Jen Taylor Play Therapy Services

** This course is being retired.  In order to obtain APT credit, you must complete the course by March 1, 2020.**

In this video interview, Dr.  Jodi Mullen discusses her research and experience on the culture of childhood.  She believes that in order for play therapists to be effective they have to be competent cross-culturally. Luckily, the language of play is universal. Still play therapists must take into account the world of children is vastly different from that of adults. There exist rules, values, customs, and language that are part of a culture that adults have left long behind. A culture where one is generally powerless, physical size matters, and your daily accomplishments are judged as inconsequential by the dominant culture of adulthood (drawings, homework, physical tasks like cartwheels). What’s important to children is not judged as such by the dominant culture. Children experience a childhood where their thoughts and feelings are often dismissed and minimized - little person equals little problem. 

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will be able to understand childhood through a cultural lens and how that relates to play therapy practice.

2. Participants will be able to give examples of how childhood can be considered a culture.

3. Participants will be able to integrate viewing childhood as a culture into the work they do as play therapists.