"Making a Place for Play"
Principles and Models of Prevention and Treatment in Coping with Stress and Trauma through Play and Playfulness in Parent-Child Relationships

This workshop will focus on understanding ways to prevent the dangerous effects of trauma and mental breakdowns in the experiences of young children exposed to stress and risk, and to address their recovery from their vulnerability. These ways are based on enlisting the involvement of significant adults in the child's life and developing their ability to use play and playfulness.

Research in recent years shows that shared play interactions between parent and child are the foundation on which reflective functions and self-regulatory abilities are built in the child, including coping with stressful events. It has been found that, alongside the potential of spontaneous play to help children cope with stress, traumatic events and ongoing stressful situations may impair play ability, especially symbolic play and its flexibility, and its contribution to coping and resilience.

Traumatic events also tend to reduce a parent's desire and ability to engage in playful interactions with their children, due to the functional stress, or their emotional reactions to the stressful situation. Thus, a paradox is created - precisely when children need playfulness most in their relationships with their parents, the parents are too anxious and depressed to be playful.

We will use the inspiration of research and experience in the implementation of the NML program (Making a Place for Play); a program led by Prof. Esther Cohen, and developed by Prof. Ruth Pat-Hornchik, Liz Jung and the team of the Israeli Center for Psychotrauma; and in its integration with other approaches. This is with the aim of helping professionals develop awareness of the importance of play and playfulness in the relationship between children and parents, while expanding the theoretical understanding of these concepts and their implications for intervention in situations of stress and trauma. We will attempt to present applied models for preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic intervention and interventions at the group and dyadic level with parents and children living in areas of war-related stress in order to strengthen their children's resilience and coping.

Course Objective: The objective of the workshop is to help therapists understand the role of play and playfulness in children's coping with traumatic situations and to become familiar with principles and models for interventions of a preventive, assessment, and therapeutic nature through play to strengthen the parent-child bond. Learners will be exposed to the rationale, principles, and demonstrations of how to implement the NML program (Making a Place for Play) with groups made up of parent-young child dyads. They will also be exposed to the principles of psycho-educational parent group meetings to promote playfulness in interaction with their children while understanding the child's needs and symbolic communication with him.

In addition, professionals will learn through video clips to identify play patterns that indicate post-traumatic distress in the child and difficulties in the parent-child relationship, and to consider principles for adapting play therapy aimed at these situations. Principles of dyadic parent-child play therapy performed at home with remote guidance from a therapist (Filial Therapy) and models of post-traumatic play therapy including Integrative Attachment Family Therapy; Child Centered Play Therapy will be presented. Theraplay