Are You A Child Therapist In Need Of Training Or Continuing Education In Play Therapy?
Are you a Registered Play Therapist (RPT) looking to acquire more skills for your practice or satisfy continuing education requirements? Is it difficult for you to find play therapy courses that offer evidence-based experiential training? Or perhaps you’re considering incorporating play therapy into your practice for the first time and don’t know where to start.
The challenges of identifying quality training for play therapy can be frustrating. Since Covid, gaining access to in-person training has presented a challenge. This lack of accessibility means you have to settle for online courses that, frankly, are usually pre-recorded webinars that are dull and unengaging. You probably resent the idea of spending your time and money on tedious online training that doesn’t offer you any hands-on skills.
It Takes Time And Money To Maintain Your RPT Credential
Although you initially committed the time and money to become an RPT, it’s surprising how quickly renewing your credential comes around every three years. Ever since stricter requirements were implemented that make it more difficult to find qualified training, perhaps you’ve decided to let your play therapist credential lapse.
As much as you want to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest modalities, you might fear you’ll fall behind with your client load if you’re unable to get the type of training you need. If you’re going to have to cancel clients to attend training, you want to be ensured you’ll come away with hands-on knowledge you can apply to your practice.
The good news is the Monarch Training Center offers required training for play therapy online that is genuinely fun and experiential. You’ll gain access to quality courses related to child and play therapy that include information and interventions you can immediately apply in your practice.
Recent Changes In Requirements Have Made Maintaining A Credential In Play Therapy More Difficult
For child therapists, obtaining our RPT is a big undertaking— we earn this credential to show that we’ve done the work to provide the best evidence-based therapy the field has to offer. And although the RPT was already one of the most expensive credentials to obtain, a host of new requirements has made it even more costly and time-consuming to maintain.
Instead of getting to choose Continuing Education (CEs) topics that align with our practice and offer experiential training for therapy modalities, the mandatory CE training for play therapists—such as Ethics or History—are seldom topics we’d want to invest our time and money to learn about.
Child Therapist Qualifications Don’t Have To Be Boring
Many of us have become resigned to investing in training that is uninspiring and doesn’t teach us any tangible skills that we can apply to our clinical work. Unfortunately, if we want to maintain our RPT, we’ve become conditioned to think of CE requirements as an unpleasant means to an end. We grin and bear the boring online training, not realizing there are better alternatives available.
But who decided that training for play therapists couldn’t be interesting and engaging? As clinicians who dedicate our careers to working with children, why should we have to settle for boring lectures that don’t directly benefit our practice?
Now you can attend a live class online that offers the opportunity for you to interact with colleagues and learn new modalities that you can utilize in your clinical work. The training for play therapy we offer is well-rounded, engaging, and experiential.
The Online Play Therapy Training We Offer For Child Therapists Is Interactive And Relevant
Lack of accessibility to quality training has a trickle-down effect on the overall mental health of your community. If maintaining your RPT has become so burdensome that you consider abandoning your play therapy practice altogether, the unintended consequence is that you deprive potential clients of this highly effective and necessary modality. Given the increase in anxiety and depression in children since the pandemic, it’s more important than ever for child therapists to have access to relevant, hands-on training.[1]
As RPTs ourselves, we witnessed first-hand the need for high-quality online play therapy training. We wished the CE courses for RPTs were accessible, experiential, and, most importantly, not boring. Creating quality course content to fulfill the strict RPT criteria was what prompted us to become approved Association for Play Therapy (APT) providers in 2019.
We Offer An Array Of Courses To Expand Your Knowledge
Monarch Training Center provides child therapists with a curriculum that meets the requirements for the RPT credential or renewal. Depending on the year and what renewal requirements are coming up, our live, online offerings will change, but self-paced webinars will soon be available that you can attend at your convenience.
No matter the topic, we pride ourselves on keeping our curriculum light, engaging, and interactive. Each of our courses includes an experiential approach to therapy training where you will have the opportunity to practice the modality we are teaching during the training. Rather than falling asleep at your computer being lectured, you’ll be excited about what you’re learning and eager to apply the modalities and techniques you have been taught to your clinical work.
What Our Curriculum Looks Like
A sample of the play therapy courses we currently offer are:
- Foundations of Play Therapy: A Historical and Practical Overview
- Ethical Considerations in Working with Minors in A High Conflict Divorce
- Using Play to Assess, Prevent, and Treat Suicide in Young Children
- Jungian Analytical Play Therapy: A Deeper Understanding of Children’s Play
You will be able to engage in discussions with your peers during the live online courses, sharing valuable information, resources, and expertise with each other that will enrich the training. Additionally, even our required therapy training is loaded with interesting information, evidence-based research, and experiential activities that you’ll be able to incorporate into your practice.
Training for therapists doesn’t have to put you to sleep. After attending one of our courses, you will walk away with knowledge and information you can immediately put into action in your clinical work. And even if it’s required training, you’ll feel like you got your money’s worth.
But You May Wonder Whether Online Play Therapy Training For Therapists Is Right For You…
Taking specialized courses in play therapy is too expensive.
As therapists ourselves, we understand that you want to ensure the courses you choose to take to fulfill your continuing education requirements in play therapy will give you a bang for your buck. We aim to balance the quality of our training with affordability to ensure you receive a return on your investment with any course you take. By offering experiential learning and interesting content, you will be able to take what you learn in training into your clinical work. And depending on the state where you practice, the continuing education courses we offer may also apply toward your state renewal requirements.
I hate the idea of canceling clients to attend psychotherapist training.
Because we also have to cancel clients to host training, we try to choose days and times that make sense for our industry. We host a lot of our training on Friday afternoons since a lot of therapists don’t schedule clients at this time. We also work to find a balance of the CE hours that are required with the amount of information you need to know so that classes aren’t longer than they have to be.
What makes your training for child therapists worth my time?
Having participated in endless hours of online training ourselves, we can confidently ensure you that our curriculum is a cut above the normal fare. We want CEs to be worth your time and that makes it worth our time as well. We want to have fun with you, not just lecture at you.
Earning Your Continuing Education Hours Can Be Engaging And Interactive
Just because a CE is mandatory doesn’t mean it can’t be fun and engaging. If you would like to find out more about the play therapy training courses we offer online, please visit our website. If you have any questions, please visit our contact page.
[1] https://www.childrens.com/health-wellness/separation-anxiety-in-children