Big Feelings, Better Connection: Using Play to Help Kids Thrive

How can play help children heal, regulate big emotions, and strengthen attachment? We talk with Georgie Wisen-Vincent about ways that adoptive, foster, and kinship caregivers can use playfulness to build connection, support emotional growth, and help children impacted by trauma thrive. She is a nationally recognized play therapy expert, co-author of the new book , The Way of Play, and the Founder/Director of The PlayStrong Institute.

In this episode, we explore why play is essential to children's emotional development, how trauma, loss, neglect, and disrupted attachment can affect a child's ability to play, and what caregivers can learn from the stories and behaviors that show up during play. Georgie also shares practical ways to use playful connection to build trust, respond to big feelings, and strengthen attachment—even when a child resists play or a caregiver doesn't naturally consider themselves playful.

Resources:

• The PlayStrong Institute
• The Way of Play: Using Little Moments of Big Connection to Raise Calm and Confident Kids 
• How Do I Handle All These Big Feelings & Big Behaviors?
• The IDEAL Response: How to Maintain Connection When Correcting Your Child

Transcript

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Tracy Whitney 0:01

Hello and welcome to Creating a Family, talk about adoption, foster care, and kinship care. My name is Tracy Whitney, and I am the content director here at Creating a Family. I am also the host of this podcast, which drops every Wednesday morning, and our Weekend Wisdom podcast, which drops every Saturday morning. And I'm thrilled to welcome Georgie Wisson Vincent here to our show today. We're gonna be talking about helping our kids thrive and heal through the connection that comes of play. Play is a great way to build connection with our kids. So let me introduce our guest. Georgie Wisson Vincent is a nationally recognized play therapy expert. She is the founder and director of the Play Strong Institute, and she is the new recent co-author with Dr. Tina Payne Bryson of the book The Way of Play, using little moments of big connection to raise calm and confident kids. And I think I can speak for all of our listeners when I say we all want small connections and big connections to create beautifully confident kids. So I'm glad that you're here with us today. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Thank you so much, Tracy. It's great to meet you and to be here and to speak to your listeners.

Why is play so important for children?

Tracy Whitney 1:19

So when many adults think about play, they think of it as just something entertaining or fun or recreational. But you wrote this book because you believe that play is actually essential to a child's healthy development and emotional well-being. Why is that so important for children?

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Well, I I'll I'll step back into this, step back in time and let everybody know that I am first and foremost a play therapist. I was trained a bunch of years ago in the healing power of play to help children who come from hard places, which it sounds like that might touch everybody's heart out there who might be listening. And I was working kind of solo for a long time and happened by chance to run into somebody that was a mentor to me before she even knew that she was. Tina Payne Bryson is the co-author of The Whole Brain Child and a few other books with Dan Siegel. The Whole Brain Child Child blew everybody out of the water when at a time when behaviorism, and a lot of that stuff could be helpful for us, but when behaviorism was kind of shifting toward understanding better what's happening at the brain level of our kids' development. And so I happened to run into Tina by chance in a store in our town. And I didn't know her already. I'd seen her on YouTube, and I stared at her for an uncomfortably long period of time in the shop that we were in. And she was like, Who is this woman that's looking at me? And anyway, went over, gave her my card, said hello. Um, I was a new mom at the time. My son is now 11. So we've been together for a while. I joined the practice, and Tina said, There's something here to play, which we play therapist new for a long time. But Tina and I talked a lot about in writing this book, The Way of Play, that play is not just a way that kids pass the time. It's a way that they really explore all the depths of who they are. And as they're getting older, you know, young children, toddlers are just kind of exploring through the senses. They're not really making meaning out of their play yet, but they're building all of these crucial skills that are going to help them do better in school and be with their caregivers in ways that makes everybody look and go, wow, isn't that kid smart? They built that whole tower, or they were digging in the sandbox and they found all these dinosaurs that were buried like a long time ago, like little toy dinosaurs, not like dinosaurs. You know, and so as they get older, children start to tell stories through pretend and they begin to weave together what it means to be them. And so for us to write that book means that we get to share what play is for children through the eyes of children, and then also respect that parents and teachers and their other therapists like me, we don't always know how to connect with kids in that world. And we'll probably touch on that as we go on. Yeah. But play is where kids get to be fully themselves, and we kind of want to know them in that way. So it's important for us to learn a little bit about that language.

Tracy Whitney 4:22

That's great. What a good explanation. So

How can trauma, loss, neglect, disrupted attachment, or prenatal substance exposure affect a child's ability to play?

Tracy Whitney 4:26

let's kind of hone in then on those children from hard places. Our audience is mainly parents and caregivers and professionals who work with children with a history of trauma, loss, neglect, disrupted attachment, prenatal substance exposure, all of those experiences that can affect a child's ability to play. So can you give us just some summary of exactly how those things may affect a child's ability to play?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yeah, I mean, those are my kids too. And so I feel really comfortable with this question because the way of play is just one look. It's a look through a particular window. It's how can families make the most of the way kids are naturally playing. But at the moment, I'm going back to my history as a play therapist and thinking about all those kids that I've worked with over the years that have in some way dealt with trauma or heavy-duty adversity, whether we're talking about trauma with a capital T or a lowercase T, the lowercase T being maybe I was just in a family mismatch for a while where there was a lot of crisis or a lot of chaos going on, and that maybe the adults didn't quite know which way to turn at that time. Or neurodivergent kids, kids who are showing up with ADHD, autism, sensory differences, learning, other learning differences, things like that. And so what we notice is there's no cookie-cutter way that kids come to the table to play, but we do see some patterns of kids kind of getting stuck in repetition, you know, playing the same maybe hopeless or aggressive kind of themes over and over again. Like this is the way my brain works now, and I don't really know any other way to be at this moment in time. And there have been problems in my life that have been insurmountable for me as a young one by myself. And so I really need the collaboration of an adult who can meet me there and take me further with what I can do developmentally, because that's what we're really doing. We're really kind of reworking some of the ways patterns have been laid down, even at the brain level, and helping kids uncover more of their strengths along the way. So play can do all that. I'm really excited that I get to sort of share more of that with the world about how that happened.

