Children
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
—P L A T O
Is your child struggling in relationship with you, his/her parents or caregivers, siblings, friends, or teachers? Play therapy can provide help in understanding the expression of frustration your child is demonstrating and that you and others are experiencing. Play therapy builds on the natural way children learn about themselves and their relationships to the world (Axline, 1947; Carmichael, 2006; Landreth, 2002) Some children, while learning to express their emotions with words, become too overwhelmed by the demands on their lives. The explanation they provide is often through some form of acting out that puzzles and frustrates parents. For these children, play is a natural expression of the ideas and feelings not able to be expressed verbally. Some of the benefits of Play Therapy include discovering appropriate socialization characteristics, building self-esteem as the child takes on new ways of behaving, learning to manage childhood fears, aggression and anger, and experiencing, through play, what someone else may be feeling.
Through the child’s language of play new characteristics can be taken in, learning acquired to regulate emotions, and exploring different ways of problem solving.
I specialize in helping children who are experiencing or have experienced:
- Stress/ Anxiety
- Anger management
- Depression
- Neglect/ Abuse
- Adoption and Attachment concerns
- Life transitions and Separation
- Grief and Loss
- Low self-esteem/ Self worth
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Problems with homework or friendships at school
Goals of Play Therapy are to:
- Develop a strong sense of self-efficacy
- Respect self and others
- Identify and express emotions
- Accept age appropriate responsibility for choices
- Develop relational problem solving skills
- Develop empathy and compassion
- Identify appropriate developmental expectations