Play Therapy for Children

What Is Play Therapy for Children in Birmingham AL?

Play is a natural activity of learning, exploration, and communication for children. Birmingham play therapy for children takes advantage of this innate ability to help children explore their feelings and thoughts, express themselves, and understand their life experiences. In essence, it helps them to play out what they may otherwise find difficult to put into words.

Depending on the needs of the child, therapeutic play can encompass a variety of specific approaches. There are many forms of play therapy including Child-Centered Play Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy, Adlerian Play Therapy, Jungian Play Therapy, Psychodynamic Play Therapy, Child-Parent Relationship Play Therapy, Narrative Play Therapy, and more.

Play therapy for Children in Birmingham AL is a sensible, research-supported, and developmentally-based child counseling approach to helping children cope with and overcome the problems they experience in the process of living their lives. The younger a child is when they begin to play therapy, the more malleable their brain structure will be. This makes it easier to build neural pathways that lead to healthy emotional regulation, well-being, and adaptive behavior as they mature into happy, well-adjusted, and functional adults.

Who Can Benefit From Play Therapy?

Generally, the appropriate range for play therapy for children is 2-12 years old, but older children with cognitive or developmental delays may also benefit. Moreover, the therapeutic play has also proven effective in treating adolescents and teens who may be going through significant life changes or peer and family relationship issues.

Exceeding Contentment Behavioral Health Inc., play therapy creates a safe environment and allows for children to open up and explore what they need to work on. It has proven to be an effective therapeutic method for a variety of children’s problems including, but not limited to, the following areas:

• Psychological issues – anxiety, grief, and loss, communication barriers, shyness, stress, dissociation and schizophrenia, emotional disturbances
• Behavioral problems – anger, aggression, acting out, poor motor coordination, ADHD, self-harming, enuresis, and encopresis
• Educational obstacles – poor organizational skills, poor planning and execution of tasks, bullying, disabilities (autism spectrum disorder, sensory impairment, intellectual impairment, deaf and physical challenges, chronic illness)
• Responses to family and relationship difficulties – family violence, abuse and neglect, trauma, parental separation or divorce, attachment disorders

Mild issues may resolve in 6-12 sessions while complex issues may take up to 48 sessions to resolve. But every child is different in terms of the amount of time they need to heal, change, and learn new adaptive skills. Multiple factors impact a successful outcome, such as consistency of visits, parental involvement, and reinforcing skills at home.

How Do Play Therapy Sessions Work at Exceeding Contentment Behavioral Health?

Our play therapy for children is about accepting the child for who they are and not looking at them as a problem. Rather, here at Exceeding Contentment Behavioral HEalth, we focus is on trying to understand where they are at and what they need at that moment in their life.

As noted before, children use play as their main form of communicating thoughts, feelings, values, and perceptions. They learn through hands-on activities. The various toys in our play therapy room are designed to allow for the expression of specific emotions and needs that they don’t necessarily have the language for. Our team of play therapists are specially trained in how to read beyond the surface of the child’s play so they can interpret that language and provide tailored support to the child and parents.

ECB Health’s goal in each session is to help your child resolve their social, emotional, behavioral, and developmental difficulties over time or to learn new behaviors and skills to cope with challenges. As they play out their negative thoughts and emotions, they don’t need to act them out anymore. Generally, children over the age of seven quickly start to understand how to take new coping skills they learned in therapy and use them in the real world.