Irish Play Therapy Community Association
IPTCA - a Non-Profit Association Supporting Play Therapists in Ireland
The Irish Play Therapy Community Association is a non-profit association for Play Therapists based in Ireland. Our aim is to nurture and develop high standards of practice by offering support, guidance and continued professional and personal development to the members of the Irish Play Therapy Community.
We are also a resource for parents/carers who wish to learn more about Play Therapy and to find a Play Therapist in their area.
Membership of IPTCA is the mark of quality for high standards of professional and ethical practice.
Be part of a growing community of Play Therapists where the qualities of compassion, kindness, understanding, support and encouragement are at its foundation.
IPTCA is an association of Play Therapists dedicated to establishing the highest standards of personal and professional conduct within the Play Therapy profession.
THE HEALING POWER OF PLAY THERAPY
A Guide for Parents
Helen Sholdice, M.A.
Play Therapy is a deeply respectful and powerful treatment modality for children as it acknowledges, toys are their words and play is their language.
WHY PLAY THERAPY?
Parents ask, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if my child talked about his worries?’
Children find it difficult to express or articulate, with ease, what worries them. What they do is act out in ways that alert their parents that all is not well. Some of these behaviours may be overly aggressive toward peers or siblings, upsetting both adults and other children; excessive shyness; toileting issues; waking frequently at night; inability to make friends at school; lack of concentration, to name a few.
Play therapy emphasises that play in itself is a process that heals. Play is innate in children and comes spontaneously and naturally from them. The very nature of therapy work with children is that it depends largely on action rather than words. This is how it differs from the ‘talking cure’ of adult therapy. A trained play therapist acts as a facilitator by inviting the children to choose from a selected range of toys to play with in many of the ways they like. As a trusting relationship is developed with the therapist, children play out their deepest fears expressing themselves in metaphor and action.
Children are offered art materials such as clay and paint; they use puppets in role-play; they use the dress-up box to assume other identities; they relish the opportunity to use musical instruments, beating hard on drums, to be ‘heard’. They use Sandplay which provides them with miniatures they place in sand trays, to symbolically represent worries for which they have no words. The playroom provides space physically and psychologically so that a child can bring all their hopes, fears, impulses and anxieties, into the room. Play Therapy is best suited for children from the ages of four to 12 years of age.
Parents ask: ‘If my child plays at home, why doesn’t that help her with her worries?’
Toys are carefully selected to provide the child with the means of expressing and exploring his/her sad, angry, aggressive and destructive impulses and feelings. The trained therapist is vital in this process as he/she supports the child to make inner changes by witnessing or participating in their play. Without judgement, the therapist reflects and makes real what the child shows her. As an active container, the therapist establishes the boundaries in which the process of playful transformation can take place. As this therapeutic alliance is developed, the child is supported to heal emotionally.
Sharing a history with the therapist of their child’s early life and present day difficulties, helps parents understand why possible life events may have contributed to strong emotional reactions within their child. Parents are supported to become more aware of their attitude and behaviour toward their children and therefore attune more successfully to their children’s emotional needs.