Interview between Speaker 1 (Meg Ferrell) and Speaker 2 (Mick Olds)
Episode 107: Practices that Deeply Respect Children
Meg:
Hey, it’s Meg with two quick really important reminders before we jump into our episode. One is that if you have not joined us yet on Patreon, you’ve already missed an episode. This episode explores how a provider concretely supports clients with self-injurious behaviors. You don’t wanna miss it. Go to patreon.com/learnplaythrive. We’ve got so much more good stuff coming up there. Other reminder is that registration for all of our online self-paced continuing education courses ends on December 16th, 2025. We do still have our 2026 Virtual Summit, and most of our early bird tickets are sold, but there’s still a few left. So, visit learnplaythrive.com/summit.
[Introductory music]
Welcome to the Two Sides of the Spectrum podcast, a place where we explore research, amplify Autistic voices, and change the way we think about autism in life and in our professional therapy practices. I’m Meg Ferrell from learnplaythrive.com, broadcasting to you today from unceded Tsalagi territory.
Welcome to the podcast. Today, I have a brand new interview for you with Mick Olds. You might know them by their given name, Kelsie Olds, or by their internet name, The Occuplaytional Therapist, but they’re always so much fun and so interesting to learn from. If you haven’t already listened to it, please go back and listen to Episode 81 on strengths-based occupational therapy and self-determination. This episode is all about child-led therapy, the ins and outs, the fun things, the hard things. We’re gonna dive into some of the things that Mick is excited about and the things that they’re still struggling with. Make sure you check out Mick’s on-demand continuing education course, ‘Here to Play’, which is available for registration through December 16th, 2025 when registration for all of our online self-paced continuing education courses close. Here’s the interview with Mick Olds.
Hey, Mick. Welcome back to the podcast.
Mick:
Thank you guys so much for having me. I’m really excited to be back.
Meg:
Really, always, it’s so much fun. Every time I get to sit down and talk to you, I just get so excited about what our work can be and what it is becoming for so many people. So, I wanna start by asking you one of my favorite questions to think about. I would say at Learn Play Thrive, we are so deeply guided by values. When I practiced as an OT, it was values that I built from and reflected back on. I parent with values instead of with rules. This is just really so integral to how we think about what we’re doing at Learn Play Thrive, and I wanna ask you what values drive how you practice school-based occupational therapy?
Mick:
Yeah, I feel like — I mean, respect is the biggest, respect for children as full human beings, respect for children as equals in humanity to adults, is like the biggest element of everything that I do, from the spiel that I give when I’m putting a new kid on my caseload to the actual practice that I do with that child when I’m seeing them every time. So, I guess, I don’t know if values need to be one word. I feel like I grew up with a poster of values on the wall and they were all one word and all mine are like a sentence, but respect for kids, but also respect for play. Which might be like a kind of a weird, you know, thing to say, but a lot of people have this idea in their mind that play is synonymous with fun or just having a fun time, even to the point where when I would take a kid from a classroom to go to our therapy gym, 99.3% of the time, people will be like, “Have fun!” And I understand that that’s just like a social nicety. I’m not like, “How dare you say that?” But it sure doesn’t capture what you’re hoping to do in occupational, like, the whole depth of everything you’re hoping to do in occupational therapy in this setting is not just, “Bye, have fun!” It’s, you know, there’s so much more nuance and layers and things to that. And even in — I’m thinking of that as a play-based occupational therapist, but even just a kid playing by themself. Everything about play is not just fun, happy, frivolous entertainment. It’s like this deep, passion, flow state work, all of these, and with other heavy emotions in there too. And so, respect for kids, respect for play. Let’s see.
I feel like I could probably name 20 values, but a couple of the other primary ones would be — let’s see, how do I put this in words? Which is funny because I’m thinking about translating the adult concerns, or worries, or desires into kid language rather than expecting a kid to step into the adult world because they are a kid with a disability or a kid with a delay of some kind. Which, I mean, honestly, that might just be respect for kids again, respect for kids 2.0. But when I said respect for kids the first time, I was thinking in the sense of literally seeing this person as a human who’s worthy of you listening to their opinions and preferences and stuff. And in this one, I mean almost like making a protective bubble around the kids so that I am letting them experience things as a child and I’m translating the stuff that’s the adult concerns down into their world instead of trying to be like, “Well, because you have a delay in this area, then that means that now you have to spend an hour of your free time working on your handwriting more than other kids do,” or whatever it is, or even more hours depending on how many therapies you have.
And so, like, I guess just if I was saying what is that that I value, I value childhood, I value protecting childhood and kind of making this fence around it where I can, even as I know that my job is rooted in interrupting just free, childlike, just doing whatever you want. My job is going to interrupt that because whatever you want might not have been to come to occupational therapy or be at school or whatever it is, but I’m doing my best to try to restore that as best as I possibly can. Yeah. I feel like those are some pretty solid root of my values at least.
Meg:
They are. They’re simple and somehow subtle and profound at the same time. As I try to wrap my mind around each of them, can you share some examples of what each of these values concretely looks like in your occupational therapy practice? Let’s start with Respect for Kids 1.0; the first, respect for kids.
