Play Therapist
Charlieās teacher says he rarely speaks, often hides in the corner, canāt express whatās wrong, and has little interaction with his peers; he finds it difficult to stay on task in the classroom.
First Session: Charlie stood quietly in front of me, not knowing what to do. My natural instinct was to help him make a choice, but as a therapist I knew this would be wrongā¦. Eventually he walked over to the figures on the table, and picking up the fighter planes one by one, he examined them, shook off the sand, and took them to the sink. After washing them, he put them back on the table. This was done in silence. He then went over to the puppets, picked up the tiger, and shook its head as if saying ānoā. He whispered in its ear. He did this with all the puppets, picking them up and moving their heads from side to sideāānoā. He then turned the tiger puppet to face him and nodded to it. Finally, he matched up the puppets with the same figures from the table. I felt it was important for him to do this, as was washing the planes. Was he putting things in order? Perhaps he was at last able to control a moment of his life? (Amar, 2016).
Child Life Specialist
Today a patient accidentally dislodged his breathing tube, causing extubation to occur. The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit sprang into action, and I worked with the patient and his father to provide procedural and emotional support. Throughout the procedure I held the patientās hand, as he was agitated and physically uncomfortable. I stayed by the patientās side until the procedure was complete, and he was relaxed and comfortable.
Later in the day, I stopped by to provide normative play for the patient in the form of a favorite board game and to offer information about the pet therapy program in the hospital. As I left the room, the patientās father said he really appreciated the care I provided his son throughout the day, and actually said that I had the most important job, which was to provide a sense of normalcy in the stressful medical setting. If you were to ask me at the time of the procedure whether the father even knew I was in the room, I would say probably not. He seemed distracted and distraught because his son was in pain. However, his comment holds an important lesson: no act of kindness, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, ever goes unnoticed (Patte, 2010).
Reflection
These vignettes, which are derived from the experience of practitioners in four different professions, are focused on the play of specific children. As such, they illustrate the complexity of childrenās play. They introduce us to the possibility that play can be, at one and the same time, social, physical, instructive, and creative. It may help us to build relationships and develop a deeper sense of self. In his classic text The Ambiguity of Play, the developmental psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith defines play as āthe potentiation of adaptive variabilityā (1997, p. 231). Elsewhere he suggests that play serves to provide us with a ābelief in the worthwhileness of merely livingā (1999, p. 254).
Clearly, play means different things to different people, which is why it is so hard to define (Sherwood & Reifel, 2010). Indeed, for a definition of play to be really tenable, it would have to be inclusive of, and apply to:
- Children and adults
- Animals and humans
- Both process and product
- Positive and negative forms
- Structured and unstructured forms
- Immediate and future benefits
- Passivity and performance
- Fleeting moments and long-lasting periods.
It is unlikely that any definition can address all these things, and so it is probably more helpful to focus on generalized descriptions rather than specific definitions. This is the approach adopted by numerous authors, including Catherine Garvey (1991) and Tina Bruce (2005). Consequently, it is common in the literature to find play described as having the following characteristics. It is:
- Freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated
- Associated with positive effect, pleasurable, enjoyable, egalitarian, and so forth
- Functional, but the emphasis is on process rather than product.
Despite the popular notion that play is more about process than product, it is nevertheless clear that play has a number of developmental outcomes, albeit the player may not necessarily be aware of them. These widespread benefits of play are summarized in Table 1.1, which is an abridged version of a much larger summary of the benefits of play (see Brown, 2014, pp. 12ā14).
Thus, play may be seen to be a key factor at the heart of child development. However, its cathartic and therapeutic aspects are less widely recognized. In all the vignettes at the beginning of this chapter, the professional worker is trying to help a troubled child through a difficult period in their life, so that they may eventually regain some sort of emotional equilibrium. In each case, play is being used as the therapeutic medium. It is that aspect of play that forms the focus of this chapter, and we explore its use and value via the day-to-day practice of a number of professions.
