🚫 Toxic stress changes how a child functions in the world — but it doesn’t always leave a clear, recognizable story. That makes assessment murky and treatment goals harder to define.
Stress and trauma weigh kids down.
Play therapy lifts them up.
Fam, the kids walking into your office are carrying the weight of so much in today’s complex and often chaotic world. They’re navigating toxic stress — the kind that floods their nervous systems day after day, with no relief in sight. They’re carrying complex trauma — deep, tangled wounds from prolonged, repeated harm. Here’s the truth:
🚫 Complex trauma can create layers of defense — so even when you know what’s behind their struggles, actually making a connection with them can feel impossible.
🚫 The overlap between the two can be messy — one child might be hypervigilant, another might shut down, and another might swing between both, all within the same session.
Which means:
😔 Their trauma responses are unpredictable — making every session feel like starting over.
😔 Their trust is hard-earned, easily lost, and even harder to rebuild.
😔 Their support systems are often fractured or skeptical — leaving you to do the work alone.
Your Let’s Play! Summer Camp experience
Your Let’s Play! Summer Camp Experience is a two-day immersive training designed to equip you with the tools, insight and confidence you need to support children facing complex trauma and toxic stress through play therapy.
📍 Where: Millis Library, Millis, MA
📅 When:
- Monday, July 14: 10 AM – 4:30 PM (6 CEs) + Optional Bonus Evening Session (2 CEs)
- Tuesday, July 15: 10 AM – 4:30 PM (6 CEs)
🍎 What’s Included:
- Catered lunch, snacks, and coffee — because you deserve to be nourished, too.
- Interactive, experiential learning — no dry PowerPoints here.
- Surprise raffles & giveaways throughout the two days.
- A welcoming, thoughtfully designed space that feels like home.
[GRAB A SEAT AROUND THE CAMPFIRE]
This two-day immersive experience is designed to help you:
🧩 Immerse yourself in a two-day training where you’ll use play therapy to create safety and connection, allowing kids to fully engage in the healing process.
🧩 Gain clarity in assessment by identifying the root causes of a child’s behaviors, so you can tailor treatment plans that are both strategic and impactful.
🧩 Integrate parents and stakeholders into the therapy process to ensure progress extends beyond the session and into a child’s daily life.
🧩 Build confidence in trauma-informed interventions and innovative play therapy techniques that will leave you feeling re-energized, prepared, and empowered in your work.
Kids don’t have time to wait for the world to catch up. Let’s give them what they need now.
Session breakdown
Across these two days, you’ll dive deep into the principles of play therapy, explore innovative trauma-informed interventions, and gain practical tools to elevate the way you support children and families.
Each session is designed to give you a clear, actionable framework for assessing behaviors, engaging stakeholders, and building treatment plans that make a lasting impact. Here’s what you can expect from this immersive experience:
Day One: Foundations of Trauma-Informed Play Therapy
🧩 Understanding the impact of toxic stress & complex trauma on children.
🧩 Breaking down seminal play therapy theories and how they inform your work.
🧩 Creating a trauma-informed play therapy space that fosters safety & healing.
🧩 Navigating today’s social & political climate—and how it impacts kids and families.
💡 Bonus Evening Session (Optional):
Deep dive into case conceptualization & treatment planning strategies that actually work.
Day Two: Play-Based Interventions & Practical Application
🛠 Hands-on interventions that build resilience, personal safety, and coping skills.
🛠 Practical strategies for integrating parents and stakeholders into the therapeutic process.
🛠 Crafting personalized, trauma-informed treatment plans.
🛠 Therapist self-care & burnout prevention—because your well-being matters, too.
✨ What makes this experience so special? We’re not just talking about play therapy — we’re playing it out together. You’ll get to experience the interventions firsthand, not just learn them, so you can feel confident bringing them into your sessions.
🏕️ Pitch your tent: Pricing & Registration
Secure your spot for this immersive play therapy experience—before early bird pricing ends!
Choose Your Experience:
Experience
Dates
CES
Price
🎟️ In-Person (Millis, MA)
July 14-15
12 (6 per day)
$597
🌙 Bonus Evening Session (Optional but highly recommended!)
July 14, 5:30-7:30 PM
2
+ $89
💻 Virtual Experience
July 31 - Aug 1
12
Special pricing available
[Snag Your Spot Before Prices Go Up!]
🚨 Early Bird Pricing Ends May 15! 🚨
Come be part of this incredible community of play therapists — where learning, connection, and growth happens together through play.
What past campers have to say:
The “Let’s Play Summer Camp” was an absolute game-changer! It was so much fun and completely immerses you in the world of play therapy. The balance of theoretical knowledge and hands-on play therapy practice was perfect! I left feeling inspired, equipped with new and fun ideas, and eager to implement what I learned in my practice. The opportunity to connect with other play therapists was also invaluable.