Mick:
Yes, respect for kids in the sense of you’re a person and I’m a person, and so that doesn’t make me above you. I guess another way you could say that would be like anti-ageism or anti-childism. I’ve heard both of those words used. They’re both a little bit clunky, but I’m not old enough to remember whether ableism or racism or other ones felt clunky when they were first coined. So, I don’t know, maybe that’ll be one that gets said more commonly in the future. But anti-ageism or anti-childism would be me being like, no part of our session is just ‘You have to do this because I said so, because I’m bigger than you and because I’m older than you, and because I said so’. The only time that I will intervene is like in a safety concern. Like, you know, you can’t jump off of that without me putting a mat there or what, just literally like some kind of safety concern where you’re actually going to hurt yourself or hurt me or something like that, which is really, really rare in sessions where a kid already knows that I’m on their team, I’m there to back them up.
They’re pretty much free to explore their brain and their body and the things that they’re interested in discovering, and I want to help facilitate that. Then there’s not a whole lot of feeling, like, ‘Well, I need to be throwing myself at the fringes of what I can do’ because they already have me on their team for a great deal of that, and so they’re not gonna try to be doing things that are unsafe. So, it tends to be more just in the sense of something that was an unknown risk or something like that.
So, yeah, so one way that looks in practice would be the fact that I’m not gonna tell them what to do. And in a lot of spaces, kids are used to being adults being like, come into this space so I can tell you what to do. That kind of manifests in one of two ways. One, it could be they come ready to fight because they’re used to being told what to do and they don’t want to. Or two, it could be they come with no agency because they are used to being told what to do. And so, they’re not used to having to decide what for themself. And so, my approach kind of differs in either of those directions for supporting either getting that agency back or reducing that fight, because you don’t have to. There’s nothing to fight here. Hi, I am just your friend, you know, I’m here to support you.
And so, an example of — and if I give any examples of kids who I’ve talked about, then I either change their name or details about them or things like that. So, I would never just talk straight about a child who I worked with. But I can remember a time with a kid who came ready to fight and would just walk in the room and start dictating what I had done wrong in setting up the room and what I should change. And, you know, like, “This round mat should be on the floor and this round, this square mat should be in the corner. And I don’t like blue, so there shouldn’t be anything blue. And the music should already be on, and it should be playing quiet music because that’s how I can think,” and just would come in. And then, as I was moving the mat, they’d be like giving another demand or request immediately. Like, I couldn’t do anything fast enough.
And so, I started taking a notebook and at the end of the session, writing down everything that they had already told me while saying it out loud. And I would be just like jotting bullet points or notes or whatever, “Okay. Round mat, middle of room. And blue mat, out of the picture because blue is bad. And quiet music playing.” And then, I would look at them and I would be like, “Is there anything else that I should remember for next time?” And it really threw him off for the first few times. ‘Cause, like, you know, sorry, were you asking my opinion? Like, that was unexpected.
And then, I started getting to the session a couple of minutes early and setting up the things the way that they had asked me to the last time and leaving the notebook out in the open to their page so that when they got there they could see that I had referenced it for what it was that I should do. And they, I watched as over the weeks they came in with less of this fight in their, even in their shoulders and their neck and the way that they held themself. Like, they could relax. And, I mean, I’m not saying this was just magic because the next time they came in and they’re like, “Why is the round mat in the middle of the room? It should be in the corner of the room.” You know, like, literally just changing things to change things.
But the more I took it seriously and reiterated that I wanted to do the thing that they wanted, I wanted this to be a space where they could work, where they could understand their own body, where they could work in the way that would help, I watched that change the way that they came to me because they were experiencing getting to be the lived expert of their own brain and body for the first time. And even if they were doing that in a clumsy or a childish way, because they are a child, I guess that’s why I said respect for children, because respecting children.
Meg:
There’s so much there. Like, you started with saying respect for children, but embedded in that is this very high level of trust that you have that kids know how to learn, and kids know how to heal, and kids know what they need. And you’re trusting their process of exploration, of discovery, you’re trusting their autonomy, you’re trusting their need to have preference and agency. You sort of wrapped all of this into respect for kids, and it’s pretty different from what a lot of us do. And I think a lot of us don’t stop to reflect on what do I believe? Do I think that if I don’t control everything, the child wouldn’t learn? Like, there’s so many interesting questions wrapped up in that. What is respect for play? That was your second one. What does that look like concretely in practice?
Mick:
So, I think that a big part of it that, especially in I wanna say the 2023/2024 school year, which was that was the year that I had a theme for myself of big kids play too, and not just little kids. Because it’s easy to do — well, maybe not easy, I don’t wanna be flippant, but it’s easier to do child-led play with a 2-year-old, or a 3-year-old, or a 4-year-old than it is to do child-led play with a 12-year-old. Like, it’s easier to know how to do that because it’s probably gonna just be like a lot of running around and doing silly stuff, you know, bubbles.
So, the year that I committed myself to also doing child-led play with the big kids on my caseload, that really pushed me in developing the respect for play because it meant a lot of times when I wasn’t still a hundred percent sure what we were doing, and what it would have to do with our goals, and how it would be beneficial. And I was, you know, if I had come to a point where I was, like, for weeks and weeks, nothing has helped or worked or done anything, and I feel like this is, you know, I’m wasting this kid’s time or the school’s time or whatever, then I probably, you know, I might’ve left that framework behind or thought that I needed to do something different. But instead, I kept seeing more and more benefits. And so, I leaped out in trust and, I was seeing more and more of this.
