2025 Play Therapy Conference

Join Dr. Stephen Porges, developer of Polyvagal Theory, and Clair Mellenthin, creator of Attachment-Centered Play Therapy, to gain essential insights into recognizing and adjusting biobehavioral states.

• Shift from Stimulus-Response to S-O-R emphasizing how a child's autonomic state mediates response to stimuli
• Guide children into social engagement to support therapy and peer connection
• Help move a child toward regulation with grounding techniques, sensory tools, and routines

Join Carmen Jimenez-Pride and Catherine Denham as they deliver a powerful message on practicing cultural humility in the playroom, emphasizing its crucial role in creating a safe and inclusive therapeutic environment for all children and families.

You'll explore principles from play therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and sandtray therapy, gaining insights into the unique impacts of cultural trauma on children of color.

In this engaging session, experts Liliana Baylon, LMFT-S, RPT-S, and Maria Laquerre-Diego, LMFT-RPT-S, unveil critical assessment tools designed to address the unique challenges of medical trauma in children.

• Assess five critical domains of play therapy
• Integrate assessments into play therapy
• Recognize and address trauma responses in play therapy

• Critical periods in parts development
• Narrative splintering
• Countertransference
• Dynamics between parent and therapist parts

Clair Mellenthin, creator of Attachment Centered Play Therapy, and Jessica Stone, creator of the Virtual Sandtray App®©, share core concepts behind systemic trauma and generational patterns, revealing how these forces shape our young clients' behaviors and relationships.

• Hands-on play therapy activity designed for immediate application in your practice
• Techniques for involving family members effectively while respecting client autonomy
• Tools to work through relational trauma and strengthen family bonds

Sueann Kenney-Noziska, MSW, LCSW, RPT-S, specialist in trauma and abuse, shares how a trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy (CBPT) lens equips you with the tools and knowledge of short- and long-term effects of childhood sexual trauma.

Join Annie Monaco and Ann Beckley-Forest, experts in EMDR, Attachment and dissociation and get to the heart of how fragmentation of the self can be recognized through our case examples within a play therapy framework and offer practical play therapy tools, including Gestalt play therapy and other prescriptive play therapy invitations to move the child towards healing. Our play therapy-based techniques help children describe their inner life, including fragmented self-states and lay the groundwork for trauma processing.

Join Chaitra Wirta-Leiker, PsyD, a licensed psychologist and international/transracial adoptee, and adoptive parent alongside Sabra Starnes, LCSW, RPT-S a transracial adoptee and adoptive parent with over 24 years of experience as an adoption therapist, as they reveal how different types of adoption and the 7 core issues of adoption shape session dynamics and profoundly influence children's self-expression.

• Navigating identity and belonging in biracial and LGBTQ+ families
• Addressing trauma and loss in single-parent or grandparent-led households
• Fostering attachment and communication skills among diverse family structures

Join play therapist Georgie Wisen-Vincent, LMFT RPT-S, co-author of upcoming The Way of Play (with Dr. Tina Payne Bryson) for an innovative approach to strengthening parent-child relationships through play therapy, trauma resilience, and brain development.

In this groundbreaking session Georgie equips you with play therapy strategies to support young clients and families facing stress, dysregulation, chaos and conflict.

Join Cherie Spehar, licensed clinical social worker to discover ShadowPlay™—an ethical, engaging framework that uses expressive arts and play therapy to help teens safely explore and integrate shadow aspects.

• A creative, ethical framework for guiding teens in shadow exploration in play therapy
• Depth-psychology insights and ethical considerations in shadow work
• Play therapy strategies that foster autonomy and safety in and self-exploration

• Healing the Trauma Brain - Rewiring Broken Connections
• Polyvagal Theory & The Vagus Nerve Superhighway
• Somatic & Sensory Strategies in Play Therapy