“How does Play Therapy help my child?”

The benefits of play therapy include:

• Meeting children where they are developmentally, allowing them to process emotions without needing abstract thinking.
• Provides children an opportunity to act out feelings and experiences they can’t express with words.
• Bridging the gap between their experiences and their understanding.
• Provides children the opportunity for problem-solving, insight, and mastering new skills.
• Encourages autonomy and independence.
• Helps kids learn social and relational skills.

How can just playing with my child heal serious, real behavior problems and emotional issues?

Play Therapy fosters an understanding of emotional well-being, addresses challenging emotions, encourages healthy expression of desires, enhances decision-making skills and executive functioning, promotes self-determination, boosts self-esteem, nurtures self-confidence, and fosters self-respect. It exemplifies self-acceptance, reduces self-criticism, helps children learn to set boundaries, guides children in viewing themselves positively, processes traumas and stressful experiences, instills responsibility and perseverance, and encourages children to engage in therapy. By creating a space filled with kindness in the Playroom, children learn from this example and develop a positive attitude of kindness and generosity towards themselves. These aspects significantly elevate a child’s happiness, leading to the resolution of most behavioral and emotional issues within a few months.

Play Therapy develops the power of decision making.
Encouraging children to hone their decision-making abilities is crucial as they grow. In the Playroom, instead of giving directions, I allow the child to make their own choices, showing great respect for their decisions. This process is vital for a child’s self-determination. Each decision is celebrated with enthusiasm, like saying, “You’ve chosen to place that item there!” or “You’ve decided to play with balloons!” This positive reinforcement creates a sense of joy and accomplishment for the child, linking good feelings with decision-making and encouraging them to make more positive choices. This experience helps children, including those with ADHD, improve their focus and reinforces their sense of self. Empowering children to make decisions successfully fosters self-confidence and enhances their executive functioning.

Developing self-determination

Play Therapy empowers the child by placing them in control. The child leads all the activities, with the adult following their lead. During the weekly Play Therapy session, the child assumes the role of the boss, gaining a thrilling sense of authority over their life and future. This feeling of self-determination is so fulfilling that the child becomes more accepting of parental instructions outside of the session. This approach helps minimize tantrums and defiance, while also reinforcing the child’s sense of importance and worth.

Learning perseverance

In the Playroom, I provide assistance to a child when asked, but otherwise, I encourage them to tackle challenges on their own. This includes tasks like figuring out how to operate a new toy or opening a container of clay. This approach helps the child develop their problem-solving skills. For example, if a toy breaks in the playroom, and the child expresses interest in fixing it, I let her work on it independently, acknowledging her progress or challenges at each step, which boosts her confidence. If she asks for help, I assist in ways that empowers her to ultimately find a way to repair and fix it in a way that is meaningful to her. Once fixed or repaired just the way she wants, she exclaims, “I know how to fix things!” – this experience nurtures genuine self-esteem and trust in herself and her abilities.

Working through stressors

Children often encounter stressors in their lives. While adults may discuss stress or trauma in psychotherapy by delving into the details of the event through talking, processing their emotions and thoughts, and receiving empathy from a therapist, young children express and process their experiences through play. For instance, a child may use play to act out scenes where characters triumph over others if feeling angry. The therapist reflects on each action verbally, similar to validating an adult’s emotions in talk therapy. Symbolic play can help a child express loss or stress, even if the therapist doesn’t explicitly link it to the exact stressor. By reflecting the child’s actions in their own language, the therapist helps the child feel heard, validated, process their stressors, and move forward from them.