So, I had a kid who started with asking me to play checkers. And I was like, I have no idea what checkers is going to have to do with your fine motor skills. You have enough, you know, you’re like 12, you have enough fine motor skills to pick up a checker and move it. So, like, that’s not, you know, that’s not the level that we’re working at. We’re working at ‘Can’t keep up in class enough to write an essay. And when you do, then it’s so sloppy that nobody can read it, and the letters are all spilling all over each other’. And so, you know, what does that have to do with playing checkers? I don’t know yet, but I’m going to respect that children learn things through play. And that play is gonna be the bridge here that enables me to do respect for children and not just walk in and tell you what to do, and what to do is sit down and drill handwriting. So, I actually literally didn’t own a checkerboard. If I had, I don’t know what I would’ve done.
But the next time I brought in a big poster and I just started drawing a checkerboard on it. And I was like, “Hey man, I’m sorry, I didn’t own any checkers, but I’m gonna draw this.” And I brought all of these little math manipulatives that are like little tiny frogs. And so, you can have some frogs be your checkers, and I’ll have some frogs be my checkers. And so, I was just totally devoted to just drawing the checkerboard while he was just kind of like sitting there watching me. And then, he was like, “Well, I’ll help you.” And so, he got a marker and started helping me. Which again, this is still not the level that he’s at. This is, he was not at ‘Can’t scribble’. So, this is not me being like, “Woo hoo, I’ve done it. You’ve scribbled on a checkerboard.” But it was like, okay, well at least we’ve got a pen in our hand. So, like, there’s something. We’re not afraid of that. We’re not so far away from the meaning of writing that we’re like, I won’t even touch a writing utensil ‘cause it’s probably a trick from an adult.
And then, we started, we played checkers for I feel like maybe four-and-a-half seconds before it instead became like, well, okay, but this frog has a power up. And then, this frog has magic powers. And then, so then the checkers rules were very quickly forgotten as the frogs had, it turns out, magic powers to do things to each other and ice powers and fire powers. And for the entire school year, we invented a game called Frog Kingdoms, where the frogs were doing — literally, it was a year, and I saw this kid, I wanna say, two or three times a month. So, it was, a, fair amount of sessions where the frogs were stranded on an island, and then they found a Frog God, and then they like left offerings for him.
And we had this, they gave us this one empty classroom that nobody used, and so we could leave our stuff set up in it and we were really lucky for that. ‘Cause if not, then it would’ve been tough to take it down and put it back every week. Although we would’ve found a way. But in that time, we wrote comics about the frogs, typed stories about the frogs. I left my iPad — which doesn’t have Internet so the kids can only just use it for typing apps or things like that — left my typing app up and then the frogs were, like, having a conversation with the Frog God who communicated only on emoji. We built — the frogs went on rollercoasters and we built some, and then we wrote like ad copy for getting frogs to come to the theme park. The frogs had a wizard who could sell the magic potions, and then we made his menu in his shop.
And so, there was, it turns out, there was tons and tons of writing embedded in all of this, and we were writing stuff. I mean, basically every week we wrote something, whether it was long or short, and a lot of it was shaped weirdly ’cause it had to fit on an altar to the Frog God, or a wizard menu. And so, his handwriting got smaller and neater as he tried to fit it into unusual things. So, when I think about — it’s not that respect for play just only comes from big kids, but that was where I had to really challenge myself to be like, if I just throw myself into playing with you, and as you play and as you give me your ideas, I’m also giving you my ideas as a play partner, and if I have an agenda, it’s a distant one and one that I’ve translated into kid language.
And so, at no time was I ever like, “Write that again. You didn’t write that right. You didn’t write that small enough or neat enough,” or anything like that. But I would be like, “Shoot, I’m super sorry. I cut the trophy out really tiny. Do you even think you’re gonna be able to write Best Frog Wizard on this really tiny trophy?” And he would be like, “I can give it a try. If I slow down then I can probably write it small enough.” And I would be like, “Yeah, I bet you’re right. Slowing it down does help you write small enough,” and it was just the accumulation of a million little iterations of that. And then, but then he was going home and making up frog stuff and then bringing it back. Like, he would come ready on Wednesday and be like, “I was thinking about the frogs, so I made the frogs these Legos. And then, the Legos have this thing and the,” you know.
And so, if I had been assigning him homework, he was a sweet kid, he might’ve done it begrudgingly or if I had got his parents involved or been like he has to, or whatever. Somebody might have forced him to do handwriting practice or whatever, there wouldn’t have been any love or delight or joy in it. But I didn’t have to assign him homework ’cause he was going home and making up stuff with his Legos so that he could bring them back for the frogs. And so, you know, I held the play as my center of everything that I was doing. And since play is the default, the center of childhood and of what kids do by default — if you leave them alone and don’t make ’em do something else, they start playing with something. And so, in his own free time, because I translated the adult concerns about handwriting down into play, then they spilled into what he would do on his own time.
Meg:
I love this. I’ve heard you make a similar point before in your work, and I think it is very salient because the concern people come with is if I do not do 30-minutes of structured goal-oriented work, we will not get enough repetition in. And this other way to look at it of if it is adult-directed and not fun, the amount of repetition you get in is necessarily going to be limited to the times adults are forcing them to do it. And you have just example after example after example of you’ve translated this skill into something meaningful in their play and now they’re practicing it because play is what they actually want to do. I love that.
Mick:
Yeah. I would argue if you do it for 30-minutes of adult-directed and the kid loves you with all their heart and is the most magical, most compliant child you’ve ever met, and you get them to perfectly practice their handwriting repetitions for 30-minutes, that you still don’t get enough repetitions in because 30-minutes is never gonna be enough time.
