Play Therapy

Healing Children Through the Power of Play

Playtime is the best time for curious little explorers! B Well Counseling is excited to offer Play Therapy to help your little one process life’s BIG emotions.

What is Child-Centered Play Therapy

Dr. Garry Landreth, one of the leaders who formalized child-centered play therapy, says play therapy relieves stress, enhances connections in relationships, stimulates creative expression and exploration, and helps children regulate their emotions. Play is used within the context of the therapeutic session to establish rapport, engage, and provide children with a way to express themselves that does not rely on receptive or expressive language skills beyond the child’s developmental level. In play therapy, the therapist depends on the child’s play rather than verbal responses. Children use play as a means of communicating their experiences. Children are encouraged to express their feelings, thoughts, and experiences.

Play therapy offers children a secure and accepting environment to explore, express, and experience their emotions freely. This emotionally safe space is crucial for their natural process of growth and healing and provides a comforting backdrop for their therapeutic journey.

Benefits of Play Therapy

Play therapy provides children with a safe environment in which they can express and explore their emotions through play, which is their natural language.

Play therapy has many benefits. It relieves stress, enhances relationships, stimulates creative expression, and regulates emotions. Playing can help children experience these benefits, contributing to their overall well-being.

Therapeutic Environment: Children are given an emotionally safe and accepting environment to explore, express, and experience their emotions, aiding their growth and healing.

Effectiveness and Parental Involvement: Research shows play therapy is effective for children’s various challenges, and therapists often involve parents to ensure progress.

How it Works

At B Well Counseling Center, our clinicians are trained in child-centered play therapy and possess empathy, unconditional positive regard, and genuineness. Through these qualities of the clinician, the child will eventually be able to accept themselves. Think of yourself and the many roles you play in your life. In different settings with various people, you may need to change your behavior for acceptance. That can be stressful and challenging. Where are you, and who are you with when you are your most authentic self and are accepted exactly as you are? How does that feel? Pretty amazing? That’s how children can think through the process of play therapy. They are free to be who they are born to be, complete with the unique gifts they possess.

In child-centered play therapy, the relationship is key. This approach to play therapy believes that people (including children) will heal, grow, and change if they are provided with an atmosphere where the prosocial aspects of the self can flourish. The child-centered play therapist can facilitate understanding by viewing the world from the child’s frame of reference and unique perspective.

Research

Play therapy research has shown effectiveness in improving or supporting children experiencing various concerns/needs, such as:

Internalizing behaviors such as anxiety, depression, and others
Externalizing behaviors such as aggression, disruptive behaviors, self-control, and others
Attachment issue
Academic performance
Autism
Attention deficit

Homelessness
Loss and bereavement
Medical conditions
Parents/caregiver/teacher relationship
Self-concept/self-esteem
Social-emotional assets
Speech/language struggles
Trauma, natural disaster, and PTSD

Parents and Play Therapy

Because parents and caregivers are children’s most outstanding teachers, we offer Child-Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT). This evidence-based 10-session filial therapy model empowers parents with the skills essential to relationship building through play therapy skill building. CPRT is a treatment program that helps parents and children strengthen their relationship. It's based on the idea that a secure attachment is essential for a child’s well-being.

How does CPRT work?

Parents learn play therapy skills in group or individual parent coaching sessions
Parents practice these skills with their child
A therapist provides feedback on parents’ play sessions
Parents complete homework between sessions

What does CPRT aim to achieve?

Improve communication between parents and children
Help parents understand and accept their child
Help parents respond more effectively to their child’s needs
Help parents limit problem behaviors
Help children develop self-control
Help children process their emotions
Help children improve their problem-solving ability
Reduce parental stress

Who is CPRT for?

Parents of children ages 2-10 who are experiencing social, emotional, and relational disorders

How is CPRT delivered?

In a series of 10 weekly structured group or individual parent coaching sessions
In a casual setting
With guidance from a licensed professional

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You’re Next Steps

Ready to take the next step?

Fill out and submit the contact form and Megan, our client care coordinator, will be in contact as soon as possible.

Let's Connect

Don’t want to wait? You don’t have to! Give us a call today or schedule your free 15-minute consultation with the therapist of your choice in our convenient client portal.