What are the benefits of Play Therapy?

 

Play is essential for children to develop physically, emotionally, cognitively & socially. Play Therapy is a mode of therapy that assists children understand painful, difficult experiences and upsetting feelings. In play therapy, the therapist utilises play to help children express what is troubling them when they do not have the verbal language to express their thoughts and feelings.   In play therapy, toys are like the child’s words and play is the child’s language.   Play therapy builds on the natural way that children learn about themselves and their relationships. It helps the child learn to express themselves, explore and make sense of the world in which they live and resolve any difficult or painful experiences. Play therapy assists children to feel connected, secure and attached.

 

Children and adolescents attending for therapy engage through many play mediums on offer. Activities which facilitate the therapeutic process include working with clay, Mandala, stones, music, drawing, painting, collage, games, construction, puppets, soft toys, books, stories and the use of worksheets.

 

Sand and water trays are central to play therapy. Sand play and water play are non-verbal therapeutic tools, which gives the client the possibility, by means of figures and the arrangement of the sand in the area bounded by the sandbox, to set up a world or pictures corresponding to his or her inner state – a projection of the child’s internal world. In this manner, through free, creative play, unconscious processes are made visible in a three-dimensional form and a pictorial world comparable to the dream experience. Dora Kalff {1991}.