Play Therapy
Play TherapyPlay Therapy
Play therapy is a good intervention approach for working with young children who lack the verbal abilities to describe their difficulties clearly enough to receive support and assistance from counselors. This strategy seems to work with children experiencing a broad range of difficulties.
The play therapist must carefully select toys that will help children to express their thoughts and feelings. The arrangement of the toys and the atmosphere in the play
therapy setting must provide comfort and consistency so that children will feel safe in acting out problem situations and relationships.
Although each approach to play therapy has its own philosophy for the process and the selection of toys, the play therapist uses the play therapy process to help children gain a better understanding of how they view themselves, others, and the world and to learn new attitudes to replace self-defeating attitudes. The play therapist chooses toys designed to facilitate this exploration and to help children learn new ways of interacting with others. Play therapy seems to work best with children who have issues surrounding power and control, children with poor self-concepts and social skills and children who have experienced some kind of trauma.
Children lack the cognitive maturity to benefit from talking through their problems. Nor do adult controlled activities give children the feeling of empowerment they can achieve with the voluntary activity of play. In a play therapy session, the child is the director and rule maker. They create a world they can master, practice social skills, overcome frightening feelings, and symbolically triumph over the upsets and traumas that have stolen their sense of well being.
A trained play therapist understands the metaphorical content of a child’s play, and strives to help the child express their needs and discover solutions in a safe, therapeutic environment. Play is the child’s natural method of learning, developing, and expressing their feelings. Play Therapy offers children the opportunity to use the power of their own natural creativity and imagination to heal and grow.
Play therapy takes place in a playroom, specially designed, decorated, and furnished with the toys and equipment children need to use as tools for the dramatic scenes they direct with the therapist. Parents are important allies in the play therapy process and can do much to support and enhance the work their child does in play therapy sessions. Therapists meet regularly with parents to learn what is happening in the child’s life, to share important observations, and to give suggestions on how parents can support their child’s therapy. Although many childhood upsets are healed without the intervention of therapy, play therapy offers children a natural, safe, and non intrusive method to hasten recovery from common distressing events as well as major traumas.
Parents sometimes believe that seeking therapy for their child would indicate parental failure. Although some children have been traumatized by events within the control of parents, many youngsters can benefit from play therapy that experienced situations over which their...
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