Meg:
Yeah. I think the kids you’re really capturing to who are so often lost are kids who have a PDA profile, or even who aren’t PDA, but are fairly demand avoidant, who are, to whatever degree, threatened by adult demands. I think you’re creating a lot of safety for those kids to be able to join in and try something.
Mick:
Yes. I now, on my new caseload, I have practically all of the PDA children because people knew about my work and were like, “Oh, this sounds like it might resonate with my kid.” But even before I, even before I really had a great grasp on what PDA was, even before I knew that as a label for any of the kids on my caseload, I still think that it’s like the thing where accommodations that support neurodivergent kids are also probably decent accommodations for neurotypical kids too. Like, classrooms could and should look more like that anyway, it’s just that the neurotypical kids might not be drowning as fast or as hard as the neurodivergent kids are.
I feel like PDA is another tier of that where it’s like the stuff that supports PDA children to even be able to breathe, to even be able to participate at all, to even be able to do anything, are also still good supports for just like literally the normal development of independence and power and autonomy. And as children age and grow up and want more of that and want to be autonomous beings because they’re humans and humans typically want autonomy, it’s just that it’s like not quite life or death, but the feeling I’m feeling is it feels like it’s life or death for a PDA kid and it doesn’t feel that way for some other kid, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still beneficial to have that autonomy to be practicing that, you know, how to direct my life type of thing.
Meg:
Yeah. Okay, your third value was letting kids be kids or Respect for Kids 2.0. What concretely does that look like in work?
Mick:
Yes. So, I think I used the word ‘translate’ a lot because that’s the way that it feels in my head, or the way that I conceptualize it is like if I sit in this IEP meeting with these adults and they’ve got all these adult concerns and, “The kid can’t do this, and the kid can’t do this,” then one thing that I could do is go out of the room and go to the kid and be like, you know, “So, we need to work on your handwriting, and we’re gonna do that this way, and it’s gonna be with this handwriting practice, and I’m gonna show you the right way to do it.” And the kid’s like, “That doesn’t feel important.” And they’re like, “Well, and but it is really important to be able to write stuff in your life. And, you know, you may not feel like it’s important ’cause you’re a kid, but I’m an adult and I know more things and, like, it is important.”
And I don’t mean going to just, like, telling a kid, “We all think you’re terrible at this.” I don’t mean that people are rude or mean or anything like that, but it’s expecting the kid to be able to step into the adult world of like, “Okay, well. I’m falling short in this way, so I gotta work on it. So, I gotta practice more and stuff’s just gonna be harder for me than it is for other kids. But I have my own strengths too, and also weaknesses and I always gotta be working on a goal,” and all of these types of things.
And instead, I’m trying to be like, this feels like it’s a room for play. Well, I mean, it is a room for play. That this is just a place where we are together. And the things that you’re interested in, I’m gonna follow your interest. And as I’m following your interest, I’m gonna have stuff that I model or suggestions that I make, but they’re not gonna feel like contrived suggestions to try to trick you into doing handwriting when you really don’t want to, but rather because I actually think that I actually personally derive joy from writing — I say to the people who like my Facebook page on which I routinely write a thousand word essays every day of my life. So, yeah, you’re like, wow, shocker.
But I’m aware that I’m talking to a kid who doesn’t derive joy from writing, who sees writing as this horrible thing that’s foisted on them by adults or at very, at least, if not horrible, maybe just meaningless; this thing that you have to do because adults say so. And I’m like, oh, there’s joy missing here. How can I show you joy because I think that it’s lovely and wonderful, and I want you to have joy in your life? Not because I’m, like, I wanna trick you into being able to get these skills so that you can do good essays and go to college or whatever.
That’s not, you know, I’m coming at this from an angle where I have, I guess, maybe in some ways zoomed out really far. And I’m like, how can this be a gateway to living a weller and better life in your life? And that might be trying to un-scare you about handwriting, or that might be trying to show you accommodations of a way to make it easier. And I’ve used handwriting a lot in this talk so far as an example, but this also relates to, like, sensory stuff, this also relates to self-care stuff. It’s not, “Oh, well, your body processes sensory information in a way that’s different from everybody else. So, everything’s always gonna be hard,” but like, how can I help you figure out how to live well in your body? How can I help you figure out what kinds of things you’re gonna choose when you want to be more comfortable?
Because everybody is constantly choosing the thing that makes them more comfortable all day long, because nobody gets up in the morning and is like, “I think I’ll drink the grossest brand of coffee from my least favorite mug, and I’ll stir it with the spoon that feels too big, and then I’ll drive to work in silence, and I’ll park uncomfortably far away, and walk in a bad posture into my room, and then sit in the office chair that I hate.” No! Everybody’s constantly choosing the things all day long that keep them feeling good. But when kids try to make choices that keep them feeling good, they might break some unspoken rule, or they might break some spoken rule, or they might not know something else that, you know, some other way that it’s inconveniencing or hurting somebody else, or they might just be doing it in a childish or an immature way.
And so, I’m trying to be like recapturing like, hey, the stuff you’re doing makes sense. The stuff you wanna do with your body makes sense. And in a free room of exploring whatever play you want to, then I’m gonna follow your lead as you delve into whatever it feels like makes sense in your own body. And then, I’m gonna give you some cool little tidbits of information about how that makes sense, and why it makes sense, and what it is that you might be doing as you do that. Did you know that some people really going upside down? And also some people, it makes them feel sick? How do you feel like that feels for you? Oh, yeah, it makes me feel sick. I’m not gonna do that. I would love to watch you do that, but I’m not gonna do that, you know?