Amy Quiroz, LCSW
I LOVED the entire Let’s Play! Summer Camp for so many reasons. I felt inspired, refreshed, and more prepared for the work we do with our kids. The camp provided an easy-to-understand breakdown of complex trauma needs and provided creative interventions to target those needs. It was especially refreshing to collaborate and spend time with other providers who are in the trenches doing the same work. Sharon Cho, ACSW
Therapy is political. Play is resistance.
We are living in a moment of deep uncertainty and systemic harm and kids aren’t just witnessing it. They’re absorbing it.
📌 DEI rollbacks are stripping critical conversations from schools — leaving kids without the language or safety to talk about their identities.
📌 ICE raids are tearing families apart — forcing kids to navigate fear, loss, and instability overnight.
📌 Book bans, funding cuts, and harmful policies are sending a loud message to marginalized kids: You don’t belong. Your story doesn’t matter.
Parents are stretched thin, anxious, and desperate — not just for answers, but for a way to explain it all while surviving the uncertainty themselves. Teachers are burnt out, under-resourced, and being asked to do more with less. And therapists? We’re stepping in to hold the emotional weight of it all as we’re reminded that sometimes stress is systemic. And therapy? It’s political. Always.
That’s why the work we do (this massively restorative work) isn’t just about helping kids regulate — it’s about helping them reclaim a sense of safety and agency in a world that often denies them both. Because play isn’t just play — it’s resistance, it’s healing, and it’s how we help kids rewrite the stories trauma has written into their bodies.
So how do we help kids feel safe when the world around them isn’t?
How do we create resilience, stability, and hope in the face of trauma that’s still unfolding?
How do we support parents, teachers, and caregivers who are struggling just to keep up?
That’s what Let’s Play! Summer Camp is about. This isn’t just professional development. It’s a call to action.
Can’t make it in person?
Get the campfire vibes with no travel required
If you’re interested in joining virtually, just know, fam, you’re still part of the campfire! This isn’t a recording or a livestream of the in-person event — it’s a fully interactive, live training designed just for virtual attendees.
You’ll engage in hands-on learning, connect with fellow clinicians, and walk away with the same high-impact interventions and insights — all from wherever you are.
📅 Virtual Dates: Thursday, July 31 & Friday, August 1
⏰ 12:30 PM – 4 PM PST (with a 30-minute break)
💻 Earn 12 CEs from home!
Meet your camp counselor: Sarah Scott Dooling, LICSW, RPT-S
Hey, Fam! I’m Sarah Scott Dooling — a licensed independent clinical social worker, registered play therapist-supervisor, and your guide for this summer camp experience. I’ve spent over fifteen years in this work — supporting kids as a school social worker, training clinicians as a supervisor, and running my own private practice. And if there’s one thing I know for sure? Self-care for kid therapists doesn’t happen in isolation — it happens in community.
Too often, we’re told to “just take care of ourselves” while juggling crisis calls, treatment plans, and broken systems that weren’t built to support the kids we serve. But real restoration? It happens in the shared experiences, conversations, and exchanges of people who truly understand the weight of this work. It happens in the shared support of learning new interventions — tools that help not only the clients we serve, but also the emotions we carry home with us each day.
That’s why I am SO excited to be back in person with child therapists again. There’s something so magical about being in the same space, playing through the interventions together, and just having fun while learning. This camp is my chance to spoil you with the super nourishing, engaging experience you deserve.
At Let’s Play! Summer Camp, you won’t just be learning interventions (though trust, you’ll leave with a packed toolbox). You’ll be experiencing them, living them, and connecting with a community of therapists who just get it—so you walk away not just with new skills, but with the energy, confidence, and connection to bring them into your sessions.
So grab a seat around the campfire, and let’s dig in.
Refill your canteen: because play heals everyone
You show up for kids every day — holding their stories, their fears, and their triumphs. You navigate the complexity of trauma, toxic stress, and all the ways they manifest in a child’s body and play.
And you do it all while juggling, advocating, triaging, treatment planning, crisis intervening, and holding space — beautiful, transformative space — for everyone around you.
💛 But here’s the thing, fam: you don’t have to carry it alone.
That’s why Let’s Play! Summer Camp isn’t just another training — it’s a community-centered, immersive experience designed to fill you back up. Over two days, you’ll gain hands-on interventions, deepen your understanding of trauma-informed play, and connect with others who truly get it.
This is a space to hold the duality of this work — the weight of it and the deep joy that makes it all worthwhile.
Rest by the campfire — I’ve got you.
You give so much of yourself in this work. It’s time to receive. Come to Let’s Play! Summer Camp 2025 and:
- Learn new tools to better support your clients.
- Feel more confident & prepared in your sessions.
- Reconnect with the joy & power of play therapy.
- Experience the community, care & connection you deserve.
🔗 [Register for camp] (Spots are limited—secure yours today!)