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.
Locate play therapy book titles using APT's Book Publication page for direct links to Amazon landing page.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.
Sessions
The Therapeutic Powers of Play: 20 Core Agents of Change, Second Edition
Credits: None available.
Revised and expanded, The Therapeutic Powers of Play, Second Edition explores the powerful effects that play therapy has on different areas within a child or adolescent's life: communication, emotion regulation, relationship enhancement, and personal strengths. Editors Charles Schaefer and Athena Drewes―renowned experts in the field of play therapy―discuss the different interventions and components of treatment that can move clients to change.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:
- History
- Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
- Skills and Methods
- Special Topics
- Describe basic tenants of play therapy.
- Identify 20 ways of how play therapy works.
- Explain theoretical backgrounds and empirical studies that support 20 agents of change.
- Apply 20 agents of change to clinical vignettes.
- Describe specific strategies and techniques for each change agent.
- Athena A. Drewes, PsyD, RPT-S
- Charles E. Schaefer, PhD, RPT-S
Therapeutic Engagement of Children and Adolescents: Play, Symbol, Drawing, and Storytelling Strategies
Credits: None available.
This book addresses the issues that child and adolescent therapists struggle with the most―how to meaningfully engage and create conditions for transformative change with children and teens who are unwilling participants at the outset and who regard any allowed influence by the therapist to be a competitive defeat. To engage these particularly reluctant children, Dr. Crenshaw has expanded the variety of stories offered in a previous book Engaging Resistant Children in Therapy, and added not only drawing, but symbol work and play therapy variations to offers choices and a range of tools to involve them in a meaningful collaborative therapeutic process. The book begins with a review of research and a rationale for using tools consisting of symbolic play for younger children and the therapeutic use of symbols, drawing, and storytelling in order to create portals of entry to reach disconnected children. The book is organized in chapters along major therapeutic goals as follows with specific tools described to meet the objectives: the challenge of therapeutic engagement with reluctant children; relational strategies to engage heart and mind; the therapeutic use of symbols to access the internal and relational worlds of the child or teen; building the therapeutic alliance with strategies that honor strengths; strategies to strengthen the self-observer; facilitating empathy for self and others; strategies to access the pain of social rejection; tools to address grief and traumatic loss; the 'quest for home' strategies; and the delicate operation of facilitating hope. The strategies described were chosen and developed based on and informed by a vast developmental psychopathology.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:
- Skills and Methods
- Special Topics
- Compile child-friendly techniques to engage hard-to-reach children and adolescents.
- Create play therapy strategies for making meaningful connections with distant and disconnected children.
- Apply a range of therapeutic strategies to reach children and adolescents who are not verbally expressive, including play, symbol, drawing and storytelling strategies.
- Describe specific strategies to address specific therapeutic goals.
- Explain key themes in child and adolescent play therapy and strategies to address these themes.
Touch in Child Counseling and Play Therapy: An Ethical and Clinical Guide
Credits: None available.
Touch in Child Counseling and Play Therapy explores the professional and legal boundaries around physical contact in therapy and offers best-practice guidelines from a variety of perspectives. Chapters address issues around appropriate and sensitive therapist-initiated touch, therapeutic approaches that use touch as an intervention in child treatment, and both positive and challenging forms of touch that are initiated by children. In these pages, professionals and students alike will find valuable information on ways to address potential ethical dilemmas, including defining boundaries, working with parents and guardians, documentation, consent forms, cultural considerations, counter transference, and much more.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:
- Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
- Skills and Methods
- Special Topics
- Identify the difference between a boundary violation and a boundary crossing.
- Describe the basic principles of FirstPlay Therapy.
- Identify the developmental milestones that make up the foundation of DIRFloortime interventions.
- Explain the role of neurobiology in reference to touch, nurturing touch and traumas related to touch.
- Describe some specific touch techniques and interventions that can be used with children who have ADHD.
- Explain how neglect, lack of touch, and/or abuse early in life can potentially impact a child and options for healing.
- Identify ethical considerations when using therapeutic touch in practice or other types of touch, such as restraint
- Describe the role of touch and the parent-infant bond in infant mental health
- Identify the potential benefits and ethical considerations of animal-assisted therapy that includes touch.
- Explain Positive Touch and identify the benefits of peer massage programs, according to UK studies.
- Identify the five proposed Clinical Competencies in Touch and describe each one in detail.
- Identify proposed ethical standards related to appropriate touch, self-awareness, suggested training requirements, and other considerations related to touch in therapy.
- Janet A. Courtney, PhD, LCSW, RPT-S
- Robert D. Nolan
Understanding and Treating the Aggression of Children: Fawns in Gorilla Suits
Credits: None available.
Understanding and Treating the Aggression of Children: Fawns in Gorilla Suits provides a thorough review of the theoretical and research basis of the techniques and interventions in the treatment of aggressive and sometimes violent children. This is not a dry and sterile academic review but rather one that comes from work directly in the therapy room with thousands of hurting and in many cases traumatized children. One cannot read this book without being deeply moved and touched by the pain of these children and yet also be buoyed by their courage and willingness to persevere against formidable barriers. The metaphor of the fawn in a gorilla suit is introduced, followed by chapters covering developmental failures and invisible wounds, profound and unacknowledged losses, the implication of new findings from neuroscience, psychodynamics of aggressive children, risk factors when treating the traumatized child, special considerations when treating children in foster care, strengthening relationships with parents and helping them be more effective, enhancing relationships with direct care and instructional staff, developing mature defenses, and coping skills, creating a therapeutic milieu for traumatized children, and fostering hope and resilience.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:
- Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
- Skills and Methods
- Special Topics
- List specific developmental failures and invisible emotional wounds in aggressive children.
