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play therapy -- what is it?

Play is young children's work. Through play, children express their feelings, master new skills,
develop social skills, learn problem-solving and coping skills. Therefore, when providing therapy to young children, it is most beneficial to use the medium of play.

A good play therapy room includes art materials, dolls, puppets, a doll house, trucks and cars, household items, books, and games. Therapy is interceded into the child's play and play can reveal many emotional and behavioral themes that are taking place in the child's every day life. For example, in the doll house area, a child may play out a sequence of abuse that occurred in detail. Another child might draw and color vivid scenes of violence that s/he has seen.

The therapist can then identify and work with these themes through play. For example, the young child that acted out an act of abuse in the doll house area can be encouraged to work through the anger, rage, fear, or shame by the therapist taking the part of a supportive role with another doll and leading the child into that directions. Actions can be rewritten so the child can see them in another light.

A child that is drawing bloody pictures can not only express the feelings associated with what happened to him or her, but can also convert the gory scenes into something of beauty. The child can be helped to express feelings and to process what happened in a non-threatening way.

I have found that play helps relax the child and make him or her feel more at home. Rapport is much more quickly gained and the play, even with teenagers, takes some of the stress off of more serious topics and allows therapist and child to converse about these topics as two friends might do while playing checkers.

I keep a guinea pig in my office that tails me from room to room. The children (and adults) are delighted. Hardly a day goes by when a parent doesn't tell me that every time they drive by my office their child cries out "There's Ben's place." (Ben being my guinea pig.)

I also keep plenty of sensory materials around -- squishy toys, sand and rice to dump back and forth in buckets, massagers, feathers, play dough, clay, sand paper, etc. Many (most?) children I see with behavior problems have sensory integration problems as well. Interestingly enough, many of the teens that I see like to play with the younger children's toys as well.

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Revised: 02/13/2008.