Caregivers often tell us, "My child doesn't know how to play," or "My child only wants screens." What might actually be happening beneath those struggles?

Tracy Whitney 6:54

So when a child is stuck or a parent is observing a child's patterns that seem to indicate that my child does not know how to play, or my child only wants one type of play, or only wants screens, what what's kind of going on underneath that struggle that indicates there might be a problem?

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Well, I think, you know, uh it it goes back to one of these concepts in interpersonal neurobiology that's like where neurons fire, they wire. So if kids are getting one kind of input or they're already wired toward a little bit more rigidity in the way that they show up in on the living room floor or out in the backyard, or when they're at school, you know, at at recess time, um playing with peers, playing with siblings, playing with you know, everybody else, playing by themselves. Um, I think that one of the things that I tell parents is it's easy enough to get those neurons to fire differently if we know how to, if we knew how to get in there and sort of what to do. So if you're seeing a child that is a little bit more kind of rigid or doesn't know how to get started, or maybe is really comfortable with the stories that get told on Roblox, but they really don't know how to bring that into real life, then what I suggest is to start with just um thinking out loud with them a little bit as they get into something. You know, a child is taking out a few toys that they might use, let's say it's magnetiles or Legos or something like that that you have around the house. Um, and they're kind of going at it the way that they normally would. Well, with just a little bit of input around, oh, I wonder what you might be thinking around this, even if it doesn't feel like it's fully formed. Like I'll play with kids where they're just like crashing two stuffed animals together, and it's impossible to tell what does that even mean? The neurons are there, they're getting warmed up. You know what I mean? Like everything is sort of being driven by the bottom up for kids in many ways. Like their body's just telling them what to do. They're not really thinking about it all that clearly. But if we can show up, and the research says this is called mentalizing, like being able to see into the mind of a child and reflect a little bit and be able to speak what they might think out loud if they had the words to describe it, then we can really enter the language of children's play. And early childhood educators call this, there's lots of names for it, but they call it like parallel play or uh sports casting, where you're really sort of going, huh? So these two, these two characters, they don't really know why they're fighting. They're just fighting. Well, maybe one of them said something silly and the other one took it as a, you know, took it the wrong way. Right, right. All of a sudden kids are like, What? You're with me? What? Like you're guessing at what I'm trying to do here, and then maybe they might catch on to it. And so I think we're just starting with opening little windows where it's like, oh, it's not just a window into your play, it's a window into your mind, how you think, how you feel, why you might behave the way you do sometimes too. There's a crossover with real life situations where parents may be struggling with their kids as well.

Tracy Whitney 10:02

So it's a similar intervention to maybe narrating what we see going on. So I wonder what would happen if you tried this, or I noticed you were building this. What made you put that block right there?

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Yeah, yeah. And you can ask questions or you can prompt for things, but sometimes kids aren't working at that level. They're not functioning at that level because there's this little bit of the science that tells us that kids initiate play, like they start playing, they come up with their first ideas down in the lower parts of the brain that aren't connected to like the words yet or the decision-making uh parts of the brain that can tell you this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. So when they're just getting started, you'll notice you'll get a lot of shrugs, or like, I don't know, who cares, or you know, whatever, whatever. Um, but if you start kind of peeling it back a little bit and saying what you notice, but also thinking more deeply about them, not just saying, oh, you decided to stack two blocks together, but hmm, maybe a tower's forming. Oh, maybe it's going to be, you know, you're starting what could be a building or a city or something like that. You're taking it just a little bit step further than the child currently is. Then they can tell you yes or no. And they can also let you know whether they like a lot of questions or not like a lot of questions when they're playing. Some kids just look at me like stare right through me when I start asking questions. Like, I'm not in that part of the brain. I'm in my downstairs brain. There's no, there's no talking down here. It's just a feet, it's just a feel, it's just a reach in and feel around. And so if we can start putting some words to that, then I think we've got our little window opening with your child.

Tracy Whitney 11:48

That's cool. Yeah.

Sometimes children's play can seem repetitive, aggressive, controlling, or focused on themes of danger and rescue. What do you think parents and caregivers can learn by paying attention to the stories children act out in play?

Tracy Whitney 11:50

So sometimes when we're observing these play times in our children, we see maybe some repetitiveness or aggression, maybe them trying to control the outcome, or they're very focused on dark or dangerous or rescue type themes. Um, and that can feel really scary for parents who don't maybe understand what's going on. But it seems to me that I hear more of it from parents in our community who've who are raising kids who've had some of these dark, difficult, challenging things going on. What do you think that we can learn by paying attention to those kinds of stories when they're playing or acting them out in play?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah, I mean, it's that kind of thing that kind of sends our nervous systems into overdrive because all of a sudden we're in a little bit of fight or flight, not in the way that we might like grab all the toys and say you're never playing with these again or something.

