Play therapy
Play therapy is a kind of therapy counseling with playing activities, which helps children overcome their psychological difficulties by themselves and helps them to achieve optimal level of development. Young children often struggle to express their emotions, needs, and thoughts with language, but it can be more easily expressed through play activities. Therefore, play can be children's language to show their state. They can also release stress and have self-confidence by freely playing what they want and getting good words from therapists.
For therapists, they should know about human development, including child development. They also need to know to apply different kinds of playing activities for children. The most important thing for therapists is to have a good relationship with the children.
There are many kinds of play therapy, including psychoanalytic play therapy, children-based play therapy, filial play therapy, cognitive behavioral play therapy, developmental play therapy, Adlerian play therapy, sand play, and group play therapy. Those kinds of play therapy can be used successfully for children between 4 and 6 years old.
Play Therapy Media
Little horse on wheels, Ancient Greek children's toy. From a tomb dating 950–900 BCE, Kerameikos Archaeological Museum, Athens
An individual engaging in sandplay therapy.
Equipment used for sandplay therapy.
An example of adult psychotherapy sand play.
Winnie-The-Pooh, the original "Winnie", possibly Christopher Robin's transitional object
Friedrich Fröbel's wooden Construction kit, 1782–1852 SINA Facsimile
A pile of Lego blocks, of assorted colors and sizes.
An early video game played by two children
A typical Tetris game in play
.jpg)
.jpg)
