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Play 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...