Tracy Whitney 12:45

But it definitely prompts a strong reaction in many parents.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Yeah, I felt that way. I know other parents feel like, well, maybe it's not a good idea for you to play with these dinosaurs right now or to have this big, you know, uh uh plastic sword or something. Like maybe this is a little bit too rough. And for some kids, that might be the right impulse, like the right place to sort of be wondering about, because maybe it is a little too overstimulating for them to be playing with it if they may have some developmental delay or developmental difference as a result of what's happened to them, what they've been through.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Where we want to kind of titrate that as they show us that they're ready for that kind of play. So it's perfectly okay to say, yeah, maybe I shouldn't be giving my kid this big plastic tomahawk or something because they're not quite ready to handle that with their body and their mind working together. But maybe we could scaffold that a little bit by having softer objects that we can play with or not give them so many toys at once, like cut down on the clutter a little bit, which can be overstimulating, things like that. But I remember having kids that that I've been with that would be like taking out lots of little gentle creatures like bunnies and kittens and things like that and putting them out on the table. And I'm thinking, oh, it's so sweet. And then all of a sudden, like a big, you know, stomping character or uh, you know, the baddie is coming out, or the dinosaur or something, and they just railroad right over these gentle little creatures. And what would have been a nice time for us to connect? You know, I'm feeling it, I thought they were feeling it, now they're not, they're stomping, um, suddenly turns into, oh my gosh, I've got a correct behavior. Like it can really turn us off and it can really make us feel like, oh, this is a moment for discipline rather than being able to stick with what it is that they're trying to show us or express right now. So I feel that with parents. I also feel that parents, grandparents, caregivers, foster caregivers are like, um, I don't have time to play. Like this is all really well and good, Georgie, but I don't have a lot of time to get down. I don't want to get down on the floor. Um, that's something that kids do together. That's not something that I usually get involved in. So I hear that. But especially with kids who might get a little bit too, you know, fast, too rough, play too hard, too, like too aggressive and rough and tumble, things like that. They really need us to be in there as kind of their external regulator, like their external co-pilot in that situation, where we can kind of go, ooh, I think this is a little too much. Maybe either I could ask a question and bring them into their upstairs brain, their thinking brain a little bit, like, oh, that that those forest animals were minding their own business. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, T Rex comes in and stomps everybody down. You could do that, or you can help them to grade the amount of force that they're doing. So you can actually use some of what occupational therapists would do, which is thinking about how do we dial down that intensity a little bit? How can I help my child realize what might be going on sensorally for them? So, like the dinosaur might be stomping on the little animal creatures. I'd be like, oh, you feel like doing stomping right now? The animal creatures, they didn't do anything wrong. Why don't we put Play-Doh underneath the dinosaurs? And you can you can really press and squish that and give your body some really nice pushback uh feeling, the counterforce that's kind of calming for kids, actually. They call it proprioceptive input, is the big fancy term for it. So, can we turn this into a sensory moment where we're actually teaching our children how to dial themselves down from the inside out, which is a valuable life skill as well. They're gonna need to do that when you're sitting in church or in the school classroom or wherever it is that you go, where they're gonna have to learn how to dial their bodies down and then back up again when it's time to go out and run around and play.

Tracy Whitney 16:51

Right, right. And how to gauge when each is needed.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Yes. When am I allowed to?

Tracy Whitney 16:58

That's another whole set of skills that they don't know. You have to teach them.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Exactly. Yeah. So they need us for that. And I think that's a good use of us when you're just spending five minutes, 10 minutes playing with your with your child.

Tracy Whitney 17:14

Hey listeners, I hope that you're enjoying this conversation with Georgie as much as I am. If you are interested in getting more great content like this right to your inbox every month, we would love for you to sign up for our free monthly newsletter. If you go to creating a family.org slash newsletter and click on whichever one of the free downloadable guides looks most interesting to you or fits your family's needs the best, you can get that free downloadable guide as a thank you for subscribing to our free monthly newsletter. And you'll have current content and archived content collated and sent to your inbox every month. So I hope you do that today, and we'll go back to the show now.

When a child has a history that tells them adults may not be safe, trustworthy, or reliable, how can play be leveraged to build trust and attachment?

Tracy Whitney 18:04

So many of our children in this community also struggle to trust. Trust takes maybe a little longer. How can we leverage play as another way of building trust between us and children who maybe be slow to trust?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah, absolutely. I think I see caregivers who are really trying to bring their all, like day in, day out. I'm giving my all to my my child or these kids. And it can wear on us when kids aren't making progress as quickly as we would like to see when we're measuring progress in inches rather than miles. And often that's what the progress looks like for our kids. It's like we take a little couple steps forward, maybe one back, maybe we feel like we're back at the drawing board, things like that. That's how it works when kids have strained attachments, maybe from before they came to us. Or I hope I'm not overstepping by saying that, but that's been sort of my observation of some over. Yes. As we're receiving kids and we're making family with them. What I notice about the trust is that kids are looking at us and and seeing what our faces are saying, our tone of voice is saying, our body posture is saying, long before they're really listening to what we're saying in our words or, you know, our effort to connect by talking through something, they're really picking up with the, you know, their mirror neurons. I'm going to keep going back to the brain science around this, but their mirror neurons are firing, which is giving them information through this special set of brain cells that is telling them whether they're safe or not in a situation. Am I seeing an adult or my caregiver, my mom or my dad who is able to mirror back to me how I'm really feeling, even if I'm raging, what I may really be feeling inside is I need you desperately, even if I'm screaming, I hate you and I never want to see you again, um, or I wish I wasn't here anymore, or whatever that might be, that if we can show up and mirror some of what might be underneath that and show that we can we can take it, play can help us do that because they're getting somebody who can use play to help them calm down, use play to help them regulate, use play to show that I'm giving you, you know, elevated eyebrows and my bright eyes and my corners of my lips turned up and my relaxed shoulders and I'm leaning in a little bit. The more doses that we can give our kids of that, just throughout the day, like here and there. Um, it doesn't mean that you have to play all day, definitely not, because we'll wear ourselves out real fast. But if we can pepper it in throughout the day, then kids are getting little doses of us continuously showing, oh, you're safe because you play, you know? And so I think it's incredibly trust building to either set up times where kids know and it's predictable that we'll play when you get home from school, or you know, whatever that whatever that that's manageable for your family, or if you're just sprinkling it in, like for example, there's a huge mess in the living room, who's gonna clean this up? You come in and you go, Okay, everybody, I'm gonna close my eyes and you pick up three toys each, and I'm gonna try and guess which ones are now missing, and you put them away, and I'm gonna try and guess where you put them. You've got now a parent who's communicating. I'm safe no matter what you do, yeah, rather than the parent who's kind of sitting there with hands on hips and you know just get it done. Yes, exactly. But you don't have to do it all the time, just give them those little verses, you know, those little bits of connection. Yeah.

