Play Therapy

Hello readers, thanks for taking your time on our blog- children are so great.  This is Michelle and I want to share some information about a book that I read recently.

Any child who has been taken out of their home and placed with a new family has experienced a “crisis”.  Leaving a home, a family, a neighborhood, a school is a hard experience for a child even when it is in their best interest- and a child who is taken out of their home has probably also experienced neglect or abuse.  Because of this, almost all foster parents are expected to take their child to counseling.

  One method of counseling that has been extremely helpful for young children has been “Play Therapy”, a therapy where the therapist or counselor engages in different methods of play (painting, puppets, sandbox, etc.) to help the child to express feelings and work through hard experiences.  When adults go for counseling, the therapist can usually learn about their needs by talking with them, but children are less willing (and cognitively able) to explain what they went through.  I’d heard that play therapy was excellent but didn’t know a lot about it, so I went to the library.

At the library I checked out Play Therapy with Children in Crisis: Individual, Group, and Family Treatment.  The first part of the book gives a “theoretical overview”.  So it talks about what is a crisis, what is play therapy, and how play therapy can be effective.  The rest of the book looks at general themes and specific case studies of children in crisis.  The book covers a lot of different kinds of crisis experiences, but the chapters are broken up in such a way that you can hone in on what’s relevant for you.  For example, a few of the chapters that seem especially relevant for foster parents are:

            

            Child Exposure to Parental Violence

            Parental Abuse and Subsequent Foster Home Placement

Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Child Sexual Abuse and Exposure to Domestic Violence.

This book is primarily written for therapists and students, so it isn’t a “how to” book for foster parents, but it’s full of great information based on a lot of research. I would recommend this book to foster parents because:

1.     It can teach you a little more about why your child benefits from going to counseling and why they do some of the activities that they do

2.     It can encourage you to actively work with the counselor to stay aware of needs and better meet the needs of your child

3.     It can help deepen your understanding for what your child has experienced.

I think it’s this last point that really matters.  I’m amazed at how understanding can help increase our patience and love.  I’m also afraid that some potential foster parents get nervous when a child needs counseling but it really is excellent that we live in a time when we’ve found a way to help these young children open up and work through their experiences.

Let me know if you have any questions or stories where you've interacted with play therapy before. Thanks for reading!

Webb, N.B. (2007). Play therapy with children in crisis: Individual, group, and family treatment. (3^rd ed.).  New York, NY: The Guilford Press.