436 | Should You Ever End a CCPT Session Early? (Clarifying Ultimate Limits in CCPT)

Episode summary

In this episode, I clear up an important misconception about ultimate limits in child-centered play therapy: Can a child ever "choose" to lose the rest of their play session? While some approaches to CCPT teach ending playtime as an ultimate consequence, I explain why that is not consistent with the Landreth model as clarified in the fourth edition of Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship. Landreth emphasizes patience, moving through the ACT limit-setting sequence at least three times—and often more—and using the final step only rarely. In almost every situation, the appropriate ultimate limit is removing the specific toy, material, or activity for the remainder of the session, not removing the child from the therapeutic experience.

I also explore why ending a session early creates problems that go far beyond limit setting. It can give children an escape from difficult therapeutic work, communicate that our acceptance has conditions, and prevent them from having the time they need to regulate and make a different choice. Ultimate limits should be extraordinarily rare, and when we find ourselves reaching for them frequently, I believe that's an invitation to examine our own patience, expectations, emotions, and agenda. CCPT asks us to stay with the child—even through the hardest behavior—and trust the model, the process, ourselves, and the child.