Play Therapy Book Tests

Earn non-contact continuing education credit by completing book tests based on play therapy publications.

ATTENTION: The fee below only includes CE test; book must be purchased separately. 

Continuing Education

NBCC. The Association for Play Therapy (APT) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5636. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. APT is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

APT. The Association for Play Therapy (APT) offers continuing education specific to play therapy. APT Approved Provider 95-100 maintains responsibility for the program.

Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy

Credits: None available.

Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy (CBPT) incorporates cognitive and behavioral interventions within a play therapy paradigm. It provides a theoretical framework based on cognitive-behavioral principles and integrates these in a developmentally sensitive way. Thus, play as well as verbal and nonverbal approaches are used in resolving problems. CBPT differs from nondirective play therapy, which avoids any direct discussion of the child's difficulties. A specific problem-solving approach is utilized, which helps the child develop more adaptive thoughts and behaviors. Cognitive-behavioral therapies are based on the premise that cognitions determine how people feel and act, and that faulty cognitions can contribute to psychological disturbance. Cognitive-behavioral therapies focus on identifying maladaptive thoughts, understanding the assumptions behind the thoughts, and learning to correct or counter the irrational ideas that interfere with healthy functioning. Since their development approximately twenty-five years ago, such therapies have traditionally been used with adults and only  more recently with adolescents and children. It has commonly been thought that preschool-age and school-age children are too young to understand or correct distortions in their thinking. However, the recent development of CBPT reveals that cognitive strategies can be used effectively with young children if treatments are adapted in order to be developmentally sensitive and attuned to the child's needs. For example, while the methods of cognitive therapy can be communicated to adults directly, these may need to be conveyed to children indirectly, through play activities. In particular, puppets and stuffed animals can be very helpful in modeling the use of cognitive strategies such as countering irrational beliefs and making positive self-statements. CBPT is structured and goal oriented and intervention is directive in nature.

• History
  
• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods

• Recite how CBPT can be used with preschool and early school age children.
• Describe the developmental issues inherent in integrating CBT and play therapy.
• Discuss how cognitive and behavioral interventions can be integrated into play therapy.
• List the similarities and differences between CBPT and more traditional play therapies.
• Explain the importance of generalization, relapse prevention and planned termination in CBPT.

• Susan M. Knell

Counseling Children and Adolescents through Grief and Loss

Credits: None available.

This comprehensive resource provides developmentally appropriate interventions for counseling children and adolescents who have experienced a wide range of grief and loss, including secondary and intangible losses such as moving or divorce. The book synthesizes current research and best-practice approaches for counseling youth. It provides a method for assessing individual needs and offers guidelines for selecting appropriate counseling strategies.

• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics
  

• Identify the multiple and varied losses experienced by children and adolescents.
• Identify cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses to loss in children and adolescents.
• Explain the secondary and intangible losses experienced by children and adolescents.
• Select healing interventions that are well suited to the developmental and cultural status of children and adolescents who are grieving or have experienced loss.
• Deconstruct primary losses so that secondary and intangible losses can be addressed in counseling.

• Jodi Ann Mullen
• Jody J. Fiorini

Cultural Issues in Play Therapy

Credits: None available.

Helping therapists hone their skills for working with diverse children and families, this unique volume looks at play therapy through a multicultural lens. Experienced practitioners examine how cultural factors may influence the ways children express themselves through play, the feelings they associate with different activities, and the responses of children and parents to particular interventions. Filled with evocative clinical material, chapters highlight specific issues to consider when working with African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian American children. The book also provides suggestions for setting up a therapeutic playroom that is engaging and welcoming to all.

• Special Topics

• List the necessary steps to go from building sensitivity to developing competence in working across cultures.
• Discuss the universality, as well as diversity, of play across cultures.
• Describe the relationship between culture and children's artistic expression and the impact of culture on art therapy with children.
• Explain the unique frame of play therapy associated with major cultural groups.
• Describe the importance of understanding cultural issues of privacy, trust, and beliefs when treating families from various cultures.

• Athena A. Drewes, PsyD, RPT-S
• Eliana Gil, PhD, RPT-S, ATS

Cultural Issues in Play Therapy, 2nd ed.

Credits: None available.