And just, I’m not like sitting down and doing a big lecture, I’m just like sharing this cool — so that’s why I say ‘translating’ because it feels like I’m taking this swirling word cloud of thoughts that’s in my head that’s like these goals, and this teacher thinks this, and you struggle with this, and in this area then you have a strength, but then in this area you get so overwhelmed that you shutdown, or meltdown, or whatever it is. And I’m taking all of these things that are in my head at this time, and then I’m just like really, really thoughtfully saying it in like eight words because otherwise I’ll lose their attention, or it’s gonna start to feel like a grownup lecture. And so, that’s my Respect for Kids 2.0 is how do I translate all of this into kid world without having to make you be an adult before you have to.
Meg:
That’s so important. I feel like we often talk about this trajectory where kids aren’t listened to when they say ‘No’, kids aren’t listened to when they ask for what they need, they’re not listened to. They’re not listened to, they’re not listened to, and then we say, “Okay, go out into the world and advocate for yourself!” And it doesn’t work like that because they can’t even feel into themselves anymore when they’ve never had the chance to. So, I really appreciate how you said you’re coming really zoomed out. The most important thing in the world is not that your therapy note for today shows they have made progress since last week, right? The most important thing might not even be that they meet that goal that you wrote. And I understand there’s logistics and reimbursement and all of these things that we have to make important in their own grownup ways, but I even sometimes zoom out when I’m looking at my own kids and things that they might be good at or things that they might be less good at. And I think the world that we live in right now, which is different than the world we grew up in, and the world that these kids are in when they’re adults is gonna be different.
Mick:
Yeah, I don’t know what world you will inherit.
Meg:
We don’t, right? Like, we’re in ecological collapse, in late stage capitalism, and things are gonna be different, and I’m not sure that we need high-level achievers as much as we need kids who can find themselves, who can feel inside of themselves, who can be emotionally and physically present in spaces, who can advocate for what they need and support others when they do the same. I think that might be a much more profound skill for this generation than simply achieving.
Mick:
Right. Yes. Yeah. If I was going to — I get a little bit hopeless if I start trying to make actual predictions about the actual world. So, if I’m doing it with trying to protect my own mental health, then I think of it in like a sci-fi way. Like, okay, I’m gonna need, no matter which, like, Star Trek or Star Wars planet you go to, I’m gonna need you to be able to be okay there because I don’t know which one of them the future’s going to look like. And so, I need a kid who can know how to take care of themselves. I don’t mean like in like a survival sense. I mean like know how to listen to what their body needs and figure out how to meet those needs, whether that’s who to ask, or what resources to get, or what to whatever, and be able to articulate those needs and, all those kinds of things because I don’t know which Star Wars planet you’re going to. And so, you gotta know who to ask when you get there and what to do with the stuff that you have. I know that sounds silly and I don’t want it to sound like I’m being flippant about anything about the real world, or making light of anybody’s situation, but that’s the way that I think about it when I’m trying to think about it, and I’m also trying not to fall into emotional about the potentialities of the future world.
Meg:
Yeah, no, I think dystopian things especially are really useful for looking more clearly at your world. And then, if we also, like, zoom in at the same time, I’ll never forget on the podcast when I interviewed Winnie Dunn and she said, with her eyes full of tears and her body full of emotions, she said, “The minutes we spend in a therapy session with a child are also the minutes of that child’s life.”
Mick:
Yeah.
Meg:
And you are creating an opportunity for them to be more fully themselves, to move closer to joy and authenticity and the things that, you know, if you do deathbed analysis, right, if they’re gonna look back on their life, they’re not gonna say, “My God, I wish I had written on the line.” And they’re also not gonna say, “I wish I had spent less time in joy.” So, I think it’s really, really important. And I love — I think it’s telling, just the conversation that you talking about your values led us to, right? It led us here, so that’s really profound. You mentioned a couple of things. One is that you have kids who come in who maybe don’t expect to have any agency. And so, they kind of come in and fight. And then, you mentioned this other group of kids that comes in and they just have no ideation ’cause there hasn’t been space for that in their life.
I just wanna mention that we have a recording that’s already done that is free that folks can go access. It’s at learnplaythrive.com/share, where you talk about what you bring in your bag to inspire play, and what ideas you can pull out of your back pocket if there isn’t anything coming up that still fits into this framework. So, people can go there if they need those ideas. But I just wanna ask you now if you can give us a few examples of things that have emerged for you during child-led sessions that felt memorable.
Mick:
Yeah. So, I mean, part of the fun is that it’s almost like Bluey where any story that I tell is going to sound memorable because I told it as a story. And also, it’s literally every kid, every kid who plays every way, I could tell in a story in a way that would sound like — so, I said it’s like a Bluey episode because the episode will actually just be about kids pretending to go to the store, but then it’s like this, like, gorgeous, magical, with a soundtrack. And it’s like, this is why I love Bluey so much ‘cause it’s a love letter to play. But so, some really memorable ones, Frog Kingdoms is really hard to beat. That was a big one for that whole year. I have had some really cool sessions with kids where we do things like drawing and coloring in unusual ways. Like, I taped big sheets of paper to the bottom of the swing so that we could lay underneath it and color up like Michelangelo coloring on the Sistine Chapel. I guess he didn’t really color, but you know what I mean. Michelangelo’s rolling over in his grave somewhere. But coloring up and then the swing’s, like, swinging out of the way and moving and stuff. So, we’re like doing all of this, you know, it’s shoulder stabilization and you’re writing and drawing in a unique way. I’ve had a typewriter that I’ve carried around with me to sessions and kids just love to type on a typewriter because it’s so concrete. It prints right out immediately. It’s printing out as you’re doing it. There’s no removal of yourself from this screen space like there is with digital stuff. And label makers can do that too, which is fun.