- Analyze various forms of grief reactions both acknowledged and unacknowledged.
- Describe key neurobiological influences on aggressive behavior.
- Discuss the difference between mature and non-mature defenses and ways to develop them.
- Write a range of empirically supported treatment programs for aggressive and violent children.
- Describe how events experienced before the development of language, remain active influences throughout our lives.
Using Superheroes and Villains in Counseling and Play Therapy: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals
Credits: None available.
Through rich and research-grounded clinical applications, Using Superheroes and Villains in Counseling and Play Therapy explores creative techniques for integrating superhero stories and metaphors in clinical work with children, adolescents, adults and families. Each chapter draws on the latest empirically supported approaches and techniques to address a wide range of clinical challenges in individual, family and group settings. The chapters also explore important contextual issues of race, gender, culture, age and ethnicity and provide case studies and practical tips that clinicians can use to support clients on their healing journey.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:
- Skills and Methods
- Special Topics
- Describe and utilize superheroes and super villains in the context of different theoretical orientations.
- List four different interventions that use the Superhero Team concept in their work with children and families.
- Analyze how villains and their back stories can inform our understanding of children, improving our implementation within the therapeutic powers of play.
- Lawrence C. Rubin, PhD, ABPP, LMHC, RPT-S
Using Superheroes in Counseling and Play Therapy
Credits: None available.
With an incisive historical foreword by John Shelton Lawrence and insight from contributors such as Michael Brody, Patty Scanlon, and Roger Kaufman, Lawrence Rubin takes us on a dynamic tour of the benefits of using these icons of popular culture and fantasy in counseling and play therapy. Not only can superheroes assist in clinical work with children, but Rubin demonstrates how they can facilitate growth and change with teen and adults. Early childhood memories of how we felt pretending to have the power to save the world or our families in the face of impending danger still resonate in our adult lives, making the use of superheroes attractive as well, to the creative counselor.
In presenting case studies and wisdom gleaned from practicing therapists' experience, Lawrence Rubin shows how it is possible to uncover children's secret identities, assist treatment of adolescents with sexual behavior problems, and inspire the journey of individuation for gay and lesbian clients, all by paying attention to our intrinsic social need for superhero fantasy and play.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:- Skills and Methods
- Special Topics
- Describe the relationship between fantasy, fantasy play and metaphor and their role in play therapy.
- Explain the relationship between the superhero myth and the classical hero.
- Discuss the foundation for the use of superheroes in play therapy.
- Identify the play therapy-based elements of the superhero myth.
- List at least 3 ways that superheroes can be used for problem exploration and treatment in play therapy.
- Explain the use of superheroes for play-based treatment with unique clinical populations.
- Recognize the limitations of using superheroes in play therapy.
- Lawrence C. Rubin, PhD, ABPP, LMHC, RPT-S
Windows to Our Children, Second Edition
Credits: None available.
When originally published, this book filled a void in child therapy literature. Counselors and therapists, in schools, mental health centers and private practice, embraced this book. It is the largest selling book on the subject in the world. This brand-new 2nd edition includes over 300 pages of methods, materials, and techniques for working with children and adolescents. Also included are session transcripts, case examples and discussions.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:
- History
- Seminal / Historically Significant Theories
- Skills and Methods
- Utilize the Gestalt play therapy orientation to conceptualize problematic childhood emotions and behavior.
- Apply the Gestalt play therapy modality to treat children struggling with a variety of presenting concerns.
- Describe how to implement play as a language for the child in psychotherapeutic treatment.
- Identify how to connect with and understand a child’s world through various expressive interventions in play therapy treatment.
- Demonstrate a developmentally appropriate play therapy working model to aid child clients in strengthening their sense of self.
- Ascertain child experiences that will bring the child back to his or herself and will renew and strengthen self-awareness, acceptance, and wholeness.
- Plan for the play therapy process, including obtaining the referral information, the first and subsequent sessions, the office space, working with resistance, and termination.
- Explain the rationale behind some of the particular behaviors that children present that bring them into play therapy treatment.
- Identify effective play interventions to treat individuals across the lifespan.
- Apply play therapy treatment in family, sibling, and group work.
- Violet Oaklander, PhD, LMFT, RPT-S
Written Paths to Healing: Education and Jungian Child Counseling
Credits: None available.
Can a book on child counseling have a lasting effect on the future of our culture? This bestseller, which draws its texts from children's writing - rather than adult writing for children - may do just that. Written Paths to Healing describes the use of journal writing and letters for leading children through their confusion. The authors focus on the themes of writing (dreams, fears, friendships, scapegoating, divorce, crises) and imagery as a writing method. Fairy tales, heroic journeys, and vision quests are vehicles for transition to young adulthood.
Play Therapy Primary Areas:
- Skills and Methods
- Special Topics
- Utilize psychological concepts that create an environment and structure for therapeutic writing and healing to occur.
- Describe how to create a safe and protected space for working with writing activities in order to resolve conflicting thoughts, feelings, and actions.
- Explain how writing activities help maintain a balance between inner material and outer worlds.
- Discuss how writing activities encourage personal growth and enrich interior development.
- Develop a repertoire of written activities that can be adapted to both individual and group formats.
- Identify the psychological relationship between written and drawn content.