Tracy Whitney 21:55

Yeah. The late Dr. Purvis used to talk about catching it low. Catching it with humor, catching it with playfulness, and just depositing lots of yeses into their banks. And when we can interact with them in those playful ways, even if we're not actually sitting down playing a game of dominoes or we're building logos with them, if we can be playful in spirit, that still feels like play to them. Um, and it can be just that lightheartedness that elevates safety so that they do want to trust you. And then when you have to say no or you can't be playful, they're buffered to take that. They can handle it.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

That's exactly it. Yeah, it really helps us in those times the the other way when we do have to come in and sort of go, I I do need to make this decision for you to take care of you. And they know that you could switch between those two stances quite readily. They know, okay, now's a serious moment. Now we can move into a playful moment again once we've taken care of that. So it's amazing to show kids that we're that flexible because that grows on them too.

Tracy Whitney 23:04

Yeah, I mean, they don't get that flexibility doesn't frighten them because it doesn't feel unpredictable. Where maybe in previous placements or previous homes or environments, unpredictability meant unsafe. Yes. And showing them flexibility versus unpredictability can be a really trust-building environment between them between you and the child.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Absolutely. There's little things in the way of play of stuff to watch out for, like safe surprises are great, but we don't want unsafe surprises. Like if you're playing hide and seek with your kid and all of a sudden you pop out of somewhere, or you're trying to scare them, or we've even seen studies of parents, caregivers who have sort of like bared their teeth when they're playing like I'm gonna get you games, that's really an attachment dance game, uh, sort of no matter where you go, I'm gonna be able to find you and I want to hold you again, and I want to be with you, and and I'm gonna get you back, you know. If you're if you're lost for a little bit, you know, I'm gonna bring you back in. That's what hide and seek and peekaboo is all built on. But when you see studies of caregivers who've been scary in the in the in the pretext of play, right, you know, they've been too aggressive or too fierce or too unpredictable, that actually works, you know, it it put sets kids back because it works against that feeling of trust and security with the caregiver. It's sort of like, oh, my caregiver could do anything to me right now. And in fact, a lot of the the that unpredictability, unpredictability has shown up in kind of situations that we would describe as abusive too. So really being aware of how we how we show up. We just want to be as gentle and then build it up as we can do, as the child is showing that they're into it, like, oh, are we playing an I'm gonna get you game? And they seem like they're matching you and they're right there with you and they want that, or are they showing that's too much for me, that doesn't feel good for me. Then I would back off of it and I might move it in a different direction. So being able to pay attention to does your child like safe surprises, or does it feel like an unsafe surprise?

Tracy Whitney 25:14

Yeah, and if you're really attuned to your kid, you can see when that delicious anticipation and suspense flips. You can see it and you know, and then it's on you then to pull that back and say, okay, we're gonna switch gears a little bit here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Many caregivers feel disconnected from a child but don't know how to bridge the gap. How does playing together or expressing playfulness create connection when conversations, rewards, and consequences aren't working?

Tracy Whitney 25:29

So many parents that we talk to get really stressed out and overwhelmed when conversations and rewards and consequences aren't working to teach or guide or um kind of mentor their children in behavior change or, you know, managing their daily life and they feel kind of disconnected from their children because of that. How can playing together or expressing that playfulness that we talked about bridge that gap and create the connection when those things aren't working?

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Yeah, I think that there's a there's a trick that we use called the playful pivot, which is when you really need your kid to do something and they're really not wanting to do it, like let's say it's the getting the shoes on to get in the car or time to stop hanging, hanging out with the sibling and get in the bathtub, or it's meal time, but they're still on their device, or whatever that might be. A playful pivot can be a really good tool in your toolkit because you're not playing, really like playing in that moment. It's not like, okay, take out all your toys and let's play a little bit before we do this, because that might not be what you want. Like we need this to happen now. Like, what is the fastest way from point A to point B? Or there might be multiple steps that the child needs to do in getting all that done. So the playful pivot is a way of kind of turning it into a game for lack of a better word, or appealing to that part of the child that goes, Oh no, you just switched on my motivation sense. You know, I used to do this with my son when he never wanted to brush his teeth. We were getting into that stage of like, why is that such a thing for kids? Five, six, seven years old, where it's like you used to love brushing your teeth when you were four, and you thought it was the greatest thing ever because you had all these teeth to brush. And now the diving for you know, lost treasure in there with your toothbrush doesn't seem to work in the same way that when you were four years old. So my son would actually hide behind the shower curtain, like he'd he'd hide from me when it was time to brush teeth. I'd say, Okay, run upstairs, let's go to the bathroom, let's get your get your teeth, get ready for bed. And I couldn't find him. And he would be hiding behind the shower curtain or who knows where. And I would see his little toes poking out from behind the shower curtain, just little toes peeking out. And so I'd get the toothbrush ready, I'd put it under the water, I'd tell him what I was doing, like, hmm, Jack's not here. I don't know where he is right now. Better find him. Um, and so I'm turning on the water. Okay, I'm getting the toothbrush wet. All right, I'm putting the toothpaste on. Mm-hmm. Smells really minty and good, you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Meanwhile, he's behind the shower curtain, and it's almost as if we're telecommunicating. Like I'm putting that out there on the radio waves of what's happening. So I'm actually walking him through the transition, even though he's not, he doesn't want to be physically present for it, right? And so finally I go, Oh, wait a second, I'm spotting not teeth, but toes. Yeah, it looks like toes want to be brushed today. So here I come with the toothbrush to those toes. And now he's giggling and jumping out from behind the shower curtain and having a great time. And then he's like, Okay, mom, I'll do it. That's not gonna work every time with every kid, but it worked for us for a little while and it turned into a ritual. It turned into like, I can't wait to play the you know, the toe finding game, and it becomes something that we can turn to over and over again for a while until it doesn't work anymore. But I think when kids see that gleam in your eye and they know that you're not gonna come at them with uh, how many times do I have to tell you? or we have two minutes and you were supposed to be in bed 10 minutes ago, kind of thing. Sometimes that can be a parent or a caregiver's greatest asset because it's a tool that we can pull out. We're not having fun, you know. But if they're not having fun, they're really not gonna want to do it. You know, it's work for us. I know. I'm gonna be really honest about that. There were so many nights where I was like, just go to bed already, kid.

