Play-Based Healing with Children and Adolescents
Margaret Blaustein, Lou Bergholz and Dafna Lender present a magical morning of learning, collaboration, and play! Children all need to feel safe in order to develop and connect to others. The quickest and most powerful way to get to transformative moments with children is through play— meaning interactive, face-to-face, reciprocal, cooperative interactions that rely on movement, rhythm, touch, a prosodic voice, and eye contact. The more a child learns that it’s pleasurable and safe to be completely caught up in a moment of shared joy or attention with another person, the deeper sense of connection. In this recording, we’ll discuss principles and techniques that underpin playful design to help facilitate connection, nurture meaningful choices.
Learning Objectives
- Analyze the role of play in developing a sense of connection between children.
- Assess the role of play in developing the capacity for regulation in children.
- Investigate the healing opportunities and limitations present in typical youth program design.
- Appraise the therapeutic core of major activities youth programs.
- Defend the importance for staff to find their joy and playful self in the program activities.
- Conclude at least two developmental capacities which are impacted by childhood trauma and adversity.
- Determine at least one way their own role / work may play a part in supporting youth sense of self.
- Determine at least one way their own role / work may play a part in supporting youth connection to others.
Course Modules
- Welcome, introductions, and playful connection; Establishing group safety
- Key principles of the importance of play
- Playful design: optimizing moments of healing
- Critical resilience factors in healthy youth development
- Group reflections and closing
Who Will Get the Most Out of This Course
- Addiction Counselors
- Special Educators
- Psychologists
- School Psychologists
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Other Helping Professionals
- Speech-Language Pathologists
- Nurses
How This Course Will Benefit You
Unlock the Power of Play for Deep Healing
Learn how to use playful, face-to-face interactions to create emotional safety, regulation, and connection—especially for children who have experienced trauma or adversity.
Transform Your Clinical or Educational Practice
Gain actionable strategies from leading experts in Theraplay, ARC, and trauma-informed care. These tools are immediately applicable in therapy sessions, classrooms, or youth programs.
Improve Outcomes for Hard-to-Reach Children
Discover how to break through emotional walls using joy, rhythm, and movement—essential for children who struggle with traditional talk-based approaches.
Restore Joy and Purpose to Your Work
Reignite your passion by tapping into your own playfulness and learning how your energy and presence can profoundly impact children’s healing.
Expand Your Professional Toolkit
Master trauma-sensitive techniques that foster developmental growth, resilience, and secure attachment in children and adolescents.
Build Deeper Therapeutic Connections
Establish trust faster and more effectively by embracing approaches that speak the language of children—play, safety, and connection.
About the Speakers
Dafna Lender, LCSW
Dafna Lender, LCSW, is an international trainer and supervisor for practitioners who work with children and families. She is a certified trainer and supervisor/consultant in both Theraplay and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) and an EMDR therapist. Dafna’s expertise is drawn from 25 years of working with families with attachment in many settings: at-risk after school programs, therapeutic foster care, in-home crisis stabilization, residential care and private practice. Dafna’s style, whether as a therapist or teacher, is combining the light-hearted with the profound by bringing a playful, intense and passionate presence to every encounter. Dafna is the author of Integrative Attachment Family Therapy (2023) and co-author of Theraplay® - The Practitioner’s Guide (2020).
Lou Bergholz, PhD
Lou Bergholz, PhD, chief knowledge officer at Edgework Consulting, has spent the last 20 years working on creating trauma-sensitive interventions in the US and abroad that apply academic research and clinical practice to populations, often without reliable access to definitive clinical care, including at the Justice Resource Institute, CARE International, and Street Soccer USA in Gaza and Thailand.
Margaret Blaustein, PhD
Margaret E. Blaustein, PhD, is a practicing clinical psychologist whose career has focused on the understanding and treatment of complex childhood trauma and its sequelae. Dr. Blaustein is co-developer of the Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency (ARC) treatment framework (Kinniburgh & Blaustein, 2005), and co-author of the text, Treating Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Fostering Resilience through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency(Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2010). Dr. Blaustein’s work has been hailed as “a landmark for understanding and treating traumatized children” by world renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and has been embraced by over 300 agencies and/or child-serving systems in the U.S. and abroad who use the ARC framework. She has provided extensive training and consultation to providers worldwide. Dr. Blaustein is the director of the Center for Trauma Training in Needham, MA, and is actively involved in local, regional, and national collaborative groups dedicated to the empathic, respectful, and effective provision of services to this population.
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