Our Services
Play Therapy
Play therapy is a type of psychotherapy designed to help children between three and twelve years of age work through troubles and worries.
Play therapy helps children with a wide variety of emotional, behavioural, social, and developmental problems including: aggression, anxiety/fearfulness, ADHD, attachment disorders, autism/PDD, conduct disorder, depression, impulsivity, low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress and social withdrawal. Play therapy also helps children cope with stress caused by divorce, grief/loss, hospitalization, chronic illness, physical/sexual abuse, domestic violence, relocation and trauma.
Play therapists use specific kinds of play to gain an understanding of a child’s emotional world. Through the play therapy process children create play that resembles the emotional experiences they are struggling with internally. These experiences usually cannot be expressed verbally. Once a therapist has gained insight into this inner world (with the crucial input of parents and other caregivers), treatment goals, using play, are made relevant, attainable, understandable, and interesting to the child through play. Play is an ideal format for integrating necessary skills and information into the real livesĀ of children.
Children are not miniature adults and not all children are alike. Just as children vary in age, gender, and social circumstance, so they vary in their characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. In conducting play therapy with children, it is frequently necessary to adapt treatments to characteristics of the individual child. It is necessary to adjust therapy to the developmental level of the child and to meet children at their developmental level, cognitively, socially, and emotionally.
Parent involvement is important in play therapy and parents will be asked to meet with the therapist at various times. Parents will be asked to contribute to their child’s progress by working with the therapist on changes that can be introduced into the home environment. However, they will not be party to the child’s sessions unless the form of therapy calls for that particular style of intervention.