Play Therapy for Children in Twin Cities, MN

Helping Children Thrive: Mental Health Care for Kids

Children are developing at a rapid pace and learning and exploring new things all of the time. This can bring big feelings, confusing changes, and new hurdles to navigate. Child therapy can provide a space to help your child navigate their growing world, process their feelings, build tools and coping strategies, and grow their resilience.

Children come to therapy for a variety of reasons, those could include:

Behavioral and Emotional Concerns

Low mood

Anxiety

Phobias or fears

Temper tantrums

Anger, agression, or defiances

Bullying

Selective mutism

Ritualistic behaviors

Social challenges

Grief & loss

Low frustration tolerance

Behavioral regressions

Life Change, Stress, or Trauma

Major changes

Divorce

Foster care / adoption

Car accidents

Physical injuries

Animal bites

Relational loss

Domestic violence

Community violence

Any type of abuse

Neglect

Natural disasters

A mixed integrative approach

Your child's brain is still growing; a child's language and logic centers are still rapidly under construction. From their earliest days, children naturally use play to explore their environment, understand the world, and process their day-to-day experiences and emotions. Adults can utilize their fully developed brain to combine introspection, logic, and reasoning with language skills, allowing them to tell a therapist exactly what they are feeling and why. Children simply cannot do that yet. They need distinct, tangible outlets to externalize their internal world.
Through a mixed and integrative approach that blends therapy with art, stories, interactive activities, and play we can honor your child's natural language of movement, play, and creativity, to help them process their feelings, learn new information, and practice new skills in an engaging way.

Creative Expression (Art & Drawing)

Use of art, drawing, and music as a powerful alternative for children to express complex feelings. Helps kids communicate when big emotions feel too difficult or overwhelming to put into words.

Bibliotherapy (Therapeutic Reading)

Carefully chosen children’s books, therapeutic stories, and workbooks that match your child’s needs. Helps normalize their struggles, explore deep feelings safely, and learn practical new life skills.

Therapeutic Games & Activities

Use of carefully chosen and structured games, crafts, and shared activities to build attention and focus, to practice impulse control, turn-taking, and improve frustration tolerance in real time.

Somatic & Sensory Tools

Exploring unique sensory needs to help children connect with their internal experiences. Utilizes movement breaks, fidgets, and weighted tools to build a lasting emotional regulation toolbox.

Directive Play

Therapist-led activities and highly structured interventions to target specific client concerns. Uses focused, goal-oriented play spaces to teach new coping behaviors and solve problem patterns.

Non Directive Play

Child-led therapy providing an open space for children to express their world freely through play. The trained play therapist tracks themes and uses reflective responses to foster deep emotional mastery.

The first few sessions

Typically, for children, we do a caregiver intake session to first meet you, get to know your concerns, your child's history, your goals, and anything else you want to share, in privacy andthrough adult conversation.
The second session is typically reserved for the child assessment and rapport building. Your therapist will meet your child, build trust, help them feel comfortable with therapy, and explore their idea of the concerns in a developmentally appropriate way.
After that, your therapist can help map out an individualized care plan and discuss how to measure progress over time.

Are you ready to get help for your child?

We can help!

infant sitting on the floor looking at toys

close up image of adult and child hand in hand

toddler girl sitting on the floor looking at stuffed dolls

What is Play Therapy?

Play therapy blends proven clinical frameworks with the therapeutic powers of play to help children prevent and resolve a variety of difficulties and achieve healthy growth. By meeting children at their natural developmental level through their natural language of play, it serves as the childhood equivalent of adult talk therapy, helping them work through their emotional, communication, adjustment, and learning-related concerns.

PLAY IS THE LANGUAGE, TOYS ARE THE WORDS.

The Association for Play Therapy further states, “child play therapy is a way of being with the child that honors their unique developmental level and looks for ways of helping in the ‘language’ of the child – play.”
– Association for Play Therapy

Is Play Therapy right for your child?

If your child between the ages of 2 and 12 is experiencing one or more of the following signs, play therapy offers an evidence-based, trauma-informed path toward healing and emotional regulation.

Every child develops at their own pace. While play therapy is highly effective for the typical 2-to-12 age range, some children around 9 or 10 years old may begin showing readiness for traditional talk therapy or a mix of both. Conversely, some older pre-teens still respond best to the expressive nature of play. An initial assessment by a qualified counselor will help determine if this is the best approach for your child’s unique needs.

Why Play?

You may be wondering why play would be a recommended way to help children overcome their problems.

The answer is child development.

Your child’s brain is still growing; during the years that play therapy is recommended (ages 2 to 12), a child’s language and logic centers are still rapidly under construction. From their earliest days, children naturally use play to explore their environment, understand the world, and process their day-to-day experiences and emotions.

Adults can utilize a fully developed brain to combine introspection, logic, and reasoning with language skills, allowing them to tell a therapist exactly what they are feeling and why. Children simply cannot do that yet. They need distinct, tangible outlets to externalize their internal world.

By creating a safe, intentional play environment (whether using puppets, drawings, dollhouses, a sand tray world, or other expressive mediums), children can process their feelings and make sense of their experiences without needing adult logic. Through play therapy, children leverage their imagination, creativity, and storytelling to express themselves, role-play real-world challenges, problem-solve, and build lasting emotional skills.

Models of Play Therapy

There are two foundational approaches to play therapy, each offering unique paths toward emotional growth and healing.

DIRECTIVE PLAY

The therapist chooses and leads the activities, utilizing a highly structured plan and targeted interventions to address specific client concerns. While directive play therapy can be very beneficial, it may not work for every situation. Some children may feel pressured or constrained by a highly structured approach.

Examples

Theraplay, Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy, Mutual Storytelling Technique, Bibliotherapy, Structured Art Interventions, Sand Tray

CHILD-CENTERED PLAY

The therapist follows the child’s lead and pace, operating under the underlying belief that the child possesses an innate ability to express their experience through play, which the therapist can then respond to within the play space. Child-centered play therapists are trained to recognize play themes, promote self-control, encourage emotional regulation, and foster mastery through reflective responses and unconditional positive regard.

Examples

Experiential Play Therapy, Filial Therapy, Gestalt Play Therapy, Adlerian Play Therapy, Synergetic Play Therapy, Child-Centered Play Therapy, Sand Play

Is game playing really therapy?

Game playing can be used in therapy for very specific and useful purposes. Whether or not it constitutes true play therapy is a different question, which is addressed below.

The following are some ways that game play can be highly useful to a clinician, even if they aren’t a traditional play therapist. First, introductory games may be used as a comfortable method to engage a child in traditional talk therapy.

Furthermore, games function as an excellent tool to help the therapist build initial rapport. They can even be used to ease situational anxiety through playful distraction, helping the child become more comfortable opening up about difficult topics. Later in a session, game play can serve as a rewarding milestone for a child’s hard work in therapy that day.

Most importantly, game play can also be a vital part of true play therapy! Because play therapy uses clinical theory to establish a therapeutic process, resolving problems and supporting healthy growth through the “therapeutic powers of play,” game playing fits naturally into this framework. Specifically, game play may be exactly what a child chooses to express themselves. Rich themes like winning and losing, power and control, depression, and helplessness can all be expressed during a game. Additionally, critical skills like frustration tolerance and anxiety regulation are frequently targeted through these models in directive play therapy.