HOW PLAY THERAPY UNFOLDS
Play therapy creates a safe space for children to express, heal, and grow through the power of play.
Discover how play therapy empowers children to navigate challenges, build resilience, and find inner strength.
What Happens in Play Therapy?
Play therapy is a specialized therapeutic approach in which trained mental health providers help children ages 3-12 express emotions, confront challenges, and build resilience through play. Due to their concrete stage of development, children struggle to articulate complex feelings or difficult experiences with words alone. They communicate most effectively through the language of play. In a play therapy session, children are invited into a welcoming, child-friendly space filled with intentionally chosen toys and materials to meet their therapeutic needs.
Who Can Benefit from Play Therapy?
Play therapy is effective for children facing a wide range of emotional, behavioral, and developmental challenges including:
Anxiety and OCD: Play therapy offers a developmentally appropriate way for children to understand their worries or fears, and develop brave new skills.
Trauma and Grief: Trauma impacts areas of the brain involved with language and memory, making it especially difficult for children to process upsetting experiences with words. Play therapy provides an effective and developmentally appropriate way for children to heal from traumatic events.
Behavioral and Social Challenges: Play therapy helps children become more responsible for their behavior, learn to express emotions effectively, cultivate empathy for themselves and others, and develop more successful social strategies with peers and family members.
Life’s Stressors: Change can be especially dysregulating for young children. Play therapy helps children navigate emotions related to new or difficult experiences.
The Role of Parents and Caregivers
Parents and caregivers are integral to the play therapy process. Regular communication between the therapist and caregivers helps reinforce the child’s progress at home and provides a consistent approach to behavioral or emotional challenges. Play therapy is most effective when a parent or caregiver is actively involved in the child’s treatment.