What is Play Therapy?
Play therapy is a therapy technique used to understand children’s problems, to analyze their emotions and behaviors, to confront children with these problems and to provide solutions. The main goals of play therapy are to create a safe environment through play to resolve children’s emotional conflicts and to support language, cognitive and motor development.
Play is natural, fun, voluntary and aimless. Through play, children learn things that no one else can teach them. According to Piaget, play is a bridge between concrete experience and abstract thought and the symbolic function of play is very important. During play, the child engages in emotional experiences using concrete objects that are symbolic for what he or she has already experienced directly or indirectly.
Through play therapy, the child brings parts of his/her life into the play and shares his/her feelings about his/her experiences, thus helping the child to express his/her problems. Afterwards, the aim is to resolve and restructure conflicts. Because it is often difficult to get information about children’s feelings and thoughts by asking them questions. The child who does not answer the questions asked will reveal many of his/her feelings and thoughts during the game in the presence of an expert. This therapy technique is different from playing with parents at home or with a teacher at school. Play therapy is carried out by people trained in this field within the framework of certain techniques and rules. Although the child is in full control during play, the therapist is not in a passive position. The therapist’s task during play is to make the child aware of the emotions that arise and to reflect these emotions back to the child. The therapist also adopts a permissive and accepting attitude.
In Which Situations is Play Therapy Effective?
- Fears and anxieties
- Self-confidence and self-development
- Sibling jealousy
- Traumas
- Shyness and introversion
- Behavior problems
- Attention deficit hyperactivity
- Difficulties in school adaptation
- Impulsivity
- Aggression
- Selective nonverbalism
- Obsessions
- Eating problems
- Anger management disorder
- Bedwetting/Fecal incontinence
- Effects of the divorce process
- Childhood depression


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