🎧 Flashback Episode: Self-Care for Play Therapists (A Revisit)

We're pulling this one back into your feed because some conversations deserve a second listen, especially when life gets busy and self-care quietly slips down the priority list again. If that's you right now, welcome back to this one.

In this episode, Kylie Ellison gets refreshingly honest about what self-care actually looks like in the life of a play therapist, recorded, fittingly, at the tail end of an exhausting Monday, with no polish and no pretending. It's less "10 tips for wellness" and more "here's what's really going on, and maybe you're going through it too."

Kylie talks through why self-care isn't a nice-to-have but a professional responsibility, especially for play therapists holding space for children's big emotions, trauma stories, and nervous systems day after day. She shares the cumulative, often invisible toll of that work, and how easily compassion fatigue and burnout can creep in when we're deeply passionate about what we do.

The conversation moves through three practical pillars:

🔹 Professional self-care: setting boundaries around caseloads, session spacing, admin time, and communication limits (including the "if it's more than two lines, it's an appointment" rule)

🔹 Emotional and nervous system care: grounding rituals before and after sessions, post-session processing, and the reminder that a dysregulated therapist can't co-regulate a child

🔹 Practical, real-life self-care: hydration, eating, workspace atmosphere, recognising early burnout signs, and building in small moments of joy and connection outside the playroom

Kylie doesn't offer this as someone who has it all figured out. She's candid about still learning, still working on her own boundaries, and still forgetting to drink water. That honesty is the heart of the episode: a reminder that self-care isn't about doing it perfectly, it's about noticing, adjusting, and starting with just one small thing.

If you're feeling tired, stretched thin, or like you've been pouring from an empty cup lately, consider this your permission slip to slow down and check in with yourself today.

💛 Take care of you, and take care of each other.

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not provide therapeutic advice. All case examples referenced are de-identified. If you're seeking personal support, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional in your area.

When Parents Push Back: Working with Resistance in Play Therapy

You can have every handout, every strategy, every piece of psychoeducation ready to go, but if the parent sitting across from you is defended, exhausted, and quietly drowning in shame, none of it is going to land. So what do we actually do?

Ever sat across from a resistant parent and thought, "If I could just get through to them, everything would shift for this child"? You're not alone, and in this episode, Kylie unpacks one of the most common threads she hears from supervisees: how do we support children when we're not finding movement, insight, or collaboration with their parents?

Recording on a beautiful winter's morning on Quandamooka country (yes, you're getting the Brisbane weather update whether you asked for it or not), Kylie shares reflections on why so many parents show up to our clinics exhausted, overscheduled, and carrying an enormous amount of shame, and why the answer, again and again, comes back to connection.

In this episode, Kylie explores:

Why all roads lead back to relationship. You can have every tool in the world, but without connection, parents simply won't invest in giving your suggestions a go.

The contributing factors behind parental defensiveness: guilt and shame (one of the most acute forms of shame in the literature), overwhelm, unresolved childhood history, system pressure, and protection.

Why this generation of parents, hello geriatric millennials, are the first expected to re-parent themselves while re-parenting their children, often while working and running a household at the same time.

How the tenets of CCPT, empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard, apply just as much to the parents in our consults as they do to the children in our playroom.

What it means to "meet children of all ages," including the defended parent who was likely criticised as a child and learned that vulnerability wasn't safe. This is the parallel process: the way we work with children mirrors the way we work with parents.

Practical shifts you can make right away: leading with curiosity and wonder statements instead of "you should try," reflecting and validating feelings, sharing playroom wins as gentle invitations, and honouring where a parent sits in the cycle of change.

Why countertransference is therapeutic gold, and what your own frustration or irritation might actually be telling you about what's happening for that parent.

The "session three" marker Kylie watches for, why early drop-off can sometimes be a better outcome than losing a family twenty sessions in, and how to set collaborative expectations, and hold boundaries, from the very first consult.

This is gentle, person-centred reflection for anyone doing the tender work of supporting families. A reminder that we don't need to break through the wall. We just need to make the environment safe enough that the wall doesn't have to work so hard, and to give parents the same patience, empathy, and time we'd offer any child in the playroom.

Whether you're a seasoned play therapist, a student just starting out, or someone deeply passionate about working with children, you belong here.

Got a play therapy or CCPT question you'd love answered on the pod? Email Kylie. The link's in the show notes, and she'd genuinely love to hear from you.

Come join the free community circle to connect with other CCPT practitioners (link in show notes too).

If this episode resonated, please follow the podcast, share it with a colleague, or leave a short review. It helps others find the circle.

Until next time, look after yourselves and each other. Go well.

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute therapeutic advice. All views are Kylie's own, and any case examples have been de-identified.