Tracy Whitney 29:32

You know, I'm I do not want to play the brush the toes game.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

I'm doing the brush the toes game. But it was working in a way that was saving us time. It was working in a way that he was happier to get into the snugglies of going to bed. And I think he even slept better if we weren't having an argument or it was a drawn-out, you know, fight or wrestling match just to get him to brush his teeth. So I think it has that quality of having a positive knock-on effect in lots of other ways. And you can use it in all sorts of ways, not just when they're little, but when they get bigger too. Like you could poke fun at yourself when you have a teenager, preteen or a teenager. They love that, you know, like um, I'm I just can't carry 10 plates down the stairs from your bedroom, or, you know, look at me balancing all these plates. Oh, I'm dropping them. You know, can you can you help me out? Like grab one, grab this one, grab this one. You know, that sort of thing can even keep things lighter and help us move through those times when we really we don't want to be the disciplinarians in this moment. Well, you know, it feels like a chore rather than being the fulfilling job of parenting that it's supposed to feel like, you know.

Tracy Whitney 30:43

I think if we can be wise enough to expand our definition of giving them the yeses, like Dr. Purvis talked about in her book, and include the giggles and the laughs as yeses. When we get one of those giggles or one of those laughs, we know we've given them a yes in some form. It may not be the word. We're we're just building up that trust bank and just building up that trust bank. And um, you know, I I'm with you on the the that time of night. The last thing I want to do is play anything or be playful at all.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

I think that and like just getting stuff done that needs to get done in the routine, and also kids who tantrum and meltdown, you know, are kids who are younger or maybe not so young anymore, who are having really big tantrums, and you know, maybe sometimes it's getting physical, maybe not. But I noticed that tantrums go through a bit of an arc, and we're not gonna play through a tantrum. Definitely let's not show up playfully during when your kid is in the storm, because you know, they're gonna interpret that as you're not taking me seriously, and that's making me even more frustrated. I was already angry, now I'm in distress. I need you to show up as my safe person through this. Actually, play is not what we want to choose when they're going through the arc of the tantrum. But as you're getting to the end of the tantrum, I notice that when kids are kind of in the sniffles part of it, you know, when they've calmed a little bit, you haven't overwhelmed them in your presence, you just kind of sat quietly with them, you let them know that you're there. Maybe you've turned down the lights or you've removed stuff around them that they could kick or throw.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

And you're just there offering your presence and they're coming down out of it, and they're now going, they're doing that little, you know, catch-cry kind of sound. I think that's a nice time to come a little bit closer to maybe show that you're available for a hug. And then as they're calming out of that, that's a nice time to sort of go, oh my gosh, you know what I just saw? A squirrel run by the window outside. Like, do you think that we could find where it went if we go outside now and see if we can, we're not gonna catch them, obviously, but you know, do you think we could leave get a couple of nuts off the tree and leave it for the squirrel? Or, you know, just something that's handy. It doesn't mean that you're gonna play Barbies or something after the tantrum is over. But I found that if you can show some people would call it distraction, I think it's the a connection point through the playfulness. If you can have that at the end, it shows that even our biggest feelings, our hugest meltdown moments can end, you know, maybe positively is not the right word, but they're survivable. And more gently. Yeah. Gently, they're survivably. We can get through this and we can move on from it. So we can go on to the next thing, and I can go back to being a kid again, not a kid who's almost in a moment of re-trauma or whatever that might have been about, but now I can go on and be a kid again. I think that's so healing and repairing for a child to receive, you know.

Tracy Whitney 34:03

Yeah, looking for those opportunities for like a well-placed dad joke or you know, kind of referencing something funny that happened the last time one of you had a meltdown. Just kind of it anything that you can use to just tie your hearts back together to each other after they've been, you know, distanced and strained and stretched because of this tantrum or this rage. Yeah. Um

How can we use play across different ages and stages to help them process emotions like anger, fear, sadness, grief, or anxiety?

Tracy Whitney 34:28

a lot of our kids in this community struggle with those big feelings. They struggle to regulate those big feelings. So we've got kids that are struggling with grief and with loss and with sadness and anxiety and fear and things like that. How can we use play? And I'm thinking particularly kind of that third person play to help them process all of those big big emotions. You mentioned earlier in the conversation, the dinosaurs and the bunnies and things like that. And of course, that works well with the small children, but let's kind of talk about it through some different ages and stages of how we can use play to process those really big emotions.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