And so, let’s see, I had a time when I had, I just put a big kiddie pool in the room and I just put — it was shortly before we were moving, so I just had all the weird little toiletries and stuff that you don’t use the last little bit of, ’cause you don’t, it turns out you didn’t really like that scent or whatever. So, I just had all of these leftover toiletries, and leftover spices, and my mortar and pestle, and a kiddie pool. Sat down with a towels on the floor around it, and then we just made potions and then we had rea stained paper, like, to make it look old where it’s crumpled and it has tea on it. And then, we wrote down like the wizard potions and rolled them up and made a scroll. And then, we hid the scrolls so that nobody else would find them. And then, I had to clean them up.
But there’s one where we ran around being pirates and that was one that I did write on my page. And so, it sounds like a big, beautiful, lovely post. And it’s easier for me to remember the ones that I wrote. One of the things that is, I think, really hard for grownups to remember is that — I don’t even know how to word it exactly. ‘Cause the words I want to use are play doesn’t have to make sense or play doesn’t have to be logical, but even that doesn’t fully capture what it is that I mean. But so, just recently, like, a week ago, and I’m probably gonna end up writing a post about this, I was in a session with a kid. And so, there was an obstacle course and he was racing through the obstacle course. And while he raced through the obstacle course, I had to, dictated by him, I had to throw rings onto traffic cones and try to get the rings to go on the traffic cones, like a ring toss. And then, also, time him in the obstacle course. And then, I would record his time and my rings. And we had a scoreboard and it had both. And then, we would roll a big dice that has 12 sides and then whatever number it got, add it to his time — or no, subtract it from his time, but add it to my rings. And none of it made any sense. Like, it’s hard for me to describe because none of it made any sense. There was only five rings, and so we would roll a 12 and then he would be like, wow, that means you got six out of five. And I would be like, does it, though? Okay, this is not a math class. Like, we’re not, none of this makes any sense. And then, he would finish the obstacle course in seven seconds and then be like, “So, and then now it’s seven minus 12. So, that’s less than one.” And I’m like, “That sure is.” And then, he’d be like, “I ran this race in less than one second.” And I’m like, “Did you though? Like, that’s not even possible.” But none of that matters, ‘cause I’m not teaching a math class. The stuff I’m writing down and the stuff he’s writing down, the OT element of it is we’re writing; the life element of it is writing is joy and delight, and when you write things down, it leaves a record and it leaves a mark and then you can reference it later and see which score was your fastest. And so, there’s a reason to it. There’s an element to it that has reason. And then, there’s also this whole sensory component of it ‘cause I was like giving the little comments that I always do about the obstacle course that he was running. And like, you know, “You love being in tight spaces. You’ve got five tunnels in this thing and you’re going through all the tunnels each time.” And he’s like, “I do love being in tight spaces.” And I’m like, “I think some people love that because it makes them feel like being a baby and being held,” and he’s like, “Ooh. It’s like being a baby and being held.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s why some people love tight spaces.” And then, he’s got little fact about his brain from now on, forever, forever from now on, whether he’s mad or sad or happy or playing or whatever, he can be in a tight space and be like, oh, yeah, people love this ’cause it’s like a baby. And is that the whole entire description of all proprioceptive sensory information I could ever teach someone? No. It’s distilled into eight words ‘cause he’s a kid and I have to distill it super far. But I just, if you talk to me on a Monday, I would probably have stories about you from that Monday, and if you talk to me on a Tuesday, I would have stories for you from that Tuesday. And so, it’s just like everything I ever do comes out with memorable stories. It’s just whether I write ’em down or not.
Meg:
I love that. And the thing that I was really noting while you were talking is how much you were smiling because the time you’re spending in these sessions, it’s your life too, right? And we have so many therapists who are bored, and stressed, and overwhelmed, and you are finding joy together with that child, which both builds security in the relationship because you are delighting in them, which is what makes kids feel secure in relationship when they feel us delight in them. And you’re also getting to enjoy your life, which matters too, for as much as time as we spend working. Unfortunately, we don’t all have as much access to play and creativity and ideation. So, in some ways I think it’s easy to hear you talk and go, “Oh, man, that’s the OT I thought I was gonna be,” and it’s hard. I’m just curious, for common humanity’s sake, what are some things that you’re still learning or that you struggle with in your practice?
Mick:
That’s a really great question. I mentioned that I had like that theme that one year about, you know, big kids play too, and I had other themes for myself before that as well from just straight up when I started being like, okay, I’m going to just try to even do play-based therapy, that was one year. And then, I was trying to do more with, like, process art instead of product art, just like exploring the process of art materials instead of being like, there’s a set craft and we’re gonna do it. And so, that was what I did one year. And now that you mention it, I don’t really have a theme for this year, which is partially because I’m adjusting a lot to a new system now that I live in Australia and a lot of my effort is going towards, like, okay, how do I do this thing that I used to know how to do in the United States way, but now I need to do it in a different way. Which it’s not like it’s that different, it’s just all the small little minutia. The kids are the same; kids are kids. But I feel like part of what I’m really working on is with like different limitations, like there’s — and I mean they’re externally imposed limitations because there’s different kinds of ways that the healthcare works here. And I’m not gonna go off on a tangent, but some kids I can see practically indefinitely. And then, other kids, I have a very limited amount of time that I can work with them. And so, one of the things that I’m working on is how to find something of a middle ground space where I can both be appropriately child-led, but maybe either be distilling what I’m doing into information I can give the parent, or distilling what I’m doing into information that I can give the kid a little bit faster than I would usually try to give it to kids in a very — we have no deadline, so when we do have a deadline, then what do I do? Because I can’t just only just play Play-Doh with you and give you nothing else out of that for five sessions and then never see you again.
