Roadblocks in CBPT with children
What you will be able to do
About this course
Working in CBPT with children often means charting unmarked territory — from a shy child refusing to let go of a parent’s hand, to balancing confidentiality with caregiver collaboration. This course shows how to read between the lines when a child’s story doesn’t match the adults’, and how to validate the child’s inner world.
Through real scenarios you’ll learn to transform resistance into engagement: encouraging nonverbal children to express themselves, transferring coping skills to everyday life, supporting imaginative play, and prioritizing interventions when multiple diagnoses or parental mental-health challenges are present.
Course objectives
- Identify common pre-treatment roadblocks and apply shaping strategies to foster engagement
- Navigate confidentiality challenges with transparent, validated communication
- Manage non-compliance, aggression and refusal with limits, reinforcement and planned ignoring
- Support nonverbal / minimally verbal children and scaffold verbal expression
- Encourage imaginative play through predictability and relationship-building
- Promote generalization to home and school; adapt CBPT for virtual delivery
Course requirements
- Psychiatrists
- Psychologists
- Clinical Social Workers
- Licensed Professional Counselors
- Licensed Marriage & Family Therapists
- Mental Health Clinical Nurse Practitioners
The delivery of the certificate of attestation at the conclusion of the course will be tied to the evaluation of participants’ requirements. In the absence of the requirements, the course hours will not be certified.
Curriculum · 1 lesson + Learning Test · 1h 02min
Instructor
Frequently asked questions
What are the roadblocks in CBPT with children?
Common obstacles such as a shy child who will not let go of a parent's hand, non-compliance, aggression or refusal, nonverbal or minimally verbal children, and situations where the child's story does not match what the adults report. The course also addresses confidentiality with caregivers and prioritizing interventions when several diagnoses or parental mental-health difficulties are present.
How does the course teach clinicians to handle resistance?
Through real scenarios: shaping strategies to build engagement before treatment, limits, reinforcement and planned ignoring for non-compliance, scaffolding of verbal expression for children who speak little, and predictability and relationship-building to encourage imaginative play.
Who teaches Roadblocks in CBPT?
Susan M. Knell, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and adjunct assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, author of Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (1993) and co-founder of the CBPT Institute in Rome. She developed the CBPT method.
Does the course cover online delivery of CBPT?
Yes. One of the objectives is adapting CBPT for virtual delivery, alongside promoting generalization of coping skills to home and school.
How long is the course and what does it cost?
One lesson of 62 minutes plus a learning test. It is a Second Level course, self-paced with lifetime access, priced at $50 plus VAT, with a certificate of attestation issued by the CBPT Research Center after verification of professional requirements.
Who this course is for
Psychologists and psychotherapists · Psychiatrists · Clinical and licensed independent social workers · Licensed professional counselors · Marriage and family therapists · Mental health clinical nurse practitioners.
A certificate of attendance is issued on completion, tied to the final learning test.