Play therapy is an active and non-directional form of psychotherapy for children, based on the principle that play is therapeutic and that it is vital for child’s development. It considers play as a form of natural and effortless learning process, as the most direct way to release the child from stress, fears, conflicts and tensions, while it facilitates adults’ communication with child’s inner world. Play is converted from means of externalization of child’s emotions to means of understanding for the therapist, so that is finally transformed into a means of therapeutic change and personal development.
Taking for granted the fact that play is the best natural child’s means of self-expression, play therapy uses various types of games (role playing, miniatures, sand) and various other forms of expression such as painting, music, clay and therapeutic fairy tale in order to help the child to explore possible traumatic experiences, current or past, in a secure environment that provides the symbolic play and the therapist. Child plays his feelings / problems in a therapeutic setting using play, which is the natural way of expression, aiming to learn to help himself.
In this procedure, child is the driver and therapist is the fellow traveler who avoids to guide it during treatment. He just facilitates this “quest journey” and provides the required therapeutic safety. Play therapy facilitates the development of a safe relationship, where the child feels free to express fully and to explore in depth himself (feelings, thoughts, experiences and behaviors) using the natural way of children’s expression: play.
Play therapy is an effective way of therapeutic intervention for children who have a variety of difficulties, such as anger crisis, aggressiveness, jealousy, separation anxiety, phobias, hyperactivity, low self-confidence, low sociability, divorce, behavioral disorders, emotional disorders, sleep appetite disorders etc.
Mutual and active collaboration between therapist and parents is very important for the optimal achievement of therapeutic goals.
Elena Georgiadou
theatrologist – play therapist
Watch the informative lecture that we organized in our nursery school titled: “Play therapy” on Monday 17th of October 2016 at 18:00, where Elena Georgiadou, theatrologist – play therapist spoke.
