Play Therapy

Would you like communication to be easier between you and your child? 
Are you ready for there to be less behavior problems with your child at home or at school?
Would you like to see your child become more self confident?
If you are ready to feel more connected with your child, Play Therapy and Child Parent Relationship Training can help. 

When children have problems, sometimes they don’t have the words to talk about them. Play gives children a way to communicate feelings they don’t understand or can’t express any other way.


Enter into children’s play and you will find the place where their minds, hearts, and souls meet. ~Virginia Axline

 

Play is to the child what verbalization is to the adult. Through play children express their feelings and explore relationships. Adults are able to verbally express their feelings, frustrations, anxieties, and personal problems but children do not have that ability. In a play therapy relationship, children are free to explore their world easily and naturally.  It is this new found freedom of self-directing that helps the child to change because in the therapeutic playroom the child is safe to be themselves. To help  the child express their feelings and needs, the play room is equipped with a variety of specially selected toys and materials which they can use as a medium for expression. The toys are their words and play is their language.

    Play therapy is a structured, theoretically based approach to therapy that builds on the normal communicative and learning processes of children (Carmichael, 2006; Landreth, 2002; O'Connor & Schaefer, 1983).

    Studies show that children with anxiety, depression, attention deficit, autism, academic and social developmental issues, physical learning disabilities, conduct disorder, anger management, grief and loss, divorce, and crisis and trauma benefit from play therapy.