Let’s Play!
Shannon White, M.A., LCMHC, RPT
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. | John 3:18
Children live out the reality of their lives through their actions and for most children, this action is through play! Play is a child's language for expressing joy, anxiety, frustration, fear, and above all, the true experiences of their lives. Play therapy, a tool used by therapists to encourage healing through the symbolic meaning and patterns of the child's play, has been proven to help children overcome a wide variety of behavioral symptoms and emotional difficulties.
Play therapy is most appropriate for children between the ages of 3-11 years old. This treatment helps manage and overcome a variety of issues, including ADHD symptoms, bullying, school difficulties, behavioral issues and adjustment disorders due to divorce, grief and loss, etc. Play therapy has proven to be beneficial for many concerns, due to the fact that it accepts the child where they are, while providing a non-threatening environment for children to verbally and physically work out their problems. It also provides free expression through play, which is an essential part of a child's emotional growth. From a developmental stand point, children lack the ability to process things verbally, so they require concrete objects, like toys, to express themselves. Through play therapy, the child is also able to experience a safe, trusting relationship with an adult. If a child has experienced trauma or loss, the supportive relationship a child has with their therapist proves to be one of the most essential parts of the healing journey.
Play therapy can be either directive or non-directive in nature. Directive play therapy is guided by the therapist for the majority of the session and consists of interaction and dialogue with the child. Non-directive play therapy allows the child freedom to explore the play room through free expression of their play. The therapist also provides a safe, supportive environment by simply witnessing the child's play and serving as a safe container for their pain.
I use an eclectic combination of both the directive and non-directive approaches, based on the child's developmental stage and where they are in their therapeutic journey. My experience is that children gain confidence and feel accepted through making their own choices in the play room. However, as the therapeutic process progresses, children also gain healing through the therapist tracking, validating, and encouraging new choices through their play.
Both directive and non-directive approaches are also supported as effective treatments for children by understanding the overall makeup of the human brain. When a child is playing quietly, their imagination is soaring. They are using the right side of the brain to control creative functions in a nonverbal manner, which excels in visual, spatial, perceptual, and intuitive information. Right brain processes happen very quickly and the style of processing is nonlinear and non-sequential - this is where uninhibited, free play is such an important aspect of play therapy. Children are internally feeling their pain, while externally working it out by using tactile expressions. The left brain is associated with verbal, logical, and analytical thinking. It excels in naming and categorizing things, symbolic abstraction, and speech. Talking about the stories that the child has created in session helps them to logically find solutions to the concerns at hand. As a result, both are essential elements of play therapy that help to promote a child's creativity, healing, and understanding of their life experiences.
