What You Really Need to Know About Unconditional Positive Regard in Play Therapy

If you are a Child Centered Play Therapist, or not, unconditional positive regard is one the essential foundations for effective therapy. 

According to Carl Rogers, unconditional positive regard is an attitude of caring, acceptance, and appreciation that is offered to a person regardless of their behavior or whether it aligns with the therapist’s personal values. Rogers believed this kind of acceptance is essential for fostering self-awareness, self-worth, and healthy personality growth—making it a universal human need crucial to emotional development.

And Carl Rogers, well… he’s kind of a big deal. 

He is the founder of Client-Centered Therapy, which serves as the foundation for Child-Centered Play Therapy. Child Centered Play Therapy is essentially Client Centered Therapy adapted for children where they express their inner world through play, and where play is the primary medium for communicating, exploring, and healing! 

Check out more resources about unconditional positive regard in play therapy  HERE and HERE!  

So here’s something you need to know as a Child Centered Play Therapist - we need to hold all play with unconditional positive regard.

Yup.  It’s a hard truth, but you can’t value some play or play sequences over others. You can’t make value judgments that kids had a “good” play session if they were doing something you deem as more meaningful than a session where they spend the entire time setting up the dollhouse.  

Setting up the dollhouse has worth and value too. I feel so passionately about that that I wrote an entire blog about it HERE! 

Just because you might not understand the play doesn’t mean it isn’t “as good” as other sessions.  AND once we dive deeper into play themes, all play has meaning.  Check out more on that HERE! And at the same time you can’t hold value judgements for kids that get stuck in play themes, the stuckness tells a story too!  

The kid that sits on your couch and only plays with the fidgets? The kid that crosses their arms and doesn’t say one word? The kid that plays with their back to you? The kid that dumps every. single. miniature. on the floor? The kid that has played the same story for 10 sessions in a row? 

Yup, we need to hold all of these with unconditional positive regard. 

On that note I want to encourage you to enter each and every one of your play sessions with unconditional positive regard and the relationship at the forefront and core of your work with kids and teens. I guarantee it will make a monumental difference to your practice. 

AND if you are looking for more resources and support around play therapy themes, check out the training Dinosaurs In The Dollhouse: Interpreting Themes in Play Therapy  and learn the 7 frameworks and tools to interpret play themes with TONS of case examples! ​​

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