This three-hour training explores limit setting within Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) not as a behavior management tool, but as one of the most therapeutically potent moments in the playroom. For many play therapists, limit setting is the skill they received the least training on, and one of the areas where they feel least confident, this training is designed to change that.
Grounded in CCPT theory, participants will examine why limits exist, what they communicate to the child, and how the therapist's own relationship with limit setting, their discomfort, their hesitation, and their self-awareness shape the therapeutic experience. The use of self-as-therapist is central to play therapy work: how we feel in the moment of a limit matters as much as the words we use.
Participants will identify and practice the CCPT ACT model alongside the Choices as Consequences framework, with attention to understanding the intention beneath the behavior, shifting from a misbehavior lens to a curiosity about what the child is seeking, needing, or testing. Play therapy case examples will span relational testing, room and toy-based limit situations, and moments that require the ultimate limit, giving participants concrete experience applying these frameworks across a range of clinical presentations.
Through case discussion and clinical language practice, participants will leave with a clearer conceptual framework, greater confidence in their decision-making, and a felt sense of how limits in play therapy, when done well, can deepen rather than rupture the therapeutic relationship.