I had 5 (or was it 6…) evaluations this week. Aside from an i.v. of caffeine, that also meant… a lot of parent questions. One particular question stuck out in my brain. “Can we not play so much”? Anyone else find their eyes twitching at that question? Me too. But my instincts told me that there was more to the question than mom was asking…and I was right.
No More Play Therapy?
For the sake of this post and patient privacy, let’s refer to her as Annie. Annie has delayed expressive and receptive language skills and has been on my caseload for about a year. For reference, Annie is 2 years old. She has made steady progress in her receptive language skills, and her expressive language skills are slowly emerging. She’s currently communicating through gestures, a few vocalizations, and will spontaneously label, but it’s not consistent.
When we wrapped up the re-evaluation this week, I asked Annie’s mom, “Is there anything else you have concerns with?” to which she responded…“Yeah, I was going to ask you– can we not play so much?”
I used to get offended and annoyed by that question. We aren’t just playing. The thing is, though, not everyone has a background in child development, taking care of siblings, or babysitting, and may not understand the importance of play in development. AND not everyone goes to grad school to learn strategies to encourage their child’s communication development.
The truth is, parents are often asking out of genuine curiosity, or their question is leading to something else.
Asking for Context
In those moments here’s what I want you to start thinking about: “how can I get more information about what this parent is asking?”
It’s up to us to figure out what’s really going on. Honestly, if you’re looking at our sessions from the average parent’s perspective, it really does look like we are just playing with the little ones, so parents may not realize what we are doing. They may still have questions even when we’ve explained ourselves a billion times. That’s okay.
You’ve gotta get some context. How do we do that? Asking open ended questions.
- “Can you give me an example of what you mean by that?”
- “That’s really important to talk about. What are you noticing—or not noticing?
- “I want to make sure I give you the most helpful answer. Can you walk me through what you’ve been noticing lately?”
- “I’d love to understand your perspective better—what has you thinking about that right now?”
Here’s what I followed up the no more play question with: “Can you be more specific about not playing as much?”
Mom had started to notice that while Annie’s ability to attend to a task is improving, she was still concerned because Annie becomes easily distracted when it comes to actually completing a task.
Now, let’s pretend for a moment I automatically assumed mom thought I was doing the wrong thing, so I started to lecture her about the importance of play in development.
Do you think it would have gone well? Mom may not have argued against me, but she would have felt that I’d completely dismissed her concerns when I was the one who asked for them.
Moving Forward
It’s important that we look at the situation from the parent/caregiver perspective and listen to their concerns. After all, we want their support and to encourage them to be actively involved because that’s how we can see progress. As it turned out, Mom wanted to work on Annie’s attention span. She sees that Annie is making progress, but she feels that it’s time to switch some things up in our sessions to keep improving. She just wasn’t sure how to go about it.
I took a moment in our conversation to gently remind her that play is how Annie is learning right now, and if we were to try to create a rigid structure of a session, it wasn’t going to get us anywhere but frustration. We will continue working on attention development, do our best to minimize distractions around the house, and continue to encourage Annie’s overall communication development.
See the difference?
Context is Key
Friends, it’s easy for us to get into our groove of doing things and forget that parents might not completely understand the importance of play in development. We’ve gotta keep that line of communication open, encourage their input, and invite them into our sessions. Remember, when we take the opportunity to ask for and listen to parents concerns, we build those important relationships that are required for progress with this age group.
So the next time a parent asks “why are you just playing?” or “can we not play so much?” take a moment to ask for some context, it just might surprise you.
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