Episode 46: Reflecting Feelings (Back to Basics) + Listener Q&A on Post-COVID Babies

In this episode, Kylie returns to her Back to Basics series to unpack one of the most fundamental and often most challenging skills in child-centred play therapy: reflecting feelings. Coming live from the playroom (beanbag and all), she takes listeners through why this skill can feel so vulnerable for beginning play therapists, even though it's one of the most powerful tools we have for building connection and trust with the children we work with.

Kylie breaks down the clinical rationale behind reflecting feelings, explaining how it helps children bridge the gap between what they're feeling internally and the words to express it, something that's neurobiologically difficult for kids and often overlooked by the adults around them. She talks through why feeling seen is one of the most therapeutic experiences a person can have, and how reflecting feelings communicates empathy in a deeply Rogerian, person-centred way.

She also walks through the common mistakes practitioners make when reflecting feelings, including turning reflections into questions through tone and inflection, over-reflecting to the point of disconnection, inserting the therapist's own feelings rather than the child's, and reflecting with too much or too little intensity compared to what the child is actually showing. Kylie shares practical guidance on matching pacing, tone, and energy to the child in the room, and how this shifts as the therapeutic relationship develops over time, from co-regulation in early sessions through to the more natural, attuned reflections that come with experience.

In the second half of the episode, Kylie answers a thoughtful listener question from Catherine, an early childhood educator, who asks whether children born after COVID are still showing developmental effects of the pandemic, even though they weren't alive during lockdowns themselves. Kylie unpacks the research and clinical observations behind this, covering family stress transmission, parental depletion and reduced co-regulation capacity, perinatal anxiety and depression, the impact of a "reduced village" in many communities, and the role of sibling modeling within the family system. She makes the case for why supporting the whole family, not just the individual child, is essential when working with this generation.

In this episode:

• Why reflecting feelings is one of the hardest skills for beginning play therapists to master
• The clinical and neurobiological reasons reflecting feelings matters
• Common mistakes: questioning tone, over-reflecting, inserting your own feelings, and mismatched intensity
• How reflecting feelings evolves as the therapeutic relationship deepens
• Listener Q&A: are post-COVID babies still affected by pandemic-era family stress, even without lockdown exposure?
• The role of family stress transmission, maternal mental health, and community support in early childhood development

Got a question or topic you'd love Kylie to explore on the podcast? She'd love to hear from you. This space is for thoughtful, soulful conversations about play-based work, and it's built around the community that listens. Reach out, follow along, and remember, you belong here.

This week's episode is one we didn't plan to record, but one that felt necessary.

On the day our community learned of the passing of Dr. Garry Landreth, Kylie sat down to record this special tribute episode in honour of one of the most influential figures in child-centred play therapy history.

Dr. Landreth's contributions to the field are immeasurable. As a Regents Professor at the University of North Texas, he founded the Center for Play Therapy in 1988, growing it into the largest play therapy training and research program in the world. He authored Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship, now in its fourth edition and the most widely used play therapy textbook globally, and produced over 150 publications across journals, books, and training videos. He co-developed Child-Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT) with Sue Bratton, was a founding board member of the Association for Play Therapy and received APT's Lifetime Achievement Award among countless other honours.

But beyond the accolades, Dr. Landreth gave child-centred play therapy its name, its identity, and its structure. Building on the lineage of Carl Rogers, Virginia Axline, and the Gurneys, he codified CCPT for training, defended its integrity against more directive approaches, and passionately championed the idea that CCPT is not simply a set of techniques, it is a way of being with a child.

In this heartfelt episode, Kylie reflects on how Dr. Landreth's writings shaped her own journey as a play therapist, clinical supervisor, and trainer. From first encountering The Art of the Relationship during her training in 2015, to leaning on it as a lifeline in her early years of practice, to building her training program and this very podcast on the foundations he laid, his influence is woven through everything the Play Therapy Circle community stands for.

Kylie also invites our global community to reflect on and share how Dr. Landreth touched their own professional lives, because his reach truly is everywhere.

All roads in child-centred play therapy lead back to Garry Landreth. This episode is our community's small way of saying thank you.

"Toys are children's words and play is their language."

Dr. Garry Landreth

Have you ever finished a session and wondered, did any of that even matter? You've shown up, you've held the space, you've given everything you have and then that child walks back out into a world you can't control. A chaotic home. An unstable system. A family in crisis. And you're left sitting with the quiet, heavy question of whether what happens inside the playroom can possibly be enough.

In this episode, Kylie gets honest about one of the most persistent questions she hears from supervisees and sits with it herself. Because here's the thing. This question doesn't go away with experience. Whether you're one month into your play therapy journey or eleven and a half years in like Kylie, the wondering doesn't stop. And she wants you to know that's not a sign something is wrong with you. It's a sign that you care.

