Healing Hearts: Creative Interventions for Treating Grief with Play Therapy

Presenter: 

Marina Bottiglieri, MA, LPC Associate

Supervised by Elizabeth Kjellstrand Hartwig, PhD, LMFT-S, LPC-S, RPT-S

Description:

Grief is universal -- it will touch everyone at some point. It’s also highly individualistic, in that each person’s grief journey looks different. As clinicians, we will most definitely come across a grieving child in our playrooms at some point in our careers. It is our job to make sure that we are able to hold space for a challenging experience that has no true solution. This training is designed to provide attendees with a basic understanding of how grief presents in children, including what grief is, maladaptive versus adaptive grief, common play themes when treating a grieving child, grief across different ages, and supporting caregivers in supporting their grieving children. In this experiential training, attendees will learn and participate in several grief-specific creative interventions to use in their play sessions. Participants will be able to take apply these interventions into their work with children who grieve. Join us for this engaging and expressive training experience!

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify adaptive/maladaptive grief reactions in children

2. Apply use of grief-specific directive activities in play therapy sessions

3. Identify and describe various common grief themes in play therapy

4. Apply mindfulness in age-appropriate manner in play therapy sessions

APT Contact Area:

Play Therapy Special Topics - 3 CEs