The 's Use Of Play Therapy With Dibs Essay

The issues in this case study involve Melinda Smith, a veteran special education teacher, Derrick Yate, a student with behavioral disorder, Greg, the school principal, Barba Cole, the school social worker, Mrs. Yates, Derrick’s mom and Mr. Douglas, a general education teacher. Besides being a student with behavioral disorder, Derrick was low achieving and had developed a notorious reputation around school. According to Karen, one of the fifth-grade teachers, “Derrick has terrorized everyone”. Despites all the putdowns on Derrick, Mrs. Smith decides to take on the challenge to straighten his behavior.

For the purpose of this essay, I will be comparing and contrasting two child development theorists, Donald Winnicott (1896 – 1971) and Eric Erickson (1902 – 1994), and showing how their theories link to therapeutic play.

This book portrays the effectiveness of play therapy on an emotionally disturbed boy named Dibs. Dibs', 5, had been attending a private school for 2 years. Throughout his years in school, he showed no improvement on his behavior. He continued to alienate himself from the other kids, as well as, his teachers. In the beginning, he never spoke nor moved. He then started to crawl around the room observing every item in his way. Dibs' would come in everyday and stand where his mother had left him until one of the teachers took off his coat. He spent most of his time looking at books, as if he could read them. Although, if anyone approached him, he would back into the wall and cover himself. He would scream, push, and sometimes scratch anyone that

Throughout therapy, Dibs appeared to be aware that his therapy was on the same schedule as his school calendar. With three sessions left to go, Miss Axline informed Dibs that “there won’t be many more times to come before we go away for the summer” (Axline, 1964, p. 183). Dibs responded in agreement with Miss Axline by confirming “yes. About three more times counting today” (p. 183). In the beginning of Dibs’s last session before summer vacation, he right away acknowledged that he was going to miss Miss Axline while he was on summer vacation.

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.

The reasons for behavior during and after the session can be inferred from the patterns and objects of play. Dibs was particularly interested in playing with the sandbox and the doll house. From his play, it is sensible to deduce that rejection and ignorance of parents deeply hurt Dibs and induce his maladaptive response. On the other hand, Dibs’ play and behaviors in playroom clearly reveals his superior intellectual capacity, which contradicts greatly with his overt presenting problems in daily functioning at home or

The success of play therapy achieved in the end was uplifting. Throughout the story, my emotions were on a roller coaster. I was engrossed in the techniques of Axline’s approach and the gradual development of Dibs’ personality. His improvement was evident and I felt joyous each time he demonstrated strength and hope. In the beginning, Dibs was resistant to leaving the Child Guidance Center because he feared going home to an emotionally absent environment. Soon, he began accepting the fact that when the hour ended he had to leave. An endearing moment happened when Dibs told Axline that he would return the following Thursday to “fill up again with happiness” (Axline, 1964, p. 133). The playroom was a special place where Dibs could express himself without limitation, and his liberation was refreshing.

One thing that really surprised me in Landreth was the fact that you are not suppose to to ask children questions during the play session. I thought that as a therapist you were suppose to ask questions when necessarily to invoke feeling or to clarify, but here it said that asking a question could lead to a feeling of not being understood. One thing in dibs that I did not fully understand was the point in which the play therapist came in to observe him in the classroom. Typically dibs did not do well listening and interacting with people, he would make his own agenda and do his own thing. When it became time to go outside originally dibs said no, but when the play therapist said she would like to go outside, dibs immediately changed his mind. He was willing to try and almost please her, while in the past was described to have a meltdown when someone tried to include him in something he did not want. Lastly, one thing that I liked in the book was the play therapists dedication to actually helping dibs learn to cope, not just coddling him. She refused money to come to his home playroom to be with him and kept her limits when he was having a temper tantrum. She knew it was in his best interest not to emotionally confused him anymore, but to teach him how to cope with the world. I thought this was amazing, because I would not have the self control to not scoop that child in my arms and give them all the

