Adlerian Play Therapy

Play therapy is a form of therapy where children can’t act out their fantasies and express their feelings or experiences and are simply encouraged to do so through play, abetted by a therapist's interpretations.

The paper topic is focused on how play therapy can help children develop their behavioral and emotional structures. The primary research question for the paper is Can Play Therapy help children with emotional and behavioral issues get better? The primary hypotheses for this paper are: If play therapy can help a child overcome his self-esteem issues, then it can help the child grow emotionally and if play therapy can help a child overcome his self-esteem issues, then it can help the child grow a strong behavioral structure. The paper is divided into an introduction which gives a brief background of the topic, literature review which focuses on the results of 10 recent studies with familiar topics, the methods section, and the results sections which provides the primary results of the study and the discussions section which illustrates the lessons learnt from conducting this study as well as the differences and limitations of the study alongside the new directions that similar researches in the future could look to explore.

The crucial C’s of Adlerian play therapy are I feel Connected, I am Capable, I Count, and I have Courage. Feeling connected to others, being self-reliant, perceiving

A study conducted on effect of play therapy on reducing behavioral problems of children with the oppositional defiant disorder. Multistage cluster sampling was selected. 40 children were randomly selected, according to their parents and teachers. Out of 40, 16 children showed the symptoms of ADHD. Play therapy reduced the severity of ADHD in experimental group. Children`s disobedience can be reduced by the play therapy. (Jafari.N

Children often face various mental health issues when they are growing up. These issues include anxiety, trauma, depression and now even autistic children. Treating young children of these conditions has been a great challenge over time. Therapy can help give children the opportunity to express their feelings through play. According to the Association for Play Therapy (2002), play therapy is a "systematic use of a theoretical model to establish an interpersonal process in which trained play therapists use the therapeutic powers of play to help clients prevent or resolve psychosocial difficulties and achieve optimal growth and development." Although various studies have been conducted in regards to play research, there is no link that has been given between play therapy and the success of an individual later in life.

Often, elementary school counselors are reluctant to suggest play therapy and have perceived barriers to its efficacy. This study surveyed 259 members of the American School Counselor Association about those barriers to implementing play therapy, and the potential solutions that could be used to overcome any reluctance. The typical barriers are logical: training, administration, time, resources, and space. It is not that the counselors as a whole do not believe in play therapy, it is that they cannot always find appropriate resources to implement the tool. The study raises the awareness that in the contemporary school in which budgets and resources are extremely tight, more training, educating faculty and administrators, and even using alternative or personal funds to purchase play therapy materials are often necessary to help students.

In discussing the difficulty in organizing his book, Golden (2002) explains, “It would be nice if I could pigeonholed each case as illustrative of a single counseling method, but real-life cases just don’t work that way” (p. x). MacGill (2017) agrees with this assessment by Golden (2002), which she demonstrates in her self-described “eclectic approach to play therapy.”

The topic of this book is how play therapy can help a child who has been in isolation, and self-discovery. Axline supports this view in various ways throughout the book. She explains her reasoning for not interrupting Dibs and gives many examples of using counseling skills. Axline’s style is formal and the chapters are clearly organized. There is a chapter for each play therapy session. She describes Dibs’ activities captivatingly, making the book engaging to read and showing that she, too, is engaged with Dibs (counsellorjen/wordpress).

The effectiveness of play therapy comes from the integration of play based skills into the day-to-day family life interactions.

When a child has experienced a crisis or trauma, the play therapist should consider intensive play therapy in which the child is scheduled for play therapy sessions two or three times a week for the first two weeks in order to speed up the therapeutic process (Landreth, 2012).

The article,” Child-Centered Expressive Arts and Play Therapy: School Groups for At-Risk Adolescent Girls”, by Kristi L. Perryman, Rochelle Moss, and Katt Cochran discusses the use of humanistic play and expressive art therapy combined with group therapy to help at-risk adolescent females overcome life challenging issues in middle school.

The setting in which my personal theory of therapy will take place is within an education school setting. Current research has claimed that utilizing APT is helpful in decreasing concerning behaviour within elementary students (Kottman and Ashby, 2015). In developing my personalized therapeutic orientation, an IPT approach was established, focusing on both non-directive and directive play therapy to support the complex needs of clients (Gil, Konrath, Shaw, Goldin, & McTaggart Bryan, 2015). This is helpful to meet the needs of a varying population of clients with differing needs and abilities within a school setting. This is highlighted as helpful for this population by Gil, Konrath, Shaw, Goldin, & McTaggart Bryan (2015) indicating that child-centered

In the selected case study, The mode of therapeutic intervention will take the Gestalt Play Therapy focus. The interaction between Jacob and I will be an open dialogue with straightforward caring, warmth, acceptance, and self-responsibility that specifically focuses on inclusion, with me fully present in the experience of Jacob, where I will not judge, analyze, or interpret what is observed. My presence refers to expressing observations, preferences, feelings, personal experience, and thoughts to Jacob. Commitment to dialogue will present the opportunity to encourage a sense of connection between Jacob and me. Our dialogue will be active and nonverbal or verbal. It can be any modality that expresses and moves

The article“Effects of Adlerian play therapy on children's externalizing behavior” by Meany‐Walen (2015) discusses that “Without intervention, children's externalizing behaviors tend to worsen over time and increase the risk that they will experience future problems.” Meany-Walen article is a quantitative study case, that mainly focuses on six Caucasian boys in kindergarten and first grade to see the effects on the Adlerian play therapy on children’s classroom behavior. The article suggests that the particular problem areas are kids that had disruptive classroom behaviors such as aggressiveness, hyperactivity, attention

CBT Play Therapy All have the foundation of using play as a means to: help prevent children from having difficulties, to overcome challenges, to grow and develop. One can observe, Susan Knell, the author of the book author of the book, “Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy” began using CBT with play therapy with children in the 1990’s. She began to take traditional cognitive and behavioral strategies and adjust them to the developmental age and needs of her young clients. By adding play through puppets, dolls, art materials, toy cars and sandboxes, for example, she has been able to offer another treatment option for younger children. CBPT could help an aggressive child learn new ways of coping. Using puppets and various situations that could cause a child to show aggression, the therapist uses puppets and shows other forms of acting. After the therapist has displayed a healthier way to cope the child is encouraged, via puppets, to model the healthy