Your Child in Play Therapy
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Play therapy is a style of therapy that is particularly helpful in treating children. Although it has been shown to be highly successful in treating childhood trauma and emotional issues it is largely misunderstood by parents. Consequently children in therapy are often removed from treatment far too soon by parents who just can't grasp the therapeutic necessity of play therapy.
When I see children in therapy I allow them to choose their activity, and often they choose the sand tray and small toys and objects that go along with sand tray therapy. I remember one grandparent who just couldn't understand how paying me money to have her four-year-old granddaughter play in the sand was going to help, so she bought a sand box for the backyard and pulled the child out of therapy.
A few months later she complained that the child wasn't improving, and then she concluded that playing in the sand was not therapy. What she couldn't understand was that play therapy is far more than just play. It takes a highly trained professional to help guide the child as well as to accurately interpret their play behavior.
Like any form of therapy, play therapy needs to run its course at the child's pace. If therapy is terminated too soon the child will not progress fully and may even relapse into undesirable behaviors. Although children in therapy tend to recover from trauma much faster than adults it is still important to allow them to progress at their own rate. Be patient, trust your mental health professional and support your child's road to recovery.
Labels: children, play therapy, sand tray
Individuality and Family Trauma
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Too often I hear parents or siblings complain that a family member is blaming their childhood for their problems, and the next thing out of their mouth is "All the kids in the family had the same childhood but you don't see us acting like that."
Every child is an individual. In families most of the children experience an event from the perspective of differing ages, genders and personality types. Consequently the experience will effect each child in a different way. Each will interpret what happened differently from the rest. And each will carry away differing memories of the event.
For instance during a divorce a parent may lean on one child for emotional support while neglecting or blaming another child. Subsequently each child will come away with a different kind of wound from the same family event. And each will be impacted in life in a different way.
Blaming a child, even an adult child, for having difficulty in life is another way of re-victimizing an already traumatized individual. Expecting that children are not emotionally or psychological damaged by family stress is living in denial. Children have the same emotions adults do, they just don't express them in the same way. And often, their pain goes unnoticed until they are grown and safely away from the family environment which caused them to suppress their suffering.
Compassion, not judgment, will go a log way in mending family strife.