Why Would A Therapist Want to Play With My Child?

Children’s behavior can be puzzling for parents as well as therapists. In the world of therapy, assessment and intervention looks very different for children than for adults where talk therapy is the predominant mode of treatment. For children, therapists commonly use play therapy which may include toys, puppets, games, or art in the therapeutic process with children. There are six major reasons for this.

Children have a harder time identifying the abstract emotional states often the focus in therapy. States such as ‘feeling helpless’, ‘being anxious’, ‘feeling overwhelmed’, ‘feeling hopeless’, ‘feeling out of control’, or ‘feeling depressed’ can be hard for children to conceptualize and talk through. Additionally, children often confuse feelings and thus may say they ‘hate’ someone when they are really ‘angry’ with them. Play therapy can be a way to facilitate emotional communication.
People learn from life experiences what to expect from others, and help us understand what is normal or right. Simply put, children do not have breadth of life experiences they may need to sort through a problem. Children from abusive home for instance, may think everyone’s parents are abusive, and not consider the constant fighting in the home as the possible root of their anxiety or sadness. Play therapy can be an effective way to facilitate conversation about healthy family life.
Children cannot always tolerate the internal conflict caused by talking about an issue directly. For instance, they may be able to play out that a monster hurt them, but not be able to talk directly about being abused or molested. They may be able to draw a picture of how much they miss their deceased grandmother, but not be able to sit with their sadness long enough to discuss the topic in the office. These are both examples of how play therapy provides safe and secure means for a child to communicate with a professional therapist.
Children are more likely to act out their internal conflicts in peculiar ways. A child may start fights with their siblings because they are feeling helpless at school from being bullied. Play therapy can give kids a more appropriate means to act out these emotions.
Children lack the impulse control that comes from physical brain development which continues until the age of twenty-five. In short, they often act before they think, which can be improved through the techniques involved in play therapy.
Last but not least, children learn best by doing, practicing, and while having fun, which are all key components of play therapy.

As therapists, what we have learned about children is that they are very good at acting out their feelings and inner conflicts through play. Because of this, children don’t have to understand or even have a name for what they feel. They can show an experienced therapist what they are feeling, and show the influences interfering with their happiness. Play Therapy, therefore, can be thought of as a kind of universal language for children.

Just as children rehearse life by playing house, dressing up, helping dad fix the sink, or playing war, they are driven to play out inner conflicts in repetitive fashion until they are resolved. The class bully, for instance, has a token action figure on the living room floor until the bully stops being a threat at school. The bottom line is that children learn best by hearing, seeing, and doing as they do in play. The role of the therapist is then to help children:

learn new ways of understanding and coping,
build new skills to talk rather than act out,
develop better social skills, and
talk about, reinterpret, and heal from trauma.

So when you walk into a therapist office with your child, consider the limitations, needs, and learning styles of your child. Therapists use playful intervention in therapy because it just so happens to be the most effective tool known. In short, it works.

by Gwen Ames, LCSW 01/09/2011