Talking is an integral part of counseling with adults. Adults are able to step back and talk about what is going on in their mental and emotional processes. Much of adult counseling is helping adults to further develop their ability to understand and manage their internal experiences. The ability to have perspective on one’s internal world does not develop for most people until they reach their teens. While children are able to describe what is going on around them and can identify feelings, for the most part they are not able to have an objective view of what is going on inside of them. Without this ability it is necessary to conduct therapy with children differently than how one would conduct therapy with an adult.[1]
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Imagine what you would do if you needed to communicate to someone who spoke a totally different language from you. You would need to act out what you want to communicate. This is what children do in play therapy. Children naturally use play to work out problems that they are facing in the real world. Using toys, children can act out the sorts of situations that are causing them problems. For example, say a child is afraid a lot and needs to learn how to manage their fear. They may play games with big, bad-guys and act out a much smaller good-guy who somehow manages to defeat the much bigger bad-guy. They can identify with the good-guy and work through the fear of the bad-guy in a controlled situation (playing with toys) in a way that helps them to deal with situations they have much less control over (the real world). By allowing the child to play and interacting with them through talking and playing I help children to do many of the things that adults do in talk therapy such as: putting words to their experiences, finding solutions they may overlook, challenging problematic thinking and learning to manage their emotions. How I play with children also communicates to them that I will be able to understand and help them, just as talking helps adults to learn that a therapist is safe and trustworthy.
Since children are limited in what they can understand and can communicate regarding their struggles, talking with parents is an important part of the counseling process. For most clients I spend about 30-35 minutes with the child and the remaining time with the parents. A number of important things happen during the time I spend with the parents: I collect information about how things are going with the child at home and at school; I share what I am learning about the child from my time with them; and I seek to work with parents in developing strategies for helping the child inside and outside of counseling.
Footnotes
- Photo by Miika Silfverberg. ↩
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