Kylie draws on Emmy Werner's landmark forty-year longitudinal study on resilience, which found that the single strongest predictor for children growing up in adversity was the presence of at least one consistent, caring, attuned adult in their life. Not necessarily a parent. Just one person who showed up and saw the child as worth showing up for. In systems where caseworkers change and placements shift, we may be that person. And that is not a small thing.

She also explores the neuroscience behind what happens in a child's brain during attuned, regulated sessions in the playroom. Neuroplasticity research tells us that repetition of safe, connected experiences can literally reshape neural pathways. The calm we offer doesn't just stay in the room. It becomes a reference point. The brain holds what happened. That's not a metaphor. It's biology.

And then there's the long timeline. Research shows that the impact of therapy with children often shows its strongest effects not during treatment, but years after it ends. The outcome you can't see at the end of a course of treatment is not evidence that there is no outcome. It's just the timing.

This episode is a gentle but firm reminder to trust yourself, trust the process, and trust the child. If you offered congruence, empathy, and unconditional positive regard, the work was done. The outcomes belong to the child. The work belongs to you.

If you've ever sat with that quiet doubt, this episode is for you. The seeds were always real, even when you don't get to see them grow.

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Back to Basics: Tracking Plus Your Questions | EP43

This episode marks something new. Listener questions, answered on the show. And the question that came in was so good, it deserved real time and real depth.

But first: a back-to-basics teaching segment on tracking — one of the very first skills we learn in Child-Centred Play Therapy, and one of the most quietly powerful. What it sounds like, why it matters, and the common mistakes that are easy to make without realising.

Tracking is the skill of verbally following and reflecting a child's play and behaviour without leading, interpreting, or directing. It sounds simple. But done well, it communicates something profound: I am fully present with you, and what you are doing matters. It builds the relationship, honours the child's autonomy, and is unconditional positive regard in action.

Kylie walks through what tracking looks like in practice, the crucial difference between tracking the action and interpreting the meaning, and the most common mistakes new practitioners make including over-tracking, labelling, and questions disguised as tracking.

Then, your question:

Terri from Ireland asks about children who people-please, control, or go silent in the playroom directed toward the therapist. Through the lens of Lipton's developmental theory, Kylie explores these behaviours as relational templates formed in the earliest years and now being replayed in the playroom. Each one is an adapted survival strategy. Each one points to an unmet need.

Kylie unpacks all three with practical examples of how to respond, and when to move from simple reflection into enlargement and deeper reflective responding. She also addresses Terri's instinct about timing: that going too deep too early, before trust is established, can feel intrusive or even unsafe for the child. That instinct is exactly right.

The principle that ties it all together: reflection follows relationship. The depth of our responding should never outpace the depth of trust we have built.

Oh, and a milestone worth celebrating. The Play Therapy Circle Podcast is now reaching listeners in 70 countries. A genuine moment of gratitude for a community that continues to grow.

In this episode:

• What tracking is, what it sounds like, and why it matters
• The difference between tracking and interpreting, and why that distinction is crucial
• Common tracking mistakes and how to avoid them
• People-pleasing, controlling, and silence as relational templates and unmet needs
• Practical examples of reflective responding and enlargement for each behaviour
• Why timing matters: when enlargement helps and when it can harm
• Reflection follows relationship: the principle that guides it all
• A celebration of 70 countries and the global Play Therapy Circle community

Have a question you'd love answered on the show? Send it in via hello@playtherapycircle.com or find Kylie on Instagram @Playtherapycirclepodcast or @kylieellisontherapy.

Join our free Community Circle - Tier One - The Community Circle

Revisited: The Pandemic Ripple Effect

This week, we're reaching back into The Play Therapy Circle archives to revisit a conversation that continues to resonate and perhaps now, more than ever, feels urgently relevant.

The Pandemic Ripple Effect.

If you are working with children aged 4–6 years old right now, whether as a play therapist, counsellor, early childhood educator, teacher, parent or carer, there is a very good chance you are noticing something. A rise in anxiety. More tears at drop-off. Children who seem younger than their age in some ways, or who struggle in social situations that might have once felt unremarkable. Big feelings that seem to arrive without warning, and separation distress that can feel confusing or even alarming to the adults around them.

You are not imagining it.

In this episode, Kylie explores what is increasingly being observed in clinical practice and supported by emerging research: that for many children in this age group, the earliest and most foundational years of their development unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those years, the ones that shape so much of who a child becomes, looked very different for this cohort. Routines that provide safety and predictability were disrupted or disappeared entirely. Playgroups, childcare and early learning environments closed or changed. Opportunities for peer connection, social rehearsal and play-based learning were significantly reduced. And all of this happened while many families were simultaneously navigating their own experiences of stress, grief, financial pressure, uncertainty and isolation.

