PLAY THERAPY

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Children are very different from how they perceive problems, challenges, trauma. The world through the eyes of a child is significantly different from the worldview of adults. Therefore traditional psychotherapy techniques have to be very different especially when working with younger kids in therapy. Smaller children find it difficult to separate themselves from their normal play and the real world - they discover the world through play and can be very concrete in their thoughts and thinking. Fantasy and the reality becomes one world.

To discover the world, playing becomes essential to discover their world, which assist them to learn in a playful manner. Playing also calming them down - it becomes a way to express themselves and to explore the unknown. Play is important for their whole development: motor development, perceptual skills, socialisation, language, cognitive skills and development, and many other skills which they need so much to grow up as well-balanced adults.

Therefore Play Therapy techniques are used to access the world of the child and to transform the world of suffering that a child may experience, and it assists to understand the suffering of such a child. Play therapy is the vehicle for the Psychotherapist to see and experience the world of a child through the eyes of a child. For instance, when a child is traumatised, they tend to regress to a younger age and show behaviour equivalent to that younger age, e.g. bedwetting.

Through Play Therapy children are assisted to rediscover a new world of meaning in which they learn to regulate, redefine and integrate their experiences.


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