Play Therapy

Children express themselves naturally through play. Play therapists at the Family Center are trained to observe and interact with children as they play, in order to understand them more fully, in the environments where they are most comfortable.

 

Play therapists at the Family Center are skilled in observing and interacting with children, as they express themselves through play. This can provide throrough insight into and understanding of each individual child. Such insight and understanding allows therapists to help children, and their parents, make sense ofspecific behaviors. This leads to greater self-awareness, self-control, and more rewarding interpersonal relationships. 

 

Play therapists at the Family Center meet regularly with each child, as well as ideally with each child's parent, for the purposes of guidance and input. 

 

The nature of play therapy is to allow children a safe venue to express their thoughts and feelings. It is termed "play therapy" because the vehicle of expression for young children is play. The term "play" should not be used to diminish the seriousness of what a child is feeling, thinking, and trying to sort out in order to make sense of his world. A child begins to have the capacity to think abstractly no earlier than approximately age eleven. Therefore, traditional talk therapy is not effective for young children, in the way that it can befor older teenagers and adults. Children from about 2 ½ to eleven are able to talk, but emotional concepts are not easy for them to translate into words. The concrete nature of playing with tangible objects, observed by a psychotherapist, with training and experience specifically in play therapy, is the most effective vehicle for understanding how a child sees meaning in his world.