10/05/2026
October Newsletter
We have some new and exciting things at the Playhouse this month! Our parenting classes are still available for any interested. This is an open group, where parents can join at any time and complete the curriculum back around. Ex: If a parent joins on week 6 they would continue to attend back around to week 5. This is designed to help parents get started as soon as they wish to and avoid waiting for start dates. Caregivers can email for more information to [email protected]
We will also be celebrating the graduation of Cohort 2 from the Becoming Playful Play Therapy Certificate Program at the end of this month! Pictures and congratulations will be sent in the November newsletter!
We have a special guest speaker presenting a 6 hour special topics course this month. See below to meet Marian!
Guest Presenter: Marian Kern LPC, RPT-S
Hi, I’m Marian Kern, LPC. I specialize in working with neurodivergent adults, particularly those with Autism, ADHD, or sensory sensitivity. My work focuses first on helping clients develop understanding, acceptance, and practical ways to live well as a neurodivergent person. Many of my clients are navigating burnout, unmasking, perfectionism, or years of feeling misunderstood in a neurotypical world. My practice is neuro-affirming, trauma-informed, and grounded in nervous system and body-based work. Many people I work with have spent years masking, pushing through overwhelm, or living in survival mode.
Therapy often begins with building awareness of how your nervous system works and learning ways to support yourself with greater compassion and sustainability. From this foundation, we may also explore trauma that developed through chronic stress, misunderstanding, or sensory overload.
Marian will be presenting Neurodiversity Affirming Attachment Work with Children with Autism on October 24th 9:00-4:00 pm.
Community Spotlight
This month we are featuring Our Lady's Inn maternity home. Our Lady’s Inn (OLI) is a maternity home for pregnant women and their dependent children who are homeless and in crisis. With locations in St. Louis City and St. Charles County, OLI offers housing in a private room setting while providing for their immediate and basic needs. Case management with individualized services to address personal health, educational, and psychosocial needs is also offered. A case manager, nurse, counselor, and other staff support the women and children in this residential program.
The Client Advocate provides case management services, working with the family to achieve their specific parenting, educational, employment, and housing goals. Registered nurses offer peri-natal support and education, helping to ensure the delivery of a healthy baby. Professional counselors focus on mental wellness-assisting residents in addressing trauma, substance abuse, and other psychosocial needs. Counselors work with community resources to coordinate additional outside services needed by our families.
Residents share in household activities, learn life skills, and establish goals through an individualized plan. Workshops and multi-session trainings cover topics such as parenting, nutrition, employment readiness, educational preparedness, stress management, smoking cessation, pre-natal and post-natal care, budgeting, child development, and building healthy relationships.
For more information go to ourladysinn.org
October Trainings at the Playhouse
10/24 - Neurodiversity Affirming Attachment Work with Children with Autism (CE) In-Person Only
Saturday 24th 9:00-4:00 pm 6 Hours Content: Special Topics
Participants will experience attachment-focused play therapy interventions as they are traditionally taught, with particular attention to Structure, Engagement, Nurture, and Challenge. Through active participation in these interventions, participants will have the opportunity to notice their own responses to the play, including what feels connecting, comfortable, challenging, forced, or dysregulating.
The training will then introduce autism and neurodivergence as a lens for reconsidering how attachment-focused play therapy is experienced and interpreted. Participants will examine how sensory processing, communication differences, executive functioning, and nervous-system capacity may
influence the way autistic children experience and respond to traditional attachment-focused play therapy interventions.
Objectives:
1. Demonstrate attachment-focused play therapy interventions representing Structure, Engagement, Nurture, and Challenge and describe the attachment purpose each intervention is intended to support.
2. Analyze how autistic sensory, communication, executive-functioning, and regulation needs may influence attachment-focused play therapy and demonstrate an adaptation that preserves the intervention's intended attachment purpose.
3. Analyze Engagement and Nurture behaviors within attachment-focused play therapy and MIM- informed observation, and demonstrate adaptations that support connection while accounting for neurodivergent sensory and communication differences.
4. Analyze Structure and Challenge within attachment-focused play therapy and demonstrate adaptations based on executive-functioning demands and current capacity to distinguish therapeutic stretch from demands that exceed available resources.
5. Design and demonstrate an attachment-focused play therapy intervention that supports caregiver sensory awareness and regulation while facilitating sustainable parent-child co-regulation and relational connection.
6. Evaluate the impact of the play therapist's nervous-system state on observation, interpretation, and play therapy decision-making and create an individualized regulation plan to support therapeutic presence, flexibility, and authentic connection.
Instructor: Marian Kern LPC, RPT-S Registration 9:15 am
Breaks determined by training.
Register at theplayhouseinc.com/store/p182/10/24_-_Neurodiversity-Affirming_Attachment_(In-Person).html # (https://www.theplayhouseinc.com/store/p182/10%2F24_-_Neurodiversity-Affirming_Attachment_%28In-Person%29.html #/)
10/30 - The Neurobiology of Trauma (CE or Program) In-Person or Live Webinar Option
Friday 30th 9:30-12:30 pm 3 Hours Content: Special Topics
It is vital for clinicians to understand the neurological response to trauma as this directly impacts a child’s behaviors, thought patterns, and overall well being. Knowing what part of the brain that the child is currently residing in is paramount for treatment in the playroom. Join us was we explore the biological response to trauma and how the therapeutic powers of play therapy can help rewire the neural network.
Objectives:
1. Participants will describe the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems.
2. Participants will describe the adaptive threat response and which play therapy techniques can work to decrease the frequency, intensity, and duration of this response over time.
3. Participants will discuss how the therapeutic powers of play therapy can help rewire the nervous system to remain in a homeostatic state.
Instructor: Danielle White LPC, RPT-S Registration 9:15 am
Breaks determined by training.
This meets APT's definition of live webinar. Live webinar counts as non-contact.
Register for In-Person at theplayhouseinc.com/store/p180/10/30_-_Neurobiology_of_Trauma_(In-Person).html # (https://www.theplayhouseinc.com/store/p180/10%2F30_-_Neurobiology_of_Trauma_%28In-Person%29.html #/)
Register for Live Webinar at theplayhouseinc.com/store/p181/10/30_-_Neurobiology_of_Trauma_(Live_Webinar).html # (https://www.theplayhouseinc.com/store/p181/10%2F30_-_Neurobiology_of_Trauma_%28Live_Webinar%29.html #/)