Children are exquisitely sensitive to the emotional climate around them. They absorb far more than we realise.

Now, as this cohort moves into kindergarten, prep and the early years of primary school, those early experiences are showing up, in school readiness challenges, in emotional regulation, in separation anxiety at the gate, in social confidence, in transitions, and in the volume and intensity of big feelings that can catch everyone off guard.

Kylie gently and thoughtfully unpacks what we know, drawing on Australian and global data, emerging research, and her own clinical experience, to help us understand this generation not through a lens of deficit or alarm, but through one of context, compassion and genuine curiosity.

This conversation is not about blame. It is not about catastrophising. It is about helping the adults in these children's lives to understand what they are seeing, to feel validated in their observations, and to know that there is a path forward.

Kylie also explores how Child-Centered Play Therapy can offer children in this cohort something profoundly important: a safe, consistent, developmentally appropriate relationship and space in which to process their experiences, practise mastery and competence, build internal safety, strengthen emotional expression and experience the kind of warm, attuned co-regulation that helps a nervous system learn that the world is okay.

Play therapy does not require children to have the words. It meets them exactly where they are.

For parents and caregivers, this episode is an invitation to exhale. What you are experiencing with your child is real. The challenges are real. And they make sense when we understand the context in which your child's earliest years took place. With the right support, connection, understanding and time, children are remarkably resilient — and they can absolutely be helped to feel safer, more settled, more confident and more ready to engage with the world around them.

For therapists and educators, this episode is a reminder of why the work you do matters so deeply right now and why meeting this cohort with patience and perspective is one of the most powerful things you can offer.

Because, as always, play is the way.

New to The Play Therapy Circle? Start here, and then explore Kylie's training programs at playtherapytrainingaustralia.com.au

Kylie dives deep into the science behind the COVID generation - what the research is now telling us about children born between 2019 and 2022, why so many kids are struggling right now, and why that is absolutely not a reflection of your parenting. From maternal prenatal stress tripling during the pandemic, to MRI findings showing differences in brain development, to the speech delays, separation anxiety, and social-emotional gaps we're seeing play out in classrooms and therapy rooms across the country - the data is real, and so is the grace that comes with understanding it.

She also unpacks why traditional behaviour strategies like sticker charts and reward systems aren't the answer for this generation of kids, and what children actually need right now: consistency, predictability, and repeated co-regulation with a calm adult over time. Not a quick fix. Not a perfect parent. You.

She also takes on the myth of the Instagram parent - that curated, polished, cropped-out-the-chaos version of family life that has so many of us silently measuring ourselves against an impossible standard - and gives you full, unapologetic permission to put it down.

Drawing on the work of Donald Winnicott and his concept of the good enough parent, Kylie reminds us that children don't need perfection. They need someone who gets it right most of the time, apologises when they don't, and stays in the relationship even when it's hard. That's it. That's the work.

This episode is for the parents. It's for the practitioners sitting with exhausted families every day. And it's for anyone who needs to hear that the fact that you're still showing up - still trying, still caring - means you are already doing more than enough.

Come as you are. You belong here.

Kylie Ellison is a Counsellor and Registered Play Therapist Supervisor who has been working in CCPT for over a decade. Her vision is to see a community of play therapists supporting and encouraging each other.

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•Ching, B. C. F., Parlatini, V., Zhang, S., et al. (2024). Impact of the Covid pandemic on the mental health of children and young people with pre-existing mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions: a systematic review andmeta-analysis. European Psychiatry.•Hossain, M. M., et al. (2022). Long-term physical, mental and social health effects of COVID-19 in the paediatric population: a scoping review. Italian Journal of Pediatrics.•Panchal, U., Salazar de Pablo, G., Franco, M., et al. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 lockdown on child and adolescent mental health: systematic review. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.•Stefanatou, P., et al. (2023). Play as a stress-coping method among children in light of the COVID-19 pandemic: a review. Cureus.•Vasileva, M., Alisic, E., & De Young, A. (2021). COVID-19 unmasked: preschool children's negative thoughts and worries during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Journal of Psychotraumatology.•Hashempour, N., et al. (2024). Prenatal maternal psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic and newborn brain development. JAMA Network Open, 7(6).•Manning, K. Y., Long, X., Watts, D., et al. (2022). Prenatal maternal distress during the COVID-19 pandemic and associations with infant brain connectivity. Biological Psychiatry.•Lu, Y.-C., Andescavage, N., Wu, Y., et al. (2022). Impact of COVID-19 related maternal stress on fetal brain development: a multimodal MRI study. Communications Medicine.•Landreth, G. L. (2023). Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship (4th ed.). Routledge.•Association for Play Therapy. (2024). Evidence base for play therapy. www.a4pt.org