What is Play Therapy?

Play therapy is a type of paediatric psychotherapy that has been developed for children between two and twelve years of age chronologically but can also be tailored for teenagers. Play therapy can also support adults whose development does not align with their chronological age.

Play therapy relies on play being the natural medium of communication and self-expression to encourage a child to work through any emotional, behavioural or psychosocial challenges they are experiencing in their everyday lives and aims to support them to express their emotions more effortlessly, than having to verbalise their thoughts, using toys and play as their conduits.

In Play Therapy one of the models, we use for our therapeutic practice is the ACT model (Landreth, 2002):

Acknowledge the feeling/behaviour,

Communicate the limit and

Target an alternative

During a session, a Play Therapist uses the following therapeutic play skills to allow a child to feel safe within their therapeutic dyad. Some of these are based on Carl Roger’s Core Conditions (1957):

  • Attunement

  • Empathy (empathic reflections)

  • Tracking

  • Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR)

  • Congruence

  • Consistency (structure, routine and limits)

  • Being, Doing, holding and joining

Play Therapy relies on the Therapeutic Powers of Play (Schaefer & Drewes, 2014) to create therapeutic agents of change during a child’s intervention. 

Beck is trained in four play therapy modalities, including:

  • Learn to Play therapy

  • Non-directive/humanistic play therapy

  • Filial therapy

  • Integrative play therapy

To find out more about these play therapy modalities, and which might suit your child’s needs best, click on the links below!