Play therapy It is a model of psychotherapeutic approach that uses the game as a mode of communication with the subject, especially with children, which allows him to approach and assist him, in addition to providing a good approach to diagnosis.
Through the game accompanied and observed the therapist establishes a relationship of trust with the child, analyzes their acts and reactions and helps them understand their experiences, providing new tools to relate to himself and his environment.
Play therapy It is especially useful for the treatment of children who have suffered situations of severe stress or for those who show a social, emotional or even cognitive development different from that considered normal.
The play therapist You must know game techniques and have therapeutic methods adapted to the specific and personal situation of each child and their stage of development.
The techniques of play therapy
The therapist watches the child while playing with many different elements: houses, dolls, painting, stories, stories, symbolic play, creativity, dramatic representation, masks, drawings, elements that favor the expression of feelings.
While he is building a climate that allows him to connect with the child and understand the causes of his disturbed behavior, offering him, in addition, tools to understand his experiences and handle the issues that influence and condition his life.
It is usually offered a space prepared game, where the toys appear ordered and accessible to the child. At the beginning you work more freely, letting the child choose and, as the relationship of trust progresses, different game elements that the therapist understands can help you more.
In the play space there is a corner where you can play symbolic games about your own home in a small house, dolls that the child will use to represent himself, puppets, animals, plastic arts equipment and always play with the possibility of going to dynamic dramatization with techniques of mimicry, narration, improvised acting and costumes.
He let the game be what channels the communication It allows the child to act without so many external conditions, to flow and express what he does not know or fears to express otherwise.
The boy in the game he feels freer for his "secrets" to sprout, even those he himself does not consciously recognize.
Children who can benefit from play therapy
Play therapy It is used in different fields. It is suitable to approach children who have suffered serious trauma: at birth or in the postnatal stage, for sexual abuse, for having been direct victims of violence or having witnessed violence towards other people, for having suffered a loss, living a unresolved grief or serious illness of a reference person, a traumatic divorce of their parents, an adoption that has not been well assimilated, accidents or diseases that have led to hospitalization or medical treatments that have caused them to suffer pain or fear and also for children who have a terminal or disabling illness.
It is also used with children who present behavioral problems: attention deficit, hyperactivity, depression, aggressiveness, disabling fears, night terrors, aggressiveness, emotional detachment, problems to manage feelings and psychological or psychiatric problems.
What children play therapy offers
Perhaps the most interesting thing you can offer children game therapy it is the possibility of expressing their feelings, emotions such as anger, fear, hatred, their loneliness, their failure, their lack of social adaptation in a safe environment such as play, where, thanks to the therapist's close attitude, they can express themselves without fear to be judged and using projection as an indirect form of expression.
But in addition to the evaluation, play therapy It has a clear therapeutic intention and to achieve its effect it is essential a continuity in the work and a commitment on the part of the parents in maintaining the sessions and, in good measure, of the same child, being this commitment something that will freely take as you advance in therapy and strengthen your confidence in the therapist.
The objective of play therapy is that the child knows himself better, understands his personal history, assumes and channels it, without denying the pain but respecting himself and learning to relate better to the environment and to exercise his freedom and responsibility.