Yeah, I'm thinking about, you know, sort of our anxious seven, eight, nine-year-olds who are really in the thick of sort of sometimes wanting to get into their pretend worlds, you know, like they might be building something elaborate, you know, there's like all these action men on the floor, and one of them is like sort of hang gliding, and another one is gonna swoop in on a helicopter. And, you know, there's there's a big battle going on. And oftentimes when I see at that age that there's a battle going on, I'm thinking, okay, what internal battle might be going on too? Or is there something that we can read into this? Not all play is like I can read into it kind of play. Sometimes it's just I like my action men, and I'm into pretending to be Spider-Man right now, and that's you know, that's just who I am. Um, I like my I like my narratives that I'm pulling in, you know, from the media or wherever else, my my shows and my comic books and all that. But other times there might be a flavor to it where you go, oh, there's something more going on here. It's almost as if they're trying to work out something, like there's a big conflict inside that might be showing up as they externalize it through the toys that they choose and the way that they're setting the game up. And so if you can join with that and you're kind of doing what we call narrate to integrate or being able to use that sports casting quality to maybe touch on relationships between characters and what the child may be trying to work out in terms of problem solving in a way that shows that they can control it. Like if it's in my play, I can control it. Even in though in real life, I couldn't control anything and stuff happened to me, and people mistreated me or people abandoned me, and I'm still that's all still swirling inside me, and the only way it comes out right now is through my behavior. But a play is another way for kids to release and even examine this stuff. So if there's one character that's sort of like hanging from a zip line about to go down and swoop in and help everyone, but is afraid to do it, you know. I'm thinking about our anxious seven, eight, nine-year-olds, then you could be like, Oh, I'm up here and I'm really, I'm really thinking about how many people I could save. I could swoop in and I could get like four people in my arms, but I'm really worried about doing it. I I'm not sure if I can make it all the way. What if I fall? And then the kid with the with the character with the helicopter says, Don't worry, if you fall, I'm gonna be able to, you know, I'm faster and I can come in with the helicopter. I'll just grab you and we'll do this amazing action-packed you know, rescue scene. Um, oh, okay, I'll try it then. And so you send them down the zip line, and you might even play that the character falls, you know, like, oh, I'm getting, I'm this is this rope is loosening. What am I supposed to do? You know, so the child can practice solving problems, finding new solutions, trying to see, is there any way to rescue somebody in a way that I wished maybe somebody had rescued me? Or I can't even picture what that would have looked like in my real life because there was nobody who could do that. But in my play, there's so many opportunities for that. And I have somebody now who wants to be that person for me. And kids like to play the powerful characters more than the vulnerable characters. So just be aware when you're doing this that oftentimes we get placed in the role. They'll assign us the role of the weaker character. You have to be ready to play the little bunny or the baby or the character that needs rescue, the people on the ground that need rescuing, because kids can feel powerful in their play in a way that oftentimes they still feel quite disempowered in real life. So you don't have to be a play therapist to do this stuff. It's just about knowing your kid and knowing some of what they've gone through. And oh, this could be meaningful, even to teach them like this is what it's like to be a helper, or this is what it's like to care for other people, or this is what it's like to feel strong and resilient in the face of adversity. Like all those things are good for all of our kids, not just the ones that have been through tough stuff.

Tracy Whitney 39:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Yeah.

Tracy Whitney 39:23

So let's translate that a little bit to maybe some older kids where they're not necessarily sitting down on the floor playing with action figures or anything like that. But they're, you know, say 12, 13, still young enough, and maybe even developmentally younger than 12 or 13 because of what they've experienced, but they're still young enough that they need someone by their side to work that out. But playing looks different when you're that age.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Yes, absolutely. I think that older kids are often more into their identities. Like they're more into like, oh, now I'm deciding more about how I spend my time and who I spend it with. Like I'm really locked into baseball, or I really am seeing myself as an artist, or I'm starting to do things that kind of narrow into a specific category of kind of more self-directed, or I'm joining groups, or I'm dealing with like different friendship pressures. And you know what I mean? Like it's just it's getting a little bit more complex at this age. And they're also kind of narrowing their interests to some degree, but also probably trying new things sometimes too, is that I think about this time of self-identity and reorganizing myself into maybe a different friend group or a different set of demands at a new school I'm going to, or whatever that looks like. So those things can come through sometimes in the way that they used to love art in elementary school. Now they're hitting middle school and they're like, I'm no good anymore.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 40:53

Like they're starting to sort of feel more self-conscious, maybe, or they're closing down when they should be strengthening those avenues. And so I think when we kind of come alongside and go, well, if you don't want to be an artist, that's fine, but could we just do some doodles together? Or could we just draw for fun? You know, oftentimes what I notice is kids start to do something and they're kind of looking over at what you're drawing. And I'll intentionally do a really terrible drawing next to a kid who's struggling with try that hard. Um, it's probably gonna look like stick figures for me. Um, but I'll intentionally do something that's just below their level or further below their level in the case that you know that's my actual you know artist ability. And they'll kind of look over at what I'm doing and I'll be like, oh, you're you're comparing a little bit, huh? You want to know how the person next to you is doing. And they'll go, Yeah. And then I'll go, huh? I I don't know if that comes up other times for you. Maybe, you know, sometimes it just kind of feels like you don't know if you should still be an artist if the person next to you draws different or something. And kids will just start talking about it because they've got something in their hand, you know, then they're not thinking all that hard about it. And I think that's where we can pull parts of the emotional brain that we can't normally get to. If you're just kind of messing around or do it doing a doodle together, you can get to some of that stuff more readily than if you were just like, no, you know, I really think if you don't think you're very good anymore, we should enroll you in that next photography class or that next, you know, sculpture, drawing, sculptural drawing class or something. Um, wait a minute, like what about just doing something for the fun of it and then seeing if that can guide us toward a better understanding of what they're going through in terms of self-identity? And that stuff is inevitably marked by the challenges of the past. I mean, you're gonna see ghosts of the past popping up and haunting their feelings about themselves now in the present, most definitely. So I think that that's that's a good avenue for our older kids who are a little bit more like, let's do a directed activity together. It's not always about free play.