In this second edition, editors Eliana Gil and Athena Drewes incorporate a broader definition of culture and addressing subcultures from a multicultural and social justice lens. The topic of racial injustice is addressed, as it affects a plurality of subcultures. Authors provide research and clinical examples, laying a well-balanced and solid theoretical, factual, and clinical foundation for promoting multicultural-social justice-informed play therapists. This is a must-read book for students and clinicians of all expertise levels and serves as a guide for play therapists’ advocacy and commitment to a more culturally and socially just practice of play therapy.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Special Topics
• Diversity
  

• Describe cultures and subcultures to apply expressive-arts and play therapy to promote therapists’ attunement to the clients’ cultural realities or subcultures.
• Identify markers of racism and white privilege from a multicultural, multiracial lens from a systemic approach.
• Analyze one’s self-awareness about various subcultures, such as LGBTQ, hearing impaired, undocumented families of color, and others.
• Apply tools to address the subculture created by technology and how it can be represented in the playroom and in tele-play therapy.

• Eliana Gil, PhD, RPT-S, ATS
• Athena A. Drewes, PsyD, RPT-S

Doing Play Therapy: From Building the Relationship to Facilitating Change

Credits: None available.

Covering the process of therapy from beginning to end, this engaging text helps students and practitioners use play confidently and effectively with children, adolescents, and adults struggling with emotional or behavioral problems or life challenges. With an accessible theory-to-practice focus, the book explains the basics of different play therapy approaches and invites readers to reflect on and develop their own clinical style. It is filled with rich case material and specific examples of play techniques and strategies. The expert authors provide steps for building strong relationships with clients; exploring their clinical issues and underlying dynamics; developing and working toward clear treatment goals; and collaborating with parents and teachers. A chapter on common challenges offers insightful guidance for navigating difficult situations in the playroom.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• History
• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics

• Identify two considerations that should be made when conducting your first play therapy session.
• Identify an effective way to end a play therapy session.
• List at least three types of play therapies/modalities.
• Identify a play therapy intervention, activities or technique to explore family dynamics.
• Describe at least two techniques that are supportive of relationship-building.
• Identify two challenges a play therapist may face and two potential techniques to resolve these challenges.

• Terry Kottman, PhD, LMHC, RPT-S
• Kristin K. Meany-Walen, PhD, LMHC, RPT-S

Empirically Based Play Interventions for Children, First Edition

Credits: None available.

Empirically Based Play Interventions for Children is a compilation of innovative, well-designed play interventions, presented for the first time in one text. Play therapy is the oldest and most popular form of child therapy in clinical practice and is widely considered by practitioners to be uniquely responsive to children's developmental needs. Play promotes normal child development and can help alleviate emotional and behavioral difficulties. Even so, play-based interventions have often been criticized for the lack of an empirical base to prove their efficacy. In an era of cost-containment, the need to provide evidence of the effectiveness of interventions is increasingly important to gain the general acceptance of third-party payers, mental health professionals, and consumers. This book answers the call from professional and managed-care organizations for research-based treatment methods with proven efficacy. It describes a range of play interventions that feature flexibility in service delivery and across settings, child populations, and age groups.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics
  

• Explain the current outcome research on empirically-based play interventions.
• Recite the vital treatment components for empirically based play prevention programs as well as learn key treatment ingredients in play interventions for developmental disorders.
• Identify a variety of directive and non-directive therapeutic play techniques to address the needs of children diagnosed with internalizing disorders.
• Describe structured, time-limited skills-based play approaches for addressing the needs of children diagnosed with externalizing disorders.
• Discuss new frameworks for designing play interventions and outcome assessment approaches in order to be the architects of the "second generation" of play intervention programs.
• List the principles upon which Developmentally Appropriate Games are based.
• Discuss the most common recommended therapeutic techniques for children who experience traumatic grief.

• Charles E. Schaefer, PhD, RPT-S
• Linda A. Reddy
• Tara M. Files-Hall

Evocative Strategies in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy

Credits: None available.

