Why Play Therapy Can Solve Anxiety For Your Child

We’ll address the question head on as to WHY play therapy can solve anxiety for your child.

I bet you’ve heard the advice to NOT ask a child WHY!

The reason is they often have no idea why they did something – it’s a very demanding question, even for adults. Instinct, habit and social customs often drive our behaviour and we never think to question WHY we do something.

Of course, WHY is similar to the HOW question – how does play therapy solve... – but not quite.

HOW tends to address what exactly we do in session with your child. In contrast, WHY gives you a reason.

And let’s face it, whether you’re paying the therapist or not, you deserve to know WHY they’re doing play therapy rather than the other options available!

3 main reasons why play therapy can help solve anxiety

1 Away from the general life of school and home, play therapy offers a safe and supportive environment when your child can say what they want rather than what they think you expect them to say. That’s about their actions and feelings.

And no, try as you might to give them permission to say what they really want to say, it mostly doesn’t work. We’re the authority figures in their lives! They aim to please us.

2 There are opportunities to develop coping skills and to manage emotions. At home, too, agreed – but life is pressing in on them at home. This means they’re not purely focused on the things they need to develop. In play therapy, the time is set apart and non-interruptible.

3 Because your child chooses what to play with and how to play, they will build a sense of mastery over whatever's troubling them. This develops confidence and reduces their anxiety levels.

We can’t remove anxiety-producing events from their life, but we can give them a sense of how to control it. Think how often children are not in control of what happens! Play therapy reverses things for the time they’re in session, which empowers them.

Why is play and play therapy a natural method for helping children?

Play therapy can solve anxiety because it stems from the following four factors that are essential to take into account when dealing with children:

Their development stage and growth
The comfort and familiarity of play in their lives
The crucial role of not having to find words
Their naturally immature levels of emotional regulation

Let's look at them in turn.

Developmental stage

Up to the age of 12, your child is typically developing their social, cognitive and emotional skills. Playing in their own unique way is actually exploring, experimenting and practising new skills in a safe environment where disaster is not a crisis and success is a great feeling!

How might this show up?

Playing with the doctor’s kit alongside the therapist and organising a pretend visit to cure a dog. Sometimes as the doctor, sometimes as the dog owner. Sometimes the dog might even make the call before the child feels able to speak up for themselves!
Building walls with blocks to keep others out and knocking them dead if they get in – and then gradually seeing what happens if they let one in and dig a hole in the sand together!

Life is pretty crazy in the playroom! But the play therapist is trained to understand what's happening, or run with it and trust the child's own processes if not!

Comfort and familiarity

If your child is playing, they’re on familiar territory and can be as inventive as they wish – with few consequences except those within their play. They can therefore try out new ways of thinking, responding, feeling etc.

Playing is also a comfortable place to be. No chores, no carrying out orders, just playing – in a way they’ve chosen themselves. When they’re not “being anxious”, all sorts of things can get righted!

If you'd like a refresh on how to encourage helpful play with your child at home, here's how.

Non-verbal expression

You’ll have seen how language develops slowly over a few years. A child may be truly anxious but have no means of expressing it in words.

In play, however, they have other ways of expressing themselves – through actions they take or force little characters to take, movement in the room (eg hiding under the table to show they feel scared), or play scenarios that progress from week to week as they work through what’s troubling them.

Emotional regulation

With a few rules laid down for safety at the beginning of the first session, your child can release pent-up emotions in a safe and constructive way, knowing that there are these few limits and that the play therapist will enforce them.

For example, to maintain this safety, the play therapist might have to remind your child and say something like:

“No, the rules are you’re not allowed to hit me or hurt me. You can hit that cushion instead.” Or –
“Remember – we agreed the puppets can’t be put in the water. You can put the miniature figures in if you like.”

Being regulated by an adult helps them learn to regulate themselves.

And in addition, the safe environment means they can deal with difficult feelings and start working on a way forward.

Research has proved play therapy can solve anxiety problems

It’s understandable that some parents think they’d be paying for their child to "muck around in the sand and be child-minded"!

However, there's now body of research that proves play therapy has therapeutic value – as it’s name suggests!

You can therefore confidently choose to allow your child to have some play therapy sessions in order to:

Have the professional guidance of the trained therapist to support your child in working through their anxiety and the difficulties stemming from it.
Allow them to play in a safe environment that has long proved its value in facilitating healing and growth.
Help them learn how to cope with their emotions away from the family environment and the natural roles we all play within our families (think: the good child, the bad one, the helpful one, the clever one etc!).
Reveal underlying issues you may be unaware of and can liaise with the therapist in sorting out.
Benefit from the positive outcomes your child will experience in all ways.

Are you convinced as to WHY play therapy can solve anxiety?

If so, and if you believe some sessions of professional play therapy can solve your child’s anxiety, have a read of this post where I help you find one (or any other type of child counsellor) safely.

It's important to sort out whatever is bothering them as soon as possible.

And whereas there’s much that we parents can do for our children, occasionally you need more input than that – especially if you have

several children,
a full-time job and
perhaps obligations to your own parents as well.

Have a look at all my glimpses into the therapy room to get a feel for what happens in play therapy!

Play therapy works! Give it a go?

And one more thing...

Here’s a page from the British Association of Play Therapists giving detailed information for parents.

Why Play Therapy Can Solve Anxiety For Your Child

3 main reasons why play therapy can help solve anxiety