Play Therapy helps children to explore their feelings, express themselves and to make sense of their life experiences.

Play is a child's natural medium to learn, communicate and explore his/her world. Conventional talking therapies may not be appropriate for children and young people who struggle to put their feelings into words. 

For this reason I provide the children with a safe environment containing toys, puppets, musical instruments, art materials, sandplay and therapeutic games.

Play Therapy can be used to help to alleviate many children's emotional and behavioural problems, inculding children who are...

• Not realising their full potential - academically, or socially.
• Having nightmares or disturbed sleep.
• At risk of being excluded from school.
• Suffering as a result of trauma.
• Have suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse.
• Adopted or fostered.
• Thought to exhibit ADHD
• Suffering because of separated/divorced parents.
• Suffering from anxiety, stress or phobias.
• Suffering from a loss or bereavement.
• are withdrawn or continually unhappy.
• Disabled, or suffering from a long term illness
• On the Autistic Spectrum.
• Finding it difficult to make friends.
• Frequently quarreling with peers or siblings.
• Bullying other children or are being bullied themselves.
• Displaying inappropriate behaviour.

Children often have difficulty talking freely about their feelings in everyday language, this is because everyday language is not their natural language of feelings. Their natural language of feelings is that of image and metaphor as in stories and dreams. The telling of stories by the child or therapist in play, painting or sand can speak about feelings with far greater richness.

I therefore provide the children with a range of activities to enable them to express themselves more naturally. These include:

Art - Many children choose art as a way of expressing themselves. Images are often extensions of the self - made visible in symbolic art form. Children tend to feel safer working with an image than talking more directly about their issues and appreciate the gentler process. Dialoguing with the image in a person-centred way can help to make connections and bridges between the image and the self.

Sandplay -  is a a powerful and compelling non-verbal physical activity that involves the selection of miniatures from a wide range and placing them in a sandtray to create a picture or miniature "world". 

There is a choice of wet or dry sand and the sand can be moulded and manipulated. Areas of water can be represented by moving the sand to reveal the painted blue bottom of the sandtray. Children are not restricted by any preconceived ideas about their ability as they might with art, so they approach the activity with less inhibition.

Regression is encouraged by the sensory nature of the activity and thus early trauma and conflicts emerge and are expressed through the choice and positioning of the symbols.

Therapeutic Storytelling - A therapeutic story aims to speak with empathy and precision about the emotional issue or problem that the child is struggling withand presents hope and the possibility of a healthier and more creative coping mechanism.

Creative Visualization - is the technique of using one's imagination to visualize specific positive behaviours or events focussing on information from as many senses as possible to increase the intensity of the experience.

Music - The aim is to enable the child to feel comfortable and confident to express him/herself through the musical instruments and to enjoy communicating a wider range of emotions in a two-way relationship, including aspects of interpersonal timing, attuned reciprocity in shared play, turn taking, listening and responding to the other person. 

Puppets - Puppets are popular withsome children and are a rich source of symbolic play. Shy children sometimes speak more fluently "behind the puppet", which says and does things the child might find too difficult to express overtly.

Clay - allows three dimensional work that can be moulded and altered thus having more flexibility and possibly more reality than drawing or painting. Children can change their minds as they go along, so often their hands rather than their heads lead the way.

Therapeutic Board Games - Some children prefer the structure of a board game and are eager to earn tokens by answering questions related to the theme of the game. The games are about anxiety, self-esteem, bullying, parental divorce, bereavement, positive thinking and social skills.