How Does Play Therapy Work?
A qualified play therapist is able to guide the play of children in ways that are therapeutic and healing. Parents, family members, and care providers are often included in this process. Having all members included allows the therapist to observe and interpret the full range of relational dynamics that are important to the child or adolescent. The play therapist is then able to enter into the child’s world and, from there, offer appropriate suggestions and interventions.
Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.
--Bob Talbert
If children live with hostility,
they learn to fight.
If children live with ridicule,
they learn to be shy.
If children live with tolerance,
they learn to be patient.
If children live with encouragement,
they learn confidence.
If children live with praise,
they learn to appreciate.
If children live with fairness,
they learn justice.
If children live with security,
they learn faith.If children live with approval,
they learn to like themselves.
If children live with acceptance, and friendship,
they learn to find love in the world.
Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph. D.
THERAPY FOR CHILDREN
What is Play Therapy?
Play therapy is a special, therapeutic approach for working with children, adolescents, and their families and care providers. Play is the language children use to express themselves. Usually, children have not developed the cognitive or verbal skills that adults use to discuss their feelings in the traditional therapy format. Structured therapeutic play is a safe container for children to express the concerns and issues they are struggling with. Some of the benefits of play therapy include:
- Children can work through their problems
using play. - Children can communicate their ideas,
feelings, and experiences nonverbally. - Children can re-create and then resolve events, such as divorce, trauma, abuse, or the death of a parent or family member in play.
Monica's play therapy room
Children
By Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children:
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies not their souls.
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
Monica has been working with our daughter for almost a year now. Our daughter has made wonderful progress in this time. We have referred friends to Monica before and will continue to do so. Monica has been wonderful about talking us through our daughter's progress and giving us all the needed information to help her work through the steps. Client
Monica is really great with kids. My 9 & 7 year old really like her She is good at coming up with practical solutions to every day problems like getting kids to do their chores and homework without nagging and getting your child’s cooperation. She is adept at diagnosing the problem and addressing it in practical terms.
-JD