Play therapy is a form of therapeutic counseling focused on children ages three to ten; children are observed during play in order to pinpoint their emotions and possible issues that may be troubling them.
For children, their most common form of communication isn’t through speech; it is through action.
“Language is not their primary or most comfortable way of communicating when they’re young, but play is,” Play Therapy Program Coordinator Kara Carnes-Holt said. “The whole philosophy of play therapy is to think of play as the child’s language and toys as their words.”
UW not only offers play therapy studies through the school of counseling, but it also houses the Rocky Mountain Center of Play Therapy, which is one of very few training centers for counselors to gain the information and instruction needed to become a play therapist.
The role of the counselor during the play therapy sessions is to facilitate relationships with children that allow them to feel safe and at-home in the play-room. Often, it is easy for a child to feel as though they aren’t validated or listened to and play therapists must combat that.
“Children are in so many different settings where they don’t have a lot of power in their lives,” UW Associate Professor Eric Dafoe said. “Something that’s so unique about play therapy is it allows a child to be present with an adult where the adult’s focus is fully on being with the child there.”
Within this form of counseling, the child isn’t receiving instruction or being told what to do. They’re encouraged to use the toys and materials around them as they seem fit. They are given the chance to grow and thrive with this outlet of self-expression.
What sets UW’s play therapy program apart from others in the country is the fact that all master’s and doctoral students are required to take courses in play therapy, whether or not they intend to work with children in their specific profession.
“Our counseling philosophy here is that we train you to be a generalist as far as being a counselor goes,” Carnes-Holt said. “We live in a rural state and we don’t always have the luxury of targeting a specific population – that’s just not practical where we are and we don’t feel like it gives justice to the profession.”
However, some counselors feel as though the emergence of play therapy’s popularity within schools and counseling may be detrimental to the development of therapeutic options.
“My only concern is that in the process of focusing on the youngsters, we’re forgetting about the oldsters who often need just as much help, if not more,” Joseph Russo, from the school of teacher education, said.
While this may be something that drives certain people away, Dafoe is confident that the play therapy classes will give counseling students the tools they need to be successful when working with both children and adults.
“How can you truly be with someone in a nonverbal way?” Dafoe said. “How can you be there supporting them? I think even people who have no interest working with kids and never plan to work with kids can still benefit from the class because you learn some additional ways in which you can work with adults as well.”
As play therapy gains more ground here at UW through intensive conferences offered every other year through the Wyoming Association for Play Therapy as well as the online certification available for master’s students, the counseling department hopes to successfully spread the ideal of rigorous training for future counselors entering the field.
