cognitive behavioral play therapist may focus on how play can build emotional awareness, self-regulation, and more adaptive responses. The goal is not to determine which theory is “right,” but to ask how a clinician’s guiding theory of change explains what is happening in the moment and what it suggests the child needs next (Stewart & Crenshaw, 2016).
Ethical, Multicultural, and Contextual Considerations: INTENT also widens the lens to include larger systems surrounding the client and their work. Caregiver expectations, pressure to reduce behaviors quickly, diagnostic language, cultural meanings attached to authority and discipline, and the therapist’s and client’s intersecting identities may all shape how this repeated play is understood (Chung et al., 2023). Ethical and contextual narrow, or disconnected from the client’s broader environment.
Narrative Articulation: Intentional practice also requires intentional language. The clinician asks, “How would I explain my response to a caregiver, supervisor, or colleague?” If the answer is limited to “it felt right,” theoretical grounding is still underdeveloped. If the therapist can describe how the child’s development, presenting concerns, context, and theory of change informed the intervention, the response becomes more coherent, intentional, and defensible.
Technique: Only then does the therapist return to intervention the work (Fall et al., 2017). In this way, technique becomes an expression of conceptualization, not a substitute for it. The clinician is not simply choosing an intervention; they are learning how to practice from a guiding theoretical orientation.
Viewed through INTENT, the repeated handcuff play is no longer simply a behavior to interrupt, redirect, or limit. It becomes a moment to consider what the child may be expressing about power, relationship safety, misattunement, or felt control (Davis et al., 2022). The response that is theoretically congruent, developmentally informed, and contextually responsive. In this way, stuckness becomes less of a clinical dead end and more of an invitation to return to the roots of practice.
A Journey Toward Intentional Practice Learning to practice intentionally from theory is a developmental one way of understanding how theoretical grounding can deepen across training, supervision, and clinical experience. One play therapist in-training described her journey in this way:
My foundation was shaped by important adults and family values that taught me children are important, deserve respect, and
6 | PLAYTHERAPY | September 2026 |
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deserve to have their voices heard. My undergraduate degree in psychology expanded my understanding of attachment and child development, and I spent the next decade working with children ages 0-12 in early childhood education (ECE), where those experiences reinforced the importance of early relationships.
to child-centered play therapy (CCPT). I learned fundamental experiences shaped my beliefs about children, families, healing, and change. Through this process, I recognized that my identities noticed shifts in my presence and language. I began practicum in early 2025 and, because I wanted to incorporate play therapy into practice ethically and intentionally, I sought additional supervision from a program faculty member who was a play therapist.
My theoretical roots deepened within child-centered play therapy as I experienced the therapeutic powers of play in session and semester of internship, I explored additional play therapy theories and techniques through a second play therapy course. Exploring other theories strengthened my alignment to CCPT. In practice, I that they came from a place of intentional theoretical alignment rather than my need to respond.
Although I am still early in my practice, my theoretical roots the CCPT framework because I know it is evidence-based and aligns with what I believe about children and their healing. I trust the process more because I am grounded in theory rather than forcing responses to meet the needs and expectations of others.
over time. Early in training, clinicians often draw primarily from their identities, values, and prior experiences. As education, supervision, and clinical experience deepen, additional domains of INTENT emerge, including theory of change, contextual and ethical awareness, articulation of clinical responses and decisions, and process in which its domains become increasingly integrated. As these connections strengthen, clinicians may become better able to articulate their rationale for clinical decisions and return to theory as a source of direction, stability, and intentionality in the playroom.
Intentional play therapy practice does not develop all at once. Like roots growing beneath the surface, theoretical grounding often strengthens the next step may be to identify which theoretical assumptions are already guiding their work. For others, it may involve noticing where technique has become more available than theory, or where moments of stuckness reveal a need for deeper theoretical grounding.
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