How does Play Therapy work?
Play is the child’s natural medium of communication and self-expression and an essential part of healthy emotional and physical development. Play is the medium through which children explore the world, their social relationships and past experiences. Children also use play to express and make sense of their feelings and to find solutions to everyday problems.
Neuroscience has shown that play is essential for healthy brain development and that it triggers the release of positive chemicals, lowering stress and stress responses. We also know that play advances emotional and cognitive development, promotes language development, communication skills, social skills and the ability to make decisions.
Because children are comfortable with play and express themselves more fully and more directly through self-initiated spontaneous play than they do verbally, play therapy is a highly effective therapeutic intervention for children who are experiencing emotional difficulties and require a safe space to explore their feelings.
Play Therapy is a clinically validated therapeutic intervention which helps and supports children to process, make sense of and come to terms with challenging experiences and situations. As a result they often become less reactive to day to day challenges in their environment and more effective at self-regulating.
Play therapy is sometimes referred to as a ‘brain sculptor’ as it has many benefits to the cognitive, social and emotional wiring of the brain. As the child has new experiences in the play room, both through the process of play and the relationship with the therapist, dysfunctional and unhelpful neural pathways are replaced with new and more positive ones. Sometimes this can happen quite quickly, at other times it takes much longer. The more difficult or traumatic the child’s previous experiences, the more time will be needed.