Informed by an amalgamation of psychoanalytic and attachment theories, the techniques offered in this book can be employed alongside a variety of therapeutic modalities, such as evidenced-based cognitive-behavioral treatment; social learning, family systems, emotion-focused, Ericksonian, and solution-focused approaches; gestalt, psychodynamic, and narrative therapies; as well as play therapy and the therapies of the creative arts. 'Evocative strategies' have been developed for the purpose of engaging children in an emotionally meaningful process. Crenshaw illustrates that in order to create moments of transformation and change in and through the therapy process, we have to learn the language of the heart―where children in their essence live.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics
  

• Identify child-friendly techniques to engage hard-to-reach oppositional, defiant, and aggressive children.
• Discuss evocative strategies for making meaningful, heart to heart connections with distant and disconnected children.
• Identify the unique advantages as well as risks of evocative strategies.
• List at least 20 different categories of evocative strategies.
• Use specific evocative strategies to deal with common therapy themes arising in children and adolescents.
• Describe criteria for when evocative strategies are indicated and when they are contraindicated.
• Identify key themes in child and adolescent psychotherapy and evocative strategies to address these themes.
• Write the value of these techniques in engaging children who are reluctant participants in therapy.

• David Crenshaw

Foundations of Play Therapy: Second Edition

Credits: None available.

Written for therapists looking for guidance on how to incorporate play therapy into their practice, as well as students or those in need of a refresher on the latest methods and techniques, Foundations of Play Therapy, Second Edition is a standard-setting resource presenting pragmatic and useful information for therapists at all levels of training.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• History
  
• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods

• Identify the historical antecedents of play therapy.
• Recognize how the therapeutic powers are inherent to play therapy.
• Produce insight into ethical fitness and decision making.
• List principles of theories and models of play therapy.
• Compare play, play therapy and therapeutic play.
• Explain the major theories of play therapy and their basic concepts.
• Describe the core techniques used to implement play therapy.

• Charles E. Schaefer, PhD, RPT-S

Game Play: The Therapeutic Use of Games with Children and Adolescents Third Edition

Credits: None available.

The revised and updated third edition of Game Play Therapy offers psychologists and psychiatrists a guide to game play therapy’s theoretical foundations and contains the practical applications that are appropriate for children and adolescents. Game playing has proven to invoke more goal-directed behavior, has the benefit of interpersonal interaction, and can perform a significant role in the adaptation to one's environment. With contributions from noted experts in the field, the third edition contains information on the time-tested, classic games and the most recent innovations and advances in game play approaches.

Game Play Therapy’s revised third edition (like the previous editions) continues to fill a gap in the literature by offering mental health practitioners the information needed to understand why and how to use this intervention effectively. The contributors offer advice for choosing the most useful games from the more than 700 now available and describe the fundamentals of administering the games.

Play Therapy Primary Areas:

• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics
  

• Describe the historical context and role of games in psychotherapy.
• Distinguish basic and advanced therapeutic concepts related to the use of games in the therapy process.
• Explain basic concepts regarding parental engagement and child development through the use of games.
• Incorporate games of chance, cooperation, strategy, and digital mediums within the therapeutic process.
• Apply games in therapy to specific developmental and behavioral concerns.
• Apply concepts such as resistance and attachment as they relate to the use of therapeutic games.

• Jessica Stone, PhD
• Charles E. Schaefer, PhD, RPT-S

Group Filial Therapy: The Complete Guide to Teaching Parents to Play Therapeutically with Their Children

Credits: None available.

In Group Filial Therapy, therapists train parents to undertake play sessions with their own children until these skills become an integral part of family life. Based on Non-directive Play Therapy principles, this evidence-based approach is a highly effective method for working therapeutically with children and families in crisis. This professional manual provides an accessible introduction to the theory and practice of the Group Filial Therapy approach, and for the first time offers step-by-step instructions for designing and implementing filial therapy group programmes with families. The authors address important practical considerations, such as how to determine the composition of groups and the duration of programmes, how to conduct intake interviews and assessments, as well as the personal qualities and skills needed to be an effective Filial Therapy group leader. Comprehensive guidelines for implementing the 20 week model of Group Filial Therapy practiced by Dr Guerney are included, and the book closes with examples from clinical practice, including useful insights into the ways in which the programme may be adapted to meet the needs of particular groups. This definitive guide to the Group Filial Therapy approach is essential reading for all those working therapeutically with children and their families, including play and family therapists, mental health practitioners, social workers, parenting experts and foster and adoptive careers.

• Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
• Skills and Methods
• Special Topics
  

• Identify the four main skills parents will be taught through the Group Filial Therapy model
• Identify at least three issues that may occur within group or play sessions and how to facilitate these sessions most effectively.
• Identify at least three of the roles parents can utilize in play sessions.
• Identify the four stages of training and practice in the Group Filial Therapy model.
• Identify at least two considerations in modifying the Group Filial Therapy Model.

• Louise Guerney, PhD, RPT-S
• Virginia Ryan