Play Therapy

Throughout the ages, children have been exposed to violent events such as wars, abuse, domestic violence, and community turmoil, yet for many years children’s reactions to traumatic events were ignored or minimized. Youth violence was largely confined to the inner city and received scant attention from the public-at-large (Garbarino, 1999). The research of Terr (1990) clearly demonstrated that children have powerful and long-lasting reactions to trauma. More recently, the increasing incidents of violence by children in previously quiet rural communities and schools have focused mainstream attention on the problem.

Sandplay therapy has been utilized with various populations, including those with posttraumatic stress disorder (e.g., Coalson, 1995), children with traumatic brain injury (e.g., Plotts, Lasser, & Prater, 2008), and individuals with substance abuse problems (e.g., Marcello, 2008). However, there are scant references to the employment of sandplay therapy with individuals with dementia. Using case studies from the author’s own work, the article provides concrete illustrations of how sandplay therapy may be a significant mode of therapy to consider in working with dementia. This article also explores how sandplay facilitates the individuation process, provides a venue for nonverbal therapy, and promotes the exploration and deepening of an individual’s connection with the unconscious mind. Implications for research are also discussed.

Animal Assisted Play Therapy® is a unique, theoretically integrative approach developed by coauthors Dr. Risë VanFleet and Tracie Faa-Thompson. It refers to the involvement of animals in professional mental health, allied health, and educational work. This volume presents a comprehensive approach to the inclusion of animals in psychotherapy in general, and play therapy in particular. The book goes beyond describing the inclusion of animals in sessions to describe the nature of the relationship between the animal, the therapist and the client. Extensive attention is paid to the competencies the therapist must have in order to engage in AAPT as well as guidance in selecting and training animals. One of the most unique aspects of the book is the degree to which it focuses on the welfare of the animal as essential to both ethical practice and to the success of any AAPT intervention. It is a useful resource for those new to the field as well as seasoned practitioners. This posting provides a description of this book, which has received high acclaim from practitioners and academics alike. It won a Maxwell Award for "best book in the human-animal bond category."

Updated and expanded, the second edition of A Parent's Handbook of Filial Therapy is intended for family therapists to use with parents who are involved in Filial Therapy. In Filial Therapy, the therapist trains and supervises parents as they conduct special play sessions with their own children in order to resolve a wide range of adjustment and mental health difficulties. Filial Therapy is a time-limited intervention with long-term benefits-55 years of research and clinical practice have consistently shown it to be effective in facilitating both child and parent change. This practical handbook is designed to help parents understand the process and answer many of the questions that arise. Included are an overview of the therapy process as well as information for parents at various phases of the therapy. The manual is written simply and clearly, and provides a convenient reference for both parent and therapist.

The second edition of this popular manual features all the information practitioners and parents have found valuable in the first edition as well as improved descriptions of the skills used in filial play sessions, an enhanced section on understanding play themes, parent self-report forms, and an expanded special topics section including information on child trauma, aggressive play, divorce, behavior problems, and parents' own reactions to the play sessions. This manual supports and reinforces the therapeutic practice of Filial Therapy for clinician and parent alike. (48 pages) [Also available in several other languages.]

Filial Therapy has been shown through 55+ years of research and clinical experience to be an effective and efficient intervention for children and families experiencing a variety of social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties. This unique therapy, co-created by Drs. Bernard and Louise Guerney, involves parents as the primary change agents for their own children in order to resolve child-related problems, to encourage children's healthy psychosocial development, and to strengthen entire families. Filial therapists train and supervise parents while the parents participate in child-centered play sessions, an approach that not only helps eliminate presenting problems but also strengthens parent-child and family relationships. This guide covers the principles, theoretical foundations, research, concepts, and specific methods used in Filial Therapy. First published in 1994, this represents the 3rd revision and update to the book. Applications to specialized populations of children and families are included, as are multicultural applications.

