As a person who works as a Camp Manager, I know firsthand how important play is for childhood development. It is fundamental for so many skills that children will develop.
-Turn taking
-Growing confidence
-Developing scientific inquiry
-Etc.
Play is also vital to helping children work through trauma, anxiety, and big emotions that they don’t know how to process yet. This is something that I worked with my foster childrens’ therapist on, finding ways to talk about these big emotions through play.
Play Therapy with Craft Supplies
One way that I used play therapy with my 5 year old foster daughter came naturally. She was very into crafting and came home very excited to tell me about a koala headband that she made at school. She wanted to make more of them, so we got out the craft supplies and got creative. We found a way to engineer a koala headband using the materials that we had. After making the headband, she got out our coloring supplies and decorated it.
I bet you are wondering how this became therapeutic. I mean other than the fact that crafting can help some people reduce their anxiety. After she decorated her koala headband she asked me if I knew why the koala bear had a tear drawn on it. I asked her to tell me why. So she decided to tell me a story. A story about how the koala bear got lost and couldn’t find his way back home. And about how the koala bear couldn’t find his mom. We talked about how this made the koala bear feel and whether there was anything we could change for the koala bear.
When we finished our project she was very proud of herself. We took a picture of the completed headbands that we made and she even created a headband tower on her head. She said that she was going to make sure that she kept them, so she would always remember the story about the koala bear. We stowed them in a safe place, with her other special works of art.
In Summary
This example is just one of many ways that you can implement play therapy with your children. This same process can be utilized with anything that your child is interested in playing with.
Examples Include:
- Dolls/Stuffed Animals
- Building Blocks
- Board Games
- Clay/Modeling Dough
The key is really that these toys are open ended, meaning that there is not only one thing that they can do with them. Your children need to be able to use their imagination and to be able to tell a story that helps them reenact what has happened to them in a safe way and/or describe the feelings they are having through other characters. The key for you as the parent is to be patient, listen, and be present in these moments with your children. You do not need to have all the answers, but you do need to show that you care and are listening to your child’s feelings (all of the time, but especially when they have gone through trauma).
