PLAY IS PREVENTION: Building Safety, Connection, Agency & Joy Through Play Therapy

Play therapy gives children more than a place to express what has happened to them. It gives them opportunities to have new experiences. Within the play therapy relationship, children can experience safety and predictability, connection and belonging, agency and mastery, and moments of shared joy and delight.

This workshop explores how these experiences can become powerful sources of protection in children’s lives. Together, we’ll consider what research on resilience and healthy development tells us about the experiences children need, explore how the Therapeutic Powers of Play help make those experiences possible, and examine what it looks like to intentionally cultivate them in the playroom. Rather than focusing only on helping children cope with adversity, we’ll consider how play therapy can help create the conditions in which children can grow, heal, and thrive.

Learning Objectives:

🌱 Define protective experiences and describe their role in supporting resilience and healthy development in children.

🌱 Describe how experiences of safety and predictability, connection and belonging, agency and mastery, and shared joy and delight can be facilitated through the Play Therapy process.

🌱 Identify at least 3 Therapeutic Powers of Play that support the development of protective experiences within Play Therapy.

🌱 Apply a protective experiences lens to Play Therapy case examples to identify opportunities for strengthening safety, connection, agency, and/or joy within the therapeutic process.

DETAILS:

Thursday, October 22nd, 2026
11:00 AM–1:00 PM ET
Live on Zoom | 2-hour workshop