This study explored the need of play therapy knowledge, skill practices and training for primary
school counsellors working with children age four to twelve years old in northern region of Malaysia. The
main purpose is to identify basic knowledge, skills, knowledge related to theory, principles and ethics, play
therapy assessment, clinical practical skills, supervision and case analysis to conduct play therapy with
children. The methodology used were mix method with quasi-experimental design and qualitative interview.
A total of 250 participants which are school counsellors at northern region of Kedah involved in this study. A
survey questionnaire for training evaluation based on Kirkpatrick Model (1996) for training was given to
participants after two days play therapy training, followed by focus group interview. The findings indicated
that most participants found play therapy training enhances their knowledges, understanding and skills
practices in helping children at school. In addition, they addressed the need for systematic and professional
play therapy training as well as on-going supervision session to improve practices. Based on qualitative focus
group interview, the helpful factors of play therapy for children are age appropriate, matches developmental
needs, facilitate non-verbal communication, mastery skills and fostering symbolization process.

Play therapy is saintifically supported approach widely used to address social, emotional and
behavioural difficulties for children at school. Play provide means for communication, while toys
and creative materials are the languages for children. Schools consider as situational setting for
play therapy in helping children or young peoples express their feeling, thought and behaviour.
This article presents a brief overview of situational play therapy as therapeutic intervention for
counseling children and young people at school. The authors present how situational play therapy
can foster symbolization process for children and young people. In addition, child-centered play
therapy themes ,patterns and activities also be highlight as effectively tools to work with children
and young people experiencing emotional and academic issues at school.

The Children's Play Therapy Instrument (CPTI), its development, and reliability studies are described. The CPTI is a new instrument to examine a child's play activity in individual psychotherapy. Three independent raters used the CPTI to rate eight videotaped play therapy vignettes. Results were compared with the authors' consensual scores from a preliminary study. Generally good to excellent levels of interrater reliability were obtained for the independent raters on intraclass correlation coefficients for ordinal categories of the CPTI. Likewise, kappa levels were acceptable to excellent for nominal categories of the scale. The CPTI holds promise to become a reliable measure of play activity in child psychotherapy. Further research is needed to assess discriminant validity of the CPTI for use as a diagnostic tool and as a measure of process and outcome.(The Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research 1998; 7:196–207)

In this work, I elucidate Winnicott’s principle of ‘mutual playing’ with reference to the treatment of a highly traumatised twelve-year-old boy, whose elder brother had committed suicide. Lamentably, he had discovered his brother’s dead body and following this experience became electively mute, lost contact with his friends, and was compulsively preoccupied with images of murder and death. It seemed that in unconscious fantasy, he believed his envy had killed his brother. He appeared to have lost the ability to imagine, and, in lacking enough contact with reality, was unable to creatively transform his unspeakable pain to comprehend the trauma. I suggest that my use of the countertransference and improvisation supported this young man’s efforts to convert the trauma into living play images. In every session, it was as if I had to become both the playwright and the supporting actor in ‘playing’ the traumatic experience with him. This form of mutual playing helped the patient regain his own ability to play, and his emotional state improved considerably. I utilise and extend Ogden’s concept of ‘talking-as-dreaming’ and suggest that a therapist often has to play from the feeling tone and imagery of the child’s experience, not about it. I suggest that with this approach, playing becomes the dream of the trauma in waking life.

The paper describes psychological interventions with children in high-risk contexts using as reference the author’s experience in Palestine. Reflections are provided on the role of mental health professionals in situations of recurrent disruptive events. The author emphasizes the role of protective factors of play, play therapy, and positive relationships in creating a necessary condition of psychological safety.

During COVID-19, Susan Linn has drawn upon her extensive experience as a therapist and her virtuosic ventriloquism to develop a virtual, screen-based approach to supporting children and families that are sheltering-in-place. She and her puppet, Audrey Duck, provide a crucial social-emotional space for play and make believe, drawing upon the opportunities presented by the relational triangularity possible in ventriloquism between child, practitioner, and puppet. By examining her work, one can gain insights into the nature of ventriloquism, as well as best practices for supporting children experiencing trauma and adversity.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of unstructured play activities on the anxiety levels of hospitalized children. Methods: A nonequivalent control group pretest posttest design was employed for this study. The sample included children (N = 165) ages 4–7 years admitted to a large pediatric referral center in the United Arab Emirates. The control group (n = 84) received usual care, while the experimental group (n = 81) engaged in age-appropriate unstructured play activities using disposable games and toys. Parents and siblings, if present, were encouraged to participate. Research assistants conducted the play activities twice a day, with 30-min morning and evening sessions. Anxiety was measured at baseline and at the end of days 2 and 3 with a translated form of the Short–State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Results: Anxiety scores in both groups were similar at baseline and decreased significantly over the 3 days. Compared with the control group, anxiety scores in the intervention group were significantly lower on day 2 (12.7 ± 2.3 vs. 10.7 ± 2.5, p = .003) and day 3 (10.6 ± 2.2 vs. 9.47 ± 2.4, p < .001). The greatest decrease occurred in the percentage of children in the experimental group with medium-level anxiety scores: baseline (n = 61, 75%), day 2 (n = 24, 30%), and day 3 (n = 0, 0%). Conclusions: This simple, low-cost play intervention implemented by nurses resulted in statistically and clinically significant decreases in the anxiety levels of children in an acute inpatient setting.

