Play therapy facts for kids

An individual engaging in sandplay therapy.

Equipment used for sandplay therapy.

Play therapy is a kind of therapy counseling with playing activities which makes children overcome their psychological difficulties by themselves and helps them to achieve optimum level of development. Young children are usually hard to express their emotion, needs, and thoughts by language, but it can be possible through their play activities. So, play can be children's language to show their state. Also, they can release stress, and have self-confidence by playing freely what they want and getting good words from therapists.

For therapists, they should know about human development including child development. Also, they need to know to apply different kinds of playing activities for children. But, the most important thing is to have good relationship with the children.

There are many kinds of play therapy. There are psychoanalytic play therapy, children-based play therapy, filial play therapy, cognitive behavioral play therapy, developmental play therapy, Adlerian play therapy, sand play, and group play therapy. Those kinds of play therapy can be used successfully for the children between 4 and 6 years old.