Who would benefit from Play Therapy?

Play therapy is evidence based and has been proven beneficial for children in need of counseling. Typically this is provided for children between 2 and 10. The following is a list of concerns that play can help with.

Difficulties with separation from caregivers.
Low mood.
Anxiety.
Temper tantrums.
Sibling, peer, or social concerns.
Ritualistic behaviors like those seen in OCD or tics.
Anger, aggression, bullying, defiance, or other difficult behaviors.
Identity concerns.
Selective mutism.
Difficulties with adjustments to life changes or stress including divorce, foster care, adoption, grief and loss, and others.

Children who have experienced traumatic experiences would also benefit from play.

Examples of traumatic events that children may experience include the following list.

Single incident traumas (car accident, injury, dog bite).
Relational traumas (abandonment, traumatic loss).
Witnessing something scary (domestic violence, violence, death, accidents).
Experiencing physical, emotional, sexual abuse, or neglect.
Crisis situations (tornado, hurricane, flood).

If your child is experiencing any of the above concerns, your child would likely benefit from a highly researched, evidence-based, effective approach to childhood mental health care, like play therapy. Some older children may also prefer this method. Some children as young as 8 may feel ready for other methods of help.

An assessment by a qualified counselor, can help determine if this is best method of therapy for your child.

Our TeamTherapists at Mindful Way Counseling who provide play therapy include:

Pa Nodalo, LADC (6+), Kim Schultz, LICSW (10+), and Andrea Patten, LICSW (ages 2-7).

Why Play?

You may be wondering why play would be a recommended way to help children overcome their problems. First, to understand why play is an effective means for therapy, it is important to understand the basics of development. When your child was born, your child did not have language to express his or her needs. In order to express needs, babies navigate their emotions and communication within their developmental capacity, which is predominantly non verbal. In infancy, children experience their needs and emotions through physical sensations (hunger, dirty diaper, tired) and infants are soothed and calmed through physical sensations. Remember when you or people you know had to drive a child around in the car in order to fall asleep? The vibrations of the car soothed the infant. So did rocking, holding, feedings, and changing diapers. At this stage your infant was not able to process emotions by talking to you the way adults process their emotions.

Development continues on, and children begin to have additional needs and express themselves in different capacities. Children begin to learn about their feelings and learn simple language. Complex language processing does not truly develop until later in life. So, in order to think about the world, consider complex dynamics, manage emotions, and process their own experiences- children play! This is why we use play to tap into children’s natural tool to process their experiences, feelings, memories, and beliefs.

Play is the child's language

Play is the way that children learn about their world. At first, children explore their environment by playing and being playful. Children learn about textures, objects, relationships between objects all by playing with things around the house. Play is the way that children develop their physical and mental skills, including social skills. Play is also how children understand how things work. Children especially use play as their primary way to express their thoughts and feelings.

“Play Therapy is based upon the fact that play is the child’s natural medium of self expression…It is an opportunity which is given to the child to ‘play out’ his feelings and problems just as in certain types of adult therapy and individual ‘talks out’ his difficulties.”
Virginia Axiline per the association for play therapy website.

So, what is Play Therapy?

The Association for Play Therapy defines Play Therapy as “the systemic use of a theoretical model to establish an interpersonal process wherein trained play therapists use the therapeutic powers of play to help clients prevent or resolve psychosocial difficulties achieve optimal growth and development.”
Association for Play Therapy

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

Counselors who use this method have extensive training to be able to take play from playful to therapeutic. Therefore, it is based on specific theoretical approaches to play to help children work through their emotional, communication, adjustment, and learning related concerns. There are numerous kinds of play therapy approaches. Each approach is structured in distinctly different ways. What they have in common is that they are structured based in theory and grounded in child development and psychology.

The two main theoretical branches include Directive and Non-Directive approaches. Each of these approaches branch off into more varied models of play therapy.

At Mindful Way Counseling our providers offer these specific models:

Experiential Play Therapy which is a non-directive, child-centered, play therapy approach, which includes play where a variety of toys, art, and games are offered to help the child express their concerns, emotions, world view, and experiences.

Sand Tray (directive) and Sand Play (non-directive), where an indoor, small, table top, sand box is used to contain play to express children’s emotions through various metaphors and themes.

But, is game playing really therapy?

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

The following are some ways that game play can be useful to a non-play therapist. Game play may be used as a method to get a child comfortable to engage in talk therapy. Games can be a tool to help the therapist build rapport with the child. Games may even be used for other reaons, like easing anxiety through playful distraction. This may help the child become more comfortable talking about hard topics. Games may be used as a means to reward the child for their hard work in therapy that day. Games may be used as a means to meet the child’s therapeutic goals. Game play definitely has a benefit.

Game play can also be a part of true play therapy! Because play therapy uses theory to establish a therapy process to resolve problems and support growth through the “therapeutic powers of play”, game playing could be a part of true play therapy. Speccifically, game play may be what a child chooses to express themselves through play. Themes likes winning and losing, power and control, depression, helplessness, and more can be expressed in game play. Frustration tolerance and anxiety are most often targeted in directive play therapy models.