Tracy Whitney 43:10

Yeah, I'm thinking as you're talking about that, a friend of mine once knew that her child was skilled at writing. And so they they did the shared journal thing. Have you heard about that before? Where kids write in a journal and a parent writes back? But they use their shared journal to do a story, and it was you write part of it, and then I'll pick up where you left off and I'll write a part. And it was getting to the point where the parent was writing just ridiculously poorly constructed stories to pull more out from their child. And I thought that was a really creative way to hone in on a child's skill set, something that they enjoy and that they're good at, but then also they were learning lots of really interesting nuggets. And then it didn't have to be that face to face conversation that that teenager was not interested in having. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Because sometimes they can interpret that as this, you know, this is another adult telling me who I'm supposed to be or what I'm supposed to be doing or how I'm supposed to feel about this. And I know we're none of us mean to do that, but I think that's just the age where you're going to see that kind of interpretation, that feeling of like everybody's looking at me, everybody's scrutinizing me in a way that's probably more hormones than anything. But ultimately, it's like, wow, that's really where they are right now. And if you've if they've been in your family for a while, if they're they're a solid part of your family, and you've known them since they were little, you know, you're gonna see kids go through seasons. And so I think it's we're always as parent in parenting, we're always like, oh my gosh, what is this season gonna bring? And we have to adapt ourselves to our kids. I'm going through it with my own son right now. So some of this is like touching on personal things for me.

Tracy Whitney 44:53

So yeah, I mean, it really it is the the truth. We have to figure out we have to observe and pay attention and hone in on and get attuned to and kind of feel like that spidey sense, you know. Pay attention to that so we can know how to respond and then how to adapt.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Exactly.

Tracy Whitney 45:11

Yeah, that's good. Well, you're not alone. There's a lot of us going through it with our kids right now. So good to know. Yeah. One final interruption to this fantastic interview about the power of play. I would love it if you would share this episode with a friend when you're done listening to it. Telling your friends about the work that we're doing here at Creating a Family is the best way and most effective way that we can get the word out about the work that we do to strengthen and support families. And having you partner with us in that way to share it with a friend helps us know that we're doing a good job, but it also helps us get more good information into the hands of the people who need it. So tell a friend and I'll let you go back to the interview now.

Let’s talk to the parent or caregiver who feels like they have very limited time to engage like this. What are some high-impact but low-pressure ways to use play to strengthen a child's relationship with a parent?

Tracy Whitney 46:06

So earlier in the conversation, you mentioned that a lot of parents feel like they just don't have time to play. So let's give those parents maybe they feel like they have 10 or 15 minutes a day. Let's give them some hope, kind of take them off the hook a little bit and say, okay, it doesn't have to be more than that. Here's a high impact but low effort way to use play and strengthen your relationship with your child.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm a huge advocate for telling parents you don't have to play all day, that this stuff is really meaningful in little bite-sized pieces. When you have younger children, you have to do that anyway, because their whole day is kind of like in and out of little bursts of play. Um, and in fact, when kids are really little, I used when my kid was little, I used to play Don't Wake the Sleeping Giant, which was Mommy Lays Down on the Sofa or on the floor, depending on how old he was. And you it and my son would climb all over me, and I'd pretend to no, I'd really be like almost on the verge of sleep. And then I feel him moving a little bit, and then I'd go, Oh, where is he? Where is he? And I got to lay down while he was playing, which is amazing. Just we're weary. Like make yourself comfortable, like find a position. You don't have to sort of be like crouched on your knees and kneeling during it to let your kid know that you're paying attention and you you know, you're engaged and you're giving them your best attention. You can just sort of go, hey, let's let's play for a few minutes before we go do X, Y, or Z. Or like I said, it could be after school where you just have your five, 10 minutes of play before you are getting ready for after school snack and all the other million things that we have to do. So really, we're just talking about five to 15 minutes at a time where the child knows that you're being as fully present as you can be. Often that involves putting your phone somewhere else. Yep. Um, because it's so easy for us to sort of go, okay, I'm getting bored now. So, you know, what's going on on social media? Um, so I have to force myself to do that too. But I think what we're talking about is make yourself comfortable, set aside little bits of time. You don't have to buy a lot of expensive toys either. Like I always say, like, kids' favorite toys are usually like the things around the house that are already there. Yeah, a cardboard box for our toddlers, you know. Um, maybe um, you know, for infants, it's just simple things from the kitchen. For our older kids, it could be duct tape uh and stuff like that. You know what I mean? Yeah, what can you make with cardboard and duct tape? So as kids get older, their interests may change, but I find like the simplest things, like you know, moving, taking the sofa, the cushions off the sofa and building a fort, those are things that can pass that five to 15 minute mark. And great, your kid feels amazing. They're gonna be ready to do whatever comes. I mean, they're gonna be more ready to do whatever comes next. I had one mom tell me, you know, I really didn't want to do the playing on the floor thing that you told me to do, but I did it for five minutes with my son, and we kind of, you know, made space in his bedroom. We shut the door, I had my partner watch the other kids, like we really honed in this special time together. And when it was all done, he like excitedly wanted to help pick up all the toys and put them away. He even opened the door for me like a little gentleman and said, Thank you so much, mommy. Like, I can't wait to do this again tomorrow, and like was holding the door for her. She was like, it totally transformed our relationship for minutes, you know, stretches of time. It felt wonderful. And not every kid is going to be like, Can I can I pick up all the toys and open the door for you? But if it if it helps a child shift out of a difficult moment or if it helps make parenting easier for a few hours after that, then wouldn't it be worth it to try something new, to be to really dedicate yourself for a little bit of time that it doesn't cost a lot. It doesn't have to cost a lot to make that time together.

Tracy Whitney 50:31

Yeah.

What if we are raising a child who rejects attempts to play, or if we feel awkward, self-conscious, or we think we aren’t a playful person?

Tracy Whitney 50:32

What if we are a parent who is just awkward and self-conscious? What if we've and I'm speaking a little vulnerably here, I've never considered myself a playful person. I play has always been very hard for me. My kids will even tell you, I like, do not bring a board game on vacation if you want me to play with you. I will play a word game, I will play a music game. Board games are not my thing, but I've really just never considered myself a playful person. So what if what if that feels very self-conscious to you? How do you get around that?