And so, some of what I’m doing is that. Some of what I’m doing is always just the, like, kids will just always have new interests and a lot of kids are interested in scary things and I really was super sheltered my own whole childhood and then did not really get into scary things as an adult. But so, I’m figuring out how to have scary things be a part of our play in a way that feels authentic enough to me that it does not bother me or anything, but also that I can wholly engage in and not just be like, “Oh, okay, well this is something you like and I don’t really care.” But so, like, figuring out where to find the in-between that is where it’s at. I am a person, and so, like, my needs matter too, which is something that I say a lot in my work, both to parents and to therapists and to teachers and to everybody.
And then, I would say that the other thing that I’m working on primarily is figuring out how to make stuff more academic. Like, the bridge between the fully child-led, fully just, you know, you can do whatever and I’m working one-on-one with you; and the struggle that a lot of teachers have in a classroom setting where even if they wanted to do that, they can’t. And so, finding ways to bridge in between those that feel authentic to both sides and feel like they are actually practical and supportive for teachers instead of just being like, well, if everybody was just one-on-one with one kid all the time and they could just play all the time, then that would be great. But good luck with your life, like, you know? So, still trying to work on that.
Meg:
What was really instructive to me was when you looked at the spots where you felt like you could grow, how much curiosity you hold those with. I didn’t realize that your themes for the year, it wasn’t what you were most excited about or what you were passionate about necessarily. It was somewhat something that you hadn’t yet figured out that you were trying to grow into. And I love that. And I love how you’re saying, oh, I see this other area. How can I grow into this in a way that is genuinely joyful for me, and authentic, and meets the needs of everybody involved? I think, as a process, that’s really instructive for all of us in the places that we feel stuck in our work, to be able to really openly and with a lot of compassion for ourselves look right at it, and then play. What does it look like? What can I try? How did it go? Where did it take me?
Mick:
Right. I just spent so much effort setting up a ghost hunting session for a kid who was super, super skeptical about OT and super, super skeptical about being there. And he had another therapist, and I wasn’t the other therapist, I was replacing the other therapist, and he didn’t even really want that. And he was grumpy about meeting me for a lot of reasons and thought that my room was boring and I was like, “Well, just, what would you be doing if you were at home? Tell me about it.” And he was like, “Well, watching YouTube videos about ghost hunting.” And then, he info dumped at me for ages about ghost hunting equipment. And so, I was writing down everything that he was saying ’cause I didn’t know what else to do. So, I was writing it down and he was like, “So, if you’re really gonna buy it, then you need to buy this and you need to buy this.” And I’m like, well, I don’t have hundreds of dollars. So, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to buy it, but I’m at least gonna write down what you’re saying so I can research it more. And he was like, yeah, okay. And so, I set up this whole ghost hunting themed session, which obviously he could come in and interact with stuff or not, but I set up this cool, we had this laser projector and it had these green lasers, and then I set up these spooky lights, and I have a typewriter. So, I left a spooky message on the typewriter and I printed out some stuff that he had talked about. And he walked in and he said, “Oh, change a plan. I’m not into ghost hunting anymore.” [Laughs] I was like, yeah, that’s how it goes, isn’t it?
Meg:
Oh, my gosh. What a story. Yeah, I was thinking about I like to learn the thing and play the game and get into it. And in my own parenting, I just, I haven’t had the time or energy or interest to figure out Minecraft. And my kids love Minecraft, but the way it’s working for me is just to play the fool. Be like, “Yeah, I don’t even know how to build a base,” right? And let them be the experts, and go from there. ‘Cause it really wouldn’t be authentic for me to be like, “Wow, this is so interesting. Let me play it together with you.” I actually don’t want to, I’ll play Mario Kart, but —
Mick:
Yeah. I have one Minecraft story, which always brings the house down with children, which is a true story, which is, you know, I’ve only ever even played Minecraft one time, and I played it for 45-minutes, and all I did was I dug a big hole and a chicken fell in it. And they always lose their minds, and that’s sufficient.
Meg:
Yeah, it’s really good leveling though, especially for your kids who are pediatrics, like, you’re bringing them up by bringing yourself down, like, “Look how bad I did at this.” It’s great. Okay. I wanna talk a little bit more about your online continuing education course, ‘Here to Play’. It is so much fun. It is so joyful, and it is so, so, so impactful, but also practical and easy to apply. It’s things that people can take and use to bring more of that joy and authenticity and respect for play and respect for kids to their work without letting go of what their job is; in fact, moving closer toward it. Can you walk us through what all is covered in ‘Here to Play’?
Mick:
Yes. I go through really, like, definitions of play and how it develops across the lifespan, the things that it’s doing in your brain and your body, which is so broad ’cause it’s like everything, but some real concrete areas that help you narrow it down into the language about specifically what it is that you could be. So, there, I think, there’s eight areas that you could be using play to move in that direction, whether it’s like toward better physical outcomes like handwriting or gross motor skills or sensory related outcomes, like, knowing more about your body and the things that your body needs, or autonomy outcomes for a kid who is really demand avoidant or is really looking for autonomy in their life, or independence outcomes, whether that’s with ADLs or with something else. And so, there’s these eight different areas that we can use play as like a compass to move in those areas.
