Play Therapy

Through play, all children explore themselves, their feelings and their world.  Children enact relationships and situations, which are familiar to them, and explore alternative stories, which they are free to create, with the tools of play.  A child creates their own magical world through play, in which they feel a sense of control, confidence, and an unbounded sense of creativity. Play therapy is based on this understanding of the primary importance of play in children’s emotional development.

Through the use of play in therapy, the child feels a sense of safety and acceptance, and enjoys a shared experience with the therapist. Complex feelings, often experienced by children, are too difficult to express in words.  Through enacting stories in play therapy, the child can communicate with me easily and feel understood and supported in their feelings.

For example, the use of puppets can help a child to tell a story about themselves and their life, without acknowledging that it is really about them, and without telling it directly. The use of a child’s doctor kit can help a child to act out feelings of pain or healing.

The most important element in therapy with children is meeting the child where they are most comfortable, and using this as fertile ground for the development of trust, empathy, and support, for the struggles of growth and change.  Play therapy is a way for me to share the child’s emotional world, and to enter into that world in a way, which feels safest for the child.

In play therapy, I help children to gain mastery over difficult feelings, and to explore, through stories, new options for behavior, which are healthier.  A child might need to enact the same story many times about monsters or fairies or whatever else, in order to feel a sense of mastery over anger, fear, or impulse control.

No amount of intellectual analysis can begin to come close to the power of symbolic play with a therapist.  Whether the child is aware of it or not, the child will naturally choose to act out in play, the most challenging and confusing aspects of their life, and to test out their strengths and creativity.  They do this naturally, intuitively, and without fear. Through empathy with their feelings and stories, I help the child to integrate and own these feelings, which promotes growth, confidence, and behavioral change.