The book of Dibs is a very interesting read, it is about a young boy who has a rich family and dad is a well-known scientist and little sister gets all the attention and is a brat. Dibs attends a private school and doesn’t receive the attention he needs from his home life. The teachers observe Dibs and his actions as he sits in the classroom or crawls around the room and hides. Dibs loves books and is always grabbing for some or finding some books to open. Dibs seems to come off to me as unsocial and bothered. In chapter 1, when they tell dibs that it is time to go home he doesn’t want to move. To me it seems he doesn’t want to go home because his parents or sister pays attention to him so he sits alone and quite. It seems his parents don’t care about Dibs or care to figure out what is in his best interest. There has to be a reason when they tell Dibs it is time to go home he doesn’t move or talk and balls up in his arms and won’t listen or look at anyone, and throws a fit when they pick him up kicking screaming and crying or he just lets it happen and is quite and looks and feels defeated. I don’t like in chapter one how everyone just overlooks him or doesn’t show him enough attention or really tries to help him or see what is going on and how other parents look down upon him for his disability. Other parents don’t want Dibs there either because he has scratched or has bitten their children and don’t see that there is more going on with Dibs then him just being a socially

The following paper is a review of the book The Explosive Child (2014) written by Dr. Ross W. Greene, Ph.D. and will consist of two parts. First, I will provide an in depth review of the book itself, the methodologies described in the book, and will explain how the interventions in the book can be used in different settings. Secondly, I will reflect on my personal thoughts and feelings while reading this book as well as explaining how I might use the information acquired from the book in my own professional development for becoming a therapist.

The plot revolves around a young 5 year-old boy that is emotionally deprived from his parents and is mentally unstable around other individuals. The little boy would often hide in the corner of the classroom or under tables to avoid human contact, and when someone his age were to approach him, he would try to scratch or kick them. Virginia Axline is the primary psychologist that directed the play therapy for Dibs. His parents and school board deemed Dibs to be autistic, but psychologists believed that Dibs was simply misunderstood. Axline developed a “Non-Directive Play Therapy” to help Dibs overcome his hatred towards his parents and the fear of being isolated. The book consists of a theme of acknowledging and allowing children to express their psychological and emotional needs.

Two research methods - an experiment and survey - were used to answer the research question asked: “How effective is Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT)? A non-pharmaceutical treatment option for school-aged children diagnosed with ADHD”. This paper is set up to show an example of the possible result of a research conducted to show the effectiveness of CCPT. Within the experiment a host of 20 school-aged children were to be used with 10 variables

Many of those who abuse other were abused themselves, so many times they pass on the abuse to others. For example, those who physically abuse other can be similar to those who are sexually abuse, in the fact, that they carry on the abuse unless they deal with the issues. Much like the treatment provided by Bradford Owen’s and his counselors, though, new types of therapy like: psychodrama, play therapy, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Psychodrama is a method of acting out what is going on outside and inside a person, so people can feel the problem and deal with it. In the same way, play therapy, is a way for a child to work with their inter struggles while role play or using toys to better approach sensitive issues. Finally, Dialectical Behavior

In the Adlerian Play Therapy, a child will misbehave if they could not find a way to behave in a socially acceptable way (Snow, Buckley & Williams, 1999). There were four identified goal behind the misbehavior of the child. The four identified goals were attention, power, revenge and a display of inadequacy (Dinkmeyer & McKay, 1989; Dreikurs, 1948 as cited in Snow, Buckley & Williams, 1999). Parent or others people that plays in a role in the child’s life will pay attention to the child when he or she is misbehaving and this is how the child seeks attention. If the child’s goal is to attain power, they will often involve in a fight with other child to attain power or control. The child will misbehave in order to revenge to the parent by making

Aggression is considered the energetic, forceful, protective quality of a person. Some say that aggression is misconstrued because without aggression humans couldn’t communicate because in order to communicate a person has to energetically preset them. Gestalt play therapy encourages the therapist to do the exercises with the child because this makes the child feel more comfortable and provides a bond. When it comes time for the child to express emotion and discover unconscious emotions the therapist should explain to the child what and emotion is and what body responses are to different emotions. According to The Handbook of Gestalt Play Therapy, “Children’s emotional expression is an important indication of the nature of their process. Some children are not aware of what emotions are. This does not mean that they do not experience emotion. They often just do not know how to verbalize it. In many cases, children tend to suppress negative emotions and will seldom announce on their own