What is Play-Based Therapy?
Just as a lion roars, a grizzly hunts for fish, and a chameleon changes colour, children play. Play is as natural to a child as breathing. All around the world, children play. It crosses cultures, environments, and geography because it is a biological necessity. Children might play with different materials, like toys, art supplies, sticks, stones, water, sand, and so forth, but you need not look very far to find a child playing something, in some way. You might wonder then, what does play have to do with therapy? How can “play-based therapy” help my child? Well, play-based therapy helps children by harnessing their natural inclination to play and facilitates an environment that transforms play into therapy. This blog will explain how play-based therapy works for children, so you can feel confident supporting your child’s emotional growth and understand what to expect from this approach.
Play-based therapy is a form of therapy that works for kids. You might have heard of adults going to therapy and talking about their problems to a counsellor. It’s similar with kids, except instead of talking, children play during play-based therapy. In a specially-equipped playroom, there are a wide variety of toys that help children express themselves and process their experiences, just as an adult would do so through talking. What’s important to know here is that children aren’t small adults, so their brains aren’t fully developed. What that means practically is children cannot express themselves verbally the way adults can, such as talking through a problem, finding solutions, and making cognitive sense of their experiences. That’s where toys come in. If play is the child’s “language”, then toys are their “words”.
It can be helpful to think of a toy as a representation of a feeling or experience. For example, let’s say I have a lion toy in my hand. As an adult, I might look at the lion and associate it with the abstract concepts of power, anger, aggression, and perhaps even nurturing. Or, say, I have a tortoise toy in my hand. I might associate it with protection (going into its shell) or the value of moving slowly (tortoise versus the hare). Now, because I have a fully developed brain, I can make these associations between a toy in my hand and concepts it might represent.
Children are different! Their brains aren’t developed, so they don’t look at a toy in their hand and think “hey, this lion is really powerful. I want it to represent me when I play with it. I don’t feel very powerful in my life so it would be nice to pretend to be powerful”. Children don’t think analytically or abstractly like adults do. Instead, a child will unconsciously be drawn to certain toys that help them to express something important through their play. Most times they will not know they are doing this. The good news is that children don’t need to know why they choose certain toys. The act of playing out certain scenes, in the presence of an accepting, attuned adult, is therapeutic in and of itself.
At this point, you might be wondering, “if children use play to process their feelings and experiences, why would a therapist be needed?” There is a big difference between playing individually and playing in the presence of a therapist. To begin, the playroom is specially designed for children. There are very particular toys in the room that help children process a wide variety of experiences. In addition, in the presence of a therapist who is knowledgeable and skilled, play transforms from ‘just play’ to ‘therapeutic play’ because of how the therapist interacts with the child.
I draw from the techniques and principles of Child-Centered Play Therapy. It’s a non-directive type of therapy, which basically means that I don’t tell the child what to do because I trust that, given the opportunity, time, and tools (toys) a child already knows how to heal. This differs from other therapists who might use specific activities to target specific issues the child is experiencing. What we know from research is that non-directive play-based therapy works better for children than directed activities. And we know that it helps children with different issues, such as anxiety, self-esteem, emotional, and behavioural problems (Bratton et al., 2005).
Even though I don’t tell a child what to do in the playroom, I am an active participant. In other words, I use very specific skills to help conduct a session.
The first skill is called ‘reflecting feelings’. What this does is helps a child associate what they’re feeling (e.g., fury, disappointment, betrayal, joy, worry) with words. This can help them build an ability to use words to describe their feelings instead of relying on problem behaviours. For instance, a child can learn to say “I’m furious” or “I’m disappointed” instead of relying on tantrums, pushing a sibling, or screaming to be understood or seen.
I also reflect behaviours and content to the child. This means that I provide commentary on what the child is doing, summarize what they say, and narrate what is happening in the child’s play. This helps the child to feel seen, understood, and to build self-awareness of behaviour.
In addition, another skill is called ‘choice giving’ which goes hand in hand with the skill of ‘limit setting’. In everyday life, children have very little control. When given choices in the playroom, children experience what it feels like to be in control, to be responsible for their actions, and to feel like they can make decisions which influence outcomes. This helps reduce power struggles in other environments because children have a space each week where they are in charge and in control. Limit setting is also used to help children make choices that are appropriate and to understand that their behaviours have consequences.
Lastly, instead of focusing on praise, I use the skill of encouragement to help children develop a sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Praise (i.e. “good job!”) is inherently evaluative, meaning it judges the child’s work and implies that a child can also do a “bad job”. Encouragement is different. It might look like something along the lines of “you worked really hard on that” or “you figured out a solution” or “you kept going even though it was hard”. Encouragement focuses on the child’s effort, not the result, which naturally leads to improved self-esteem.
In summary, non-directive play-based therapy helps children thrive. When children are given the time, tools, and opportunity to process their stuff, they can:
Build emotional vocabulary and self-regulation
Develop self-esteem and confidence
Feel seen, understood, and accepted
Learn problem solving and self-responsibility
And, really, who doesn’t want that for their kids?
References
Bratton, S. C., Ray, D., Rhine, T., & Jones, L. (2005). The efficacy of play therapy with children: A meta-analytic review of treatment outcomes. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 36(4), 376–390. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.36.4.376
