Play Therapy
“Toys are children’s words and play is their language”
– Gary Landreth
Play is a child’s natural mode of communication and is essential in a child’s development. Play facilitates the development of social skills, language expression, and emotional regulation and remains important across a person’s lifespan. Children construct their inner and outer worlds through play. Often, more can be deduced by how a child plays than through the words they use, as language is not yet fully developed, and emotions are not easily articulated. Play therapy is a research based and developmentally appropriate healing modality for children between the ages of 2 and 12.
What Is Play Therapy?
The Association for Play Therapy (2014) broadly defines play therapy as the ways in which trained clinicians employ the therapeutic powers of play to help child clients work through and resolve psychological, social, and emotional difficulties in order to achieve optimal growth and development. Play therapy facilitates emotional expression, increases a child’s ability to communicate their thoughts and feelings, reduces problematic behaviors, integrates traumatic experiences, reduces anxiety, and increases a child’s ability to self-regulate.
Play therapy is interactive and relationship based. It facilitates emotional learning and regulation in real time. Play therapy seeks to create integration between the pre-verbal and emotion based parts of the brain with the higher thinking cortex of the developing child. In this way, it helps the child make sense of, name, track, communicate, and respond to their emotional and somatic experience in new ways.
What Play Therapy Can Help With
Play therapy can be extremely beneficial for those who have trouble communicating or expressing themselves verbally. Play therapy can be effective for children who contend with or who have experienced the following:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Aggression
- Social Difficulties
- Shyness
- Fearfulness
- Attachment Issues
- Tantrum Behaviors
- Separation Anxiety
- Spectrum Disorders
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Physical and Emotional Trauma
- Sexual Abuse
What Are The Benefits of Play Therapy
Play therapy offers a myriad of benefits including:
- Emotional expression
- Empowers the child in their therapy process
- Increases emotional and somatic awareness
- Improvement in social skills
- Increases a child’s ability to regulate and contend with distressing emotions
- Increased a child’s ability to connect to themselves and to others
- Increases self-esteem
- Increases coping skills
- Decreases anxiety and depression
- Fosters interoceptive awareness (the ability to know what we are feeling)
- Teaches emotional regulation
How To Get Started
Children can learn to communicate, process their feelings, and build connections through play. They can also learn to overcome obstacles and learn new ways of dealing with emotions. We are here to support you and your child in reaching your goals, finding increased ease, and improving communication and connection.
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