And then, there’s a whole entire module about the whole administrative documentation, goal writing, defending yourself to insurance, defending yourself to teachers, defending yourself to parents. Like, all of that side, because I know that’s everybody’s biggest worry is, well, I love this ideologically, but how the heck am I supposed to do it practically? And I don’t want the course to just be like ‘Here’s a bunch of ideology where I just tell you all the things that I think are nice and would sound good in a perfect world’. Like, it’s literally, it’s — I’m still practicing. I practice right now. I’ve been in practice for years, so it’s just a million examples about me, and literal things that I’ve done, and the kids that I’ve worked with, and the teachers and parents, and things that I’ve written, and people who I’ve talked to just over and over. So, I want it to be very, very practical.
And then, it ends with perhaps the most practical, which is literally, like, what do I put in a room, and then go in the room with the kid? And then, what do we do with the stuff in the room? Like, actual play ideas and the way that I would set up different — what’s the word I’m trying to think of? If I had a big space, if I had a little space, if I have a mobile space, if I have to be able to stick everything in one backpack, I go through different — I’ve done all of those things. And so, I go through different, you know, this is my core five things I would bring in. And then, okay, if I had more space, I would also add this. And if I had more space, I would also add this. And so, you can really adapt it to whichever space or setting that you are in. I didn’t want it to just be like ‘Look at me and how cool my setup is’. I want it to be able to be accessible for anybody.
Meg:
And how do you hope that OT practitioners will feel after they complete ‘Here to Play’?
Mick:
Like, energized, and joyful, and you like your job because you probably started it because you liked it or you thought you would like it. But I know so many people who feel exhausted and super discouraged. And I really love my job and I love what I do, and I think that it’s important. And I think that there’s so many of us, and I want everybody to feel that way and feel confident in feeling that way. Not just, like, when I — so, I even found Learn Play Thrive as an existent thing when I was a really, really new practitioner and I was, like, frantically Googling, like, neuro-affirming CEUs because I was super, super helpless and I was like, surely somebody has thought of any of this before because I don’t know what I’m doing.
And I’m just, it feels like I’m just making stuff up and then hoping that it works, and then making more stuff up and then hoping that it works, and trial and erroring my way through this. And so, I really didn’t feel like OT school gave me a ton about pediatrics or anything about neuro-affirming anything. And so, I just felt like I have this intuitive feeling about how OT ought to be, and what I wanted OT to be, and what I hope in the world, but I don’t know if that exists or is what anybody’s doing or how to do it. And so, I felt like I fumbled my way through for a while. And what I want, really, is to be able to go back in time and hand myself my own course and be like, “Here you go, do this. You’re gonna feel this way in eight years,” you know, “You’re gonna feel like you’ve got your feet under you, and you can super confidently spout out whatever, and explain whatever you’re doing, and defend yourself in writing or out loud. And also, all of the stuff that you loved forever about the concept of getting to grow up and play with children for your whole entire life is actually true. So, good news.” And that’s what I want you to walk away from it feeling like.
Meg:
It’s such a gift, really, and I think so many of us need that. So grateful to you, Mick, for putting that together. What are you working on now and where can we find you online?
Mick:
Publicly, I am working on literally just having the energy to write Facebook posts ever, so it’s been a real adjustment moving. And I’m hoping to get to bring out some big projects because every time that I start to work on one big project, my brain helpfully supplies me with four new ones. And so, I’m just juggling a million things in the background. And you can find me on occuplaytional.com. That’s like a backlog of stuff. It’s not updated very frequently, but it’s a solid backlog if you want to search for a particular topic or look at something that is tagged or categorized and then look at all the things that I’ve ever written about it, like fine motor stuff, or sensory, or behavior, or whatever. On Facebook, there’s always new stuff. I’m always posting stuff. Right now, I’m just taking a picture of something I do during the day and writing a little post about it because in the past I’ve had these big extensive themes planned out and stuff shared; instead, I’m just really stripping it down to ‘Here’s something I did today’. And then, I am secretly in the background working on a few books that I’m really excited about.
My favorite thing to info dump to anybody who will accidentally stumble into making me think that they want to listen right now is about proprioceptive sensory input and how it has to do with emotional regulation and how powerful it is. And so, that’s one that I’m working on. And then, another that I’m working on is adapting a hundred ways to do hard things, which is both a post and a lecture that I’ve done in the past and I think it would be a really, really helpful book for people. I keep sending iterations of it to clients who I’m literally working with now to try to help support with ways to alter, adapt, and accommodate ADLs and IADLs and just anything that it’s feeling like, ‘Shoot, there’s gotta be a different way to do this ‘cause the way that we’re doing this right now is really hard, or my kid absolutely can’t do it, or I absolutely can’t do it’, or whatever it is, a framework for looking at that and OT-fying it. The thing that we’re all good at, but that the rest of the world comes to us for and gets that support for.
Meg:
So cool. We will link to everything, including your website and your social media where people can follow along with your new projects on the show notes and people can find’Here to Play’ at learnplaythrive.com/play. Thank you so much, Mick.
Mick:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I always love the work that you guys are doing. I feel like we are of the same mind and heart, and I love being a part of it.
[Ending note]
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