their own. In fact, one of the only universal themes within psychology occurs at the beginning of the process when most will begin by testing the therapeutic relationship for acceptance and encouragement. In response to such tests, the therapist’s use of unconditional positive regard and attachment will give a child permission to emote and explore that which had been previously fearful or chaotic territory. 

Why is it effective?
Play therapy offers children psychological freedom to express themselves. The impact of this experience cannot be overstated. Freedom to express oneself is dependent upon the relationship and environment created by the therapist: one of empowerment, safety and acceptance. Much as in adult talk therapy, this helps children internalize a positive self-acceptance around emotions that are previously rejected and dis-owned. Empirical studies show us that play therapy is effective in helping children manage their emotions and experience relief from a wide variety of mental and emotional health symptoms.