Jacintha Field: Play Therapy and Regulating Kids in Divorce

A child comes apart over an ice cream, and the adult concludes the child is being ridiculous. Jacintha Field runs the tape back: they were rushed out the door before they had disconnected from you, a teacher shamed them, a friend dropped them at recess, they forgot their homework, and by five o'clock they were done. It was never about the ice cream.

Our guest this episode joins from Melbourne, where it is already tomorrow and the middle of winter. Jacintha Field, known to the children in her practice as Jay, is a family and child counsellor, an art therapist, a trained play therapist, and a kids' yoga teacher, and the founder of Happy Souls Kids. She spent 15 years in a domestically violent relationship, separated, and has co-parented since, including through her son's own aggression, which she names as a trigger for her rather than pretending otherwise. She works with children and, increasingly, with their parents.

Jay lays out self-regulation and dysregulation in plain terms, and why so many parents find a meltdown unbearable: they were told to harden up as children and never learned to sit in a feeling, so holding space for someone else's is unfamiliar work. She covers healthy ways to move anger through a body, for adults and children both, then explains play therapy: the child chooses the modality, whether that is the sand tray, slime, bubbles, or hide and seek, and the therapist reads what the play is saying. Control runs underneath all of it. Children are told what to do at school, at home, and by their friends, and a separation removes what little is left, so she looks for ways to hand some back, including meeting her son at the beach after every handover.

The practical core is aggression. Rather than telling a child to stop, she validates the feeling, states a boundary out loud, and points the anger somewhere it can safely land. She is firm that a dysregulated child cannot hear you, so the teaching conversation happens once they are calm, repeatedly, until it lands. If you are sent out of the room, sit outside the door and say you are still there. On co-parenting she talks about doing most of the work by the other parent's choice, surrendering to what she cannot control while holding real boundaries where safety is involved, and using the weeks without her son to rebuild herself so she is solid when he comes back. She closes on going into your child's world rather than waiting for them to come into yours, gaming included.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Co-regulation: why your child's nervous system takes its reading from yours
• Self-regulation versus dysregulation, and why meltdowns are hard for parents to sit with
• What play therapy actually is, and why the child picks the activity
• Why control is the thing a separation takes, and how to hand some back
• Aggression: validating the feeling, stating a body boundary, giving the anger a place to go
• Why a dysregulated child cannot hear you, and when to have the conversation instead
• Going into your child's world, gaming included, rather than waiting for them to enter yours
• Co-parenting: surrendering to what happens in the other house without giving up your boundaries

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Co-regulation, and why your calm sets theirs
3:00 Self-regulation, dysregulation, and moving anger through the body
6:00 What play therapy is, and why the child picks
9:00 Control: what a separation takes, and how to give some back
11:00 Does age matter for play therapy?
13:00 Undivided time, on their terms
15:00 One present parent, and what you cannot control
18:00 Aggression: validating the feeling, holding the boundary
23:00 Co-parenting, surrender, and the work you do in the off weeks
28:00 The ice cream that was never about the ice cream

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Jacintha Field at Happy Souls Kids: https://happysoulskids.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.