Table 1.1 The Benefits of Play
KEY FACTORS Contributing to development while playing | OUTCOMES In the longer term, playing helps to produce: |
|
Fun | Happiness and the continuation of brain plasticity |
Freedom | A sense of independence, and an understanding of the parameters of risk, challenge, and danger |
Flexibility | Broader horizonsāan understanding of the world and an open-mindedness about its true potential |
Social Interaction | Friendship groups and an understanding of social networks Transmission of childrenās cultures |
Socialization | Self-acceptance and a respect for the views and wishes of others |
Physical Activity | Musculoskeletal development and physical health |
Environmental Cognitive | Knowledge and understanding, and a sense of wonder about |
Stimulation | the potential for expanding our horizons |
Creativity and | Combinatorial flexibility leading to problem-solving skills, |
Problem Solving | abstract thinking, and aesthetic appreciation |
Self-Discovery | A unique individual personality; self-aware ness and self-confidence |
Of course, it is arguable that childrenās play is inherently therapeutic, and therefore children have it within themselves to cure their own ills. Freud (1900) suggested one of the functions of play was reconciliation; in other words, a process that enables children to come to terms with traumatic events. By āplaying outā the event, and possibly replaying it many times in lots of different ways, children can at one and the same time take control of the experience and gain a full understanding of it. This idea is hinted at in the opening line of the quote at the beginning of this chapter (Erikson, 1940). It is a theme taken up by Virginia Axline (1969), and applied to her professional practice, where she adopted (and promoted) a non-directive approach to play therapy. For Axline, the role of the play therapist is to create the conditions that enable the child to explore whatever has happened to them, so as to reconcile themselves to it, and hopefully have enough self-confidence to be able to move forward.
The renowned dramatherapist, Sue Jennings, in her groundbreaking book, Healthy Attachments and Neuro-Dramatic Play, introduces the idea of a āplay to play therapy continuum, where playing can be considered a āpreventativeā activity and play therapy a ācurativeā activity.ā She goes on to say that āthere is a large gap in the middle where children are able to generate their own play to help themselves; this often does not need the intervention of play therapistsā (2011, p. 64). Unfortunately, contrary to that optimistic view, in the more developed industrial nations there is an increasingly ālarge gap in the middleā where children are not able to generate their own play. This is due to a combination of sociocultural circumstances; for example, increase in traffic, suspicion of strangers, excessive emphasis on academic attainment, etc. (Gill, 2007). That is where playwork comes in. Put simply, the more sociocultural changes that restrict childrenās freedom to play, the more we store up psychosocial problems for the future. That is why we need playworkers. In its most straightforward expression, playwork is compensatory in nature. It is about creating environments that enable children to generate their own play (Brown, 2014). Inevitably there is a therapeutic aspect to this. If Freudās analysis is correct, it follows that children will use the playwork environment in the same way as any child engaged in free play would.
Thus, in therapeutic terms we can return to Jennings āplay to play therapy continuumā and suggest the following: where children are able to play freely, they will be able to use their play as a naturally therapeutic medium and reconcile themselves to minor traumatic events. Where play is restricted, children may be able to attend a playwork project, where they will be able to play freely and engage in a similar reconciliation process. Where the traumatic events are more severe, the child may need a more focused and protected environment, where a play therapist is able to offer the reassurance of a personal, one-to-one relationship to help the child come to a solution.
Child life specialists and occupational therapists are also at this end of the continuum, albeit their approaches are sometimes more structured, because they may have very specific goals in mind.
However, we should perhaps end this section with a couple of caveats. First, as Piaget (1951) tells us, a lot of childrenās play is actually repetition and practice of previously learned actions, so we should be very cautious when interpreting its meaning. That leads us to the second point, that is, that a childās play may not mean what we think it does. It is often the case that play is ambiguous and/or paradoxical (Sutton-Smith, 1997). The most obvious example of this is play fightingāan activity that most mammals indulge in. ...