Long before children have verbal language, they learn to make their needs known and learn how to get their caretakers to respond. This non-verbal communication is not only adaptive but ensures their survival. When children become verbal, expressing their needs, likes, and dislikes, it begins in relation to concrete things in their environment. Feelings, as all adults know, are not so tangible or obvious. What adult hasn’t felt like they ‘just got up on the wrong side of the bed’ and have no explanation for their bad mood or irritability? There might be so many feelings going on at once that it just feels like a giant cauldron of emotions boiling over. Children usually begin by learning to identify the ‘big’ feelings of anger, sadness and happiness: the mad/sad/glad continuum. They may not realize that all of these feelings can coexist at once or that they might be feeling something else underneath their ‘mad’ feelings. This is a difficult thing for adults to realize. Part of a child’s development involves learning to identify their feelings; to learn that feelings aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’; to understand their own range of emotions; to learn to pause before acting, or for others to learn to act and not stay on ‘pause’; and to learn how to express these feelings in a way that is beneficial to themselves and respectful of others. When their feelings are normalized and they have gained a deeper understanding of who they are and how they operate, they can be freer to express themselves in a way that is consistent with their personality and temperament.
This is something that most adults work on their entire lives and children are just setting out on the process. Play therapy affords the child some distance from their feelings and gives them the chance to structure, create and reveal their own world and how they see themselves in that world. It is often said ‘play is the language of children’ and provides a vehicle for: role-playing; enhancing communicate skills; problem-solving and prioritizing; managing stress and conflict; and developing new ways of relating to others. The play is child-centered and the child gets to ‘be in charge’ of directing and structuring the play. Through the developing relationship between a child and therapist, a child gets a chance to practice new behaviors and ways of relating in a non-pressured, self-directed manner. The child then has the chance to generalize these skills and to practice them in their environment, coming back and tweaking or honing these behaviors in the play therapy setting. Although a change in behavior may be a byproduct of the play therapy experience, the emphasis in play therapy is not on changing a child’s behavior to fit the needs of the environment; the purpose is for the child and parents to better understand the world from the child’s vantage point, working together with the therapist to help the child function and make decisions in a positive and productive manner.
