What is play therapy and how can it help?

In simple terms, play therapy is a mode of therapy that helps children explore their feelings and behaviour and enables them to communicate and express themselves through play. Play therapy aims to enable children to acknowledge their feelings in a constructive way and give them strategies for coping with any difficulties that they may face.

Whereas adults might choose spoken language to address and work through a difficult situation children explore and play naturally and so the language of play is a very natural medium for them to work through difficulties. Play therapy can promote emotional and social development, it can foster imagination and creativity, can help in forming and sustaining friendships which encourages confidence and self-esteem which in turn can help with learning and achieving in the classroom. Since it offers a space to explore different strategies for dealing with different situations – trying different ways out - it is also a safe space to make and learn from ‘mistakes.’

Example 1
A child might have difficulties with aggressive or impulsive behaviour in the classroom which makes it difficult to sustain friendships and effectively take part in learning. The play therapy session would be a safe place to explore social themes and get to the bottom of the problem behaviour and to give the child strategies and tools for coping with their feelings of anger and frustration.

Example 2
A child who has difficulty with sharing and turn-taking might through the play therapy sessions find a different way of tolerating having to share toys because of an increased awareness of how it feels to be the other person, to take another persons perspective and might be able to begin to enjoy sharing and playing together in reciprocal friendships. Because the child can play with different roles, try different things out in the sessions without judgement, play therapy can create, explore and assimilate new experiences which can impact positively on a child’s life.