The two studies presented examine the use of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics on the social-emotional development and behavior of 28 children participating in a therapeutic preschool program. Results from these studies indicate that the use of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics approach to determine the nature, timing, and &quot;dose&quot; of developmentally appropriate activities and interventions within the context of

À la suite de son ouvrage sur les « Ateliers thérapeutiques pour enfants psychotiques », le Docteur Éric Loonis vous livre les secrets de sa pratique au travers d’un ouvrage essentiellement didactique, qui décrit plus de 170 exercices et jeux pour des ateliers thérapeutiques ou de développement personnel avec des enfants ou des adolescents. Ces éléments pratiques sont des médiateurs, qui vont favoriser l’expression de soi, amener à développer des qualités profondes, comme l’empathie, le détachement, l’affirmation de soi dans le respect de l’autre, la coopération, l’écoute de l’autre, la confiance en soi et en l’autre, ainsi que l’estime de soi, indispensables pour l’avenir social de futurs adultes. Au-delà des nombreux exemples qu’il décrit, ce livre donne à l’animateur-thérapeute des bases, des pistes, des idées, sur lesquelles inventer ses propres supports thérapeutiques. Cet ouvrage du Docteur Loonis présente 173 exercices et jeux, répartis en sept catégories : les rituels de début et fin (8) ; les jeux de mimes (16) ; les jeux d’actions (16) ; les jeux d’interactions (54) ; les jeux d’imagination (22) ; les exercices d’invention (46) ; et les exercices d’observation (11). L’ouvrage se veut essentiellement pratique et n’aborde que d’une façon sommaire la théorie clinique et thérapeutique. Chaque exercice et jeu est soigneusement décrit, avec des exemples si nécessaire, des liens vers des ressources internet et des illustrations. Pour le thérapeute, ce manuel peut être directement utilisé pour créer facilement son programme d’atelier thérapeutique. L’auteur a réuni ici un matériel technique considérable et intéressant, à destination de tous ceux qui veulent se lancer dans cette passionnante aventure thérapeutique avec des enfants ou des adolescents.

Since humans are considered to be a neotonous species, and play throughout their lifetimes, it may be important to understand how play behavior may be used therapeutically with adults. The author works to develop a model for adult group play therapy.

Ongoing foreign conflicts have exposed militaryconnected
children to stressors not generally faced by the
general child population. Although many children of service
members and veterans are resilient and successfully adapt to
these changes, frequent relocation, fluid family structure, and
ambiguous loss can become too overwhelming for many
children of military families and lead to pathological symptoms
that require them to receive treatment. This paper discusses
the use of family-based play therapy interventions
with military children. It will focus on the following areas:
(1) risks to the psychological and emotional health of children
of service members, (2) adverse effects of combat stress
reactions of military parents on their children, (3) traumatic
grief of children whose family member has died or been
grievously wounded, (4) family-based therapies currently in
the treatment of childhood grief and trauma, and (5) play
therapy as a means of treating bereavement and traumatization
of military-connected children and their families. A case
example demonstrating a couple and family therapist’s use of
family-based play therapy to deal with traumatic grief of a
military child is provid

