Endings are woven into the fabric of every relationship. Some come abruptly, some are carefully planned, but all of them carry fragility and lingering echoes of grief. In play therapy, where connection is often built wordlessly through the safety of games, toys, and shared imagination, the process of goodbye can feel especially difficult to navigate.

As I reflect on what endings look like in a therapeutic setting, there is a story I want to share with you:

I spoke with quiet deliberation to the young boy sitting in front of me, reminding him that our time together in the playroom would soon come to an inevitable end.

My graduate internship was drawing to a close, and this was one of our final sessions. I watched his face contort, shifting from confusion to anger to stoic determination. He didn’t speak, but his body spoke for him, methodically knocking over chairs, tossing toys at the wall, and finally barricading himself behind a bookshelf. Without a single word, he was telling me everything.

Back in the waiting room, his mother’s eyes met mine. She sighed softly and said, “Él está muy triste.”

He is very sad.

I now saw my task as modeling for him how to say goodbye. My hope was that he might carry some small piece of that model with him, whether days or decades from now, when life, as it inevitably does for all of us, presents its own goodbyes.

When he returned the following week, we sat quietly, playing Jenga. I told him I knew change could be hard, and that I would miss our time together too. He said nothing in return. But when it was my turn to remove a block, he suddenly paused me, carefully scanned the tower, and pointed to one I should pull. His eyes held mine for just a moment, as if to say, I’ve got you.

His mother had first sought counseling for her son because of his intense emotional outbursts. She was exhausted by how deeply he struggled to regulate himself whenever he won or lost a game.

He was a pendulum, swinging from braggadocious in victory to hostile in defeat. In our earliest sessions, he would often shout, “You suck!” if I missed a ball he threw my way. The games were never just games; they were practice runs for bigger emotions he didn’t yet know how to contain.

But here he was now, seemingly unbothered by winning or losing, thoughtfully surveying the tower so I wouldn’t lose. At that moment, he wasn’t playing to win, he was rooting for me. He was caring for me with the same gentleness I had offered him.

I often tell parents that in play therapy, we are not simply teaching children to behave differently; we are modeling for them how a safe relationship can feel. We tolerate hard emotions. We repair ruptures. We offer consistency that we hope stays with them long after our sessions conclude.

Termination is never easy. Goodbyes are complicated, for both the client and the therapist. But, my best hope for this little boy is that our work together will leave him with a kind of resilience he can draw from in future losses. That he won’t turn to barricades and flipped chairs, but to gentleness, courage, and care, for himself and for others.

In the quiet of that playroom, through the careful pull of a small wooden block, I saw something beautiful take shape: 

A child practicing goodbye.