SPEAKER_02 51:10

I think you know, some of us like this, like you are, get paired with kids. We just happen to have kids that want the exact form of play that we need. You know, it's like if you don't like dress up, they're gonna bring all the costume hats and stuff over to you. If you don't like, you know, pretend putting on silly voices, they're gonna be like, you be the evil witch and cackle like an evil witch. You know, they're gonna bring you sometimes what we need to learn from in some ways. Right. And it's really beautiful to have a child who has different play strengths than you do, because it means that you live in a really diverse family where everybody can bring their own gifts to the table. You know, I really like that. I will just tell kids, like, I'm just gonna let you know that this isn't really, you know, I wasn't born a good evil witch cackler, but you know, if you want to show me how I will, you know what I mean? I wasn't born to I do, I do. Um it's kind of a nice way of not making them feel bad because they've suggested a particular play idea. Because sometimes kids can feel it's a little rejecting if we say, no, I don't do pretend. Um, but there are like very um diplomatic ways of saying it. Like I wasn't born um cackling like an evil witch, but if you want to show me on um the Wizard of Oz or if you want to act it out for me, and then sometimes I'll be like, Oh, you're so much better at it than I am. Can you do the evil witch cackle when it's my time to do that? Like I'll kind of ask them to do their play strength when it's time to do that. And you can set the timer for less time if it's a if it's a play type that you don't enjoy. Don't punish yourself by having to really like, you know, zoom around the room on a broom. That's a lot of rhyming words. Um you don't you don't actually have to concentrate playing with your kid on the play that they most love. You could find common ground. So if you're gonna do more play together, I would choose activities that you both really love. So if it's not board games, but maybe it's puzzles, then maybe that becomes your shared play language together, or you like gardening, or you like cooking together, or you like to walk the dog, or whatever that might be. If you like doing folding socks and you want to fold socks together, I don't know. I'm I'm just thinking about all this. No, I get what you're saying.

Tracy Whitney 53:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

Yeah, the strange, wonderful world of being a family and what your traditions are and what's valuable to you, that can come come through in your play. I remember spending long afternoons with my grandma when I was a kid. She loved playing cards, and I thought this is the most boring thing in the whole world. Like she should be playing with her grandma friends, not with me playing cards. But I would play cards with my grandma, and over time I started feeling like this that was one some of the greatest love that I ever received was my grandma playing cards with me. Like I wouldn't trade those memories for the world. Yeah, she had funny ways of celebrating when she won that didn't make me feel bad, you know? Like she was so adorable in like cheering for herself, but also cheering for me. So I think just knowing like you're allowed to choose play that you like to do and concentrate that con like concentrate it with your kid. Yeah. Because that's what they're really gonna remember. They're not really gonna remember the times when they had meltdowns and you, you know, cradled them all the way through it. They're gonna remember the card games or the gardening together. Do you know what I mean? Like that's yeah, that's what they're gonna carry forward and give their own kids one day. So yeah.

Tracy Whitney 54:45

I got around it when my kids were little. I mentioned I don't like board games. I got around it by uh I and I just called it in. I was like, you can move my guy around the board for me. I don't care. I'm very non-competitive. Yeah. I I mean, I when I sit down and do a game, it doesn't matter what kind of game it is unless it's the Eagles playing football. Okay, okay. I don't care who wins, but I am very playful when it comes around football. Like my kids all know that I'm gonna scream and yell and cheer, and I'm gonna yell at the umps and all that stuff, the refs. But yeah, I got around my kids loved shoots and ladders and that cherry picking game. And I did not enjoy any of those. Yeah, but I would make it sound as if they were doing me a great favor. Oh, could you move my car for me? I can't reach it across the board, or whatever, and just engaging them that way. And they would always win because I never kept track of what I was doing or where I was going on the board. They didn't actually know until they were older that I hated board games.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

Isn't it funny how it builds reflection in us just to play with our kids? Like, oh, that tells me something about myself, and I'm learning something about them too, which kind of brings us full circle with it. But yeah, if it's a play play type that you don't like, you can ask them to do more of the work for you. But if it's a play type you love, if it's watching the football game together and shouting at the TV, you know, in a good way, they're gonna carry that forward, and that's gonna be part of family lore. And I love that for families. And they're probably also gonna remember times when you cheered for them during the board games, too. You know, they're gonna remember that you were there, they're gonna remember that you were their supporter. So I think that's really what we're getting at here is that you don't have to do it all. Um, play is just something to sprinkle in through the day, especially when you most need it.

Tracy Whitney 56:37

Yeah. That's great.

If you could leave adoptive, foster, and kinship caregivers with one encouragement about the power of play in helping our children heal and thrive, what would it be?

Tracy Whitney 56:40

Well, if you could leave our adoptive foster and kinship listenership with one encouragement about the role of play in helping our kids heal and thrive, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 56:53

I think if there's one small thing that they could do is just to become more interested in observers, even if you don't want to start playing with your kid right now, today, just because you heard my voice or you saw me talking about this. Yeah. Even being able to read the way of play and listen to the audiobook or have have a sense that play is something that adds to our kids' development, it helps them build resilience, it helps them deal with their feelings, it might even help them sort through their difficult stories and unpack what's there so it makes life a little bit easier for everyone and a little bit happier. Even if you become a more interested observer in your child's play, if you look at it as like a scientist who's trying to better understand what's going on inside that mind of theirs, that's an amazing step toward advocacy for kids to be able to access more equitable and more enriching forms of play on a daily basis. That's really important to me, is so that the whole world knows how important play is. And it can just take a little bit of extra intention around it. That's all.

Tracy Whitney 58:02

Well, guys, the book is called The Way of Play. I hope that you uh run right out and get it for yourselves. And thank you, Georgie, for your time today. Thanks for taking the time to write it and get it all down for us to heal and strengthen families. Listeners, I hope you come back next week and uh listen to the next new bit of information from our experts.