Child-centered play therapy (CCPT) has been supported as an effective method for working with children. A case study is presented that describes treatment using CCPT with a 7-year-old boy diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder (IED). This case study delineates 16 sessions of play therapy with a registered play therapist. The behavioral problems the child exhibited at the onset of therapy were greatly improved at the conclusion of the sessions. The outcome of this case study supported the use of play therapy for children with IED. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Language and communicative development is related to the understanding of the symbolic
world. Children with special educational needs who use symbolic play have higher levels of
communicative skills (Pizzo & Bruce, 2010; Barton & Wolery, 2010). It is known that most
children with impaired hearing are lagging behind in the development of verbal speech due to
the delayed auditory development. Access to Sign Language and also to gesture communication
for deaf children from an early age is a prerequisite for normal cognitive and playing skills
development. The children covered by this study have varying degrees of hearing impairment
and are trained to use verbal communication, while signs have only a supportive function. All
the 16 children included in the study have poorly developed skills for coherent communication
through oral speech, and only 3 of them communicate with signs. The objective of this study
was to assess the developing of play in children with hearing impairment in pre-school age,
as well as to analyse the degree of the symbolism in their play. An unstructured assessment of
children’s play was performed on-purpose, followed by a quantitative and qualitative analysis
of the results. Half of the children from the experimental group (most of them after 5 years old)
showed elements of symbolic play during observations. A qualitative analysis of their symbolic
play reveals that their skills are lower than the expected for the same age in typical development
mainly in the playing sequences, playing a role and using of substitution objects.

This chapter discusses the occurrence of string games in Australia, and traces the history of string figures from first century Greece, through 19th century Aboriginal cultures and into 21st century Australian playgrounds. Along the way, attitudes and adaptations to the game, ethnographic and folklore research and the skills involved in making string figures are explored. Currently regarded as a children's pastime, the game has a rich history showing connections between people, place and time, and has the potential to be of interest and value to researchers and practitioners working in several disciplines.

Un livre pour comprendre la psychose infantile au travers de l’expérience même de l’enfant psychotique. Pour ceux qui ne les connaissent pas, les enfants psychotiques font peur. Ils sont inquiétants, voire angoissants, car ils se comportent suivant les lois invisibles de la folie, ce qui les rend imprévisibles. Pourtant, ces enfants « fous » sont comme tous les autres enfants, avec leur sensibilité, leurs difficultés, leurs besoins d’être accompagnés, compris et aimés. Au cours de deux séries d’ateliers thérapeutiques en Institut médico-éducatif, le lecteur est invité à partir à la découverte de ces enfants étranges. Des ateliers qui se sont révélés être de véritables laboratoires d’observation des caractéristiques particulières de ces enfants et des mécanismes de la psychose. Un modèle empirique de la psychose infantile est présenté, articulant plus d’une quarantaine de caractéristiques et mécanismes issus de ces observations en atelier.

Gençlik, bir değişim ve dönüşüm dönemidir. Çocukluktan ergenliğe geçiştir. Oyun çocukluk ve gençlik çağının önemli olgularından biridir. Oyun genel olarak fiziksel oyunlar, nesne oyunları, sembolik oyunlar, dramatik oyunlar ve kurallı oyunlar olarak gruplanabilir. Bu oyunlar, çocukların ve gençlerin psikomotor, bilişsel, duygusal ve sosyal gelişimine katkı sağlar. Ancak günümüzde okul sürelerinin ve planlanmış aktivitelerinin artması, şehirlerde oyun alanlarının daralması ve ekran sayısının çoğalması nedeni ile gençler daha az oyun oynamakta ya da oyunu ekran karşısında oynamaktadır. Oyunun azalması ile gençlerde görülen psikopatolojilerin artması arasında ilişki bulunmaktadır. Gençlerde görülen psikopatolojilerin tedavisinde oyun merkezli terapiler kullanılmaktadır. Gençlerde yaygın olarak kullanılan terapiler Kum Terapisi, Kukla Terapisi ve Theraplay’dir.

Cet article introduit quatre textes de D.W. Winnicott restés jusqu’alors inédits en français : « Jeu dans la situation analytique » (1954), « Le destin de l’objet transitionnel » (1959), « Notes sur le jeu » (non daté) et, enfin, « Le jeu du squiggle » (1964-1968). Après une présentation de la démarche qui a mené à la traduction, chaque texte est brièvement présenté avec une mise en contexte de leur émergence au regard de l’oeuvre de Winnicott.

Summary
This article introduces four texts written by D.W. Winnicott unpublished until now in French: “Play in the analytic situation” (1954), “The Fate of the transitional object” (1959), “Notes on play” (undated) and finally, “the squiggle game” (1964-1968). After a presentation of the process that led to the translation, each text is briefly presented in order to set the context of their emergence in relation to Winnicott’s work.