Why Play Therapy?

To play is natural for children; children do not have to be taught how to play. When given the opportunity, children will “play out” their experiences and emotions. Play therapists join children in their worlds of play and interact with them in strategic ways to promote growth, change, and healing.

Play Therapy:

• Teaches emotional language
• Increases confidence
• Solves problem behaviors such as tantrums
• Improves social skills
• Provides the opportunity to work through trapped, repressed, and denied emotions
• Helps children become more emotionally aware
• Leads children to be more self-reliant and feel more capable
• Empowers children to feel like independent decision makers
• Allows children to work through any past traumas or difficult experiences
• Gives children a special time that is just for them
• Improves peer and family relationships

Play therapy is highly effective in addressing a wide range of issues, such as anxiety, moodiness/depression, behavior problems (such as defiance and tantrums), just to name a few. If your child is struggling in any way, it’s natural to feel discouraged and even hopeless at times. It is time now for you to breathe a big sigh of relief, because there is such comfort and reassurance in knowing that the challenges you are concerned about CAN be overcome!

We now know that children get better faster and become their best possible selves when they are given the freedom to be themselves. At Play Therapy with Dr. Jen, children aren’t expected to sit still on an uncomfortable couch and answer a lot of questions that make them feel like there is something wrong with them (this is what happens in many traditional talk therapy sessions!). Children play during their therapy sessions and actually love coming to their “special time that is just for them” each week.