Introducing Play Therapy

We recently sat down with our new Therapeutic Play Practitioner, Beck, to learn all about our newest therapy service. Watch the video or read the transcript below to find out if play therapy could be beneficial for you!

Video Transcript

Hello. You’ve stumbled on the play therapy section of Early Links, and I’m glad you’re here because I get to introduce myself. My name’s Beck and I am the Therapeutic Play Practitioner here at Early Links. So there are four different play therapy modalities that I work with, and they’re the main ones that you find across play therapy internationally.

One of them is directive and that means that for a child who is neurodiverse or perhaps has experienced developmental trauma, we can use a directive approach in play therapy to try and build up their play skills, which hopefully translates into their everyday life and socially, cognitively and emotionally builds up their capacity to be able to cope in everyday life as well.

Then there is non-directive, which is also known as humanistic or child-centred play therapy. It is very child-centred and basically, I let the child guide the entire session and that’s in the hope that eventually, well, firstly we want to build amazing therapeutic rapport, which feels positive for both me the therapist and your child, but it’s in the hope that we’re building a child’s confidence and sense of self and we’re giving them agency in their therapy sessions.

The other modality is called filial play therapy, and that’s actually family play therapy. So that’s where I’ve just come from. I’ve been working in filial therapy for the last couple of years and that is where the whole family is involved or whomever has capacity to be involved because we know life gets busy. So if one parent is interested in coming and doing sessions with their child and that can help build attachment and connection, then I can also create sessions that cater to those needs.

The other beautiful thing about play therapy is it can be used from birth right up to adulthood. I guess we’re not looking at chronological age in play therapy either, we’re looking at developmental age. So if you have an adult client that you think could benefit from play therapy, we can also look at catering for their needs as well in the sessions.

But basically some people are purist child-centered therapists and some people are directive and some people are integrative, which means they combine all of the modalities, and that’s me. I combine all of the modalities because I think that it can’t be a one size fits all for every child. And so we need to kind of work together with families and decide what approach would be best.

And sometimes we might be able to start with directive if they need some help with their play skills and we might be able to move into non-directive and we might be able to add some filial in too. So I look forward to meeting you and working with you.

Want to know more?

You can find out more about how Beck can support you on our Play Therapy page, or get in touch with our friendly team via our Contact page.

You may also like…