Play Therapy
People experience emotional and behavioral challenges in every stage of life. Even children and adolescents experience different problems in their young ages. Like adults, children and adolescents experience difficulties such as child abuse, depression, low self-esteem, loss of a family member, bullying, sexual abuse, and drug abuse. As a result, therapists use different approaches to help children and adolescents out to healthy growth. Group therapy is one of the most potent methods for children and adolescents because, mostly, they are faced with similar issues. To make group therapy more useful, I would use strategies such as play therapy.
The reason why I would choose Play Therapy is that groups can significantly relate them, and thus they would be more attentive, which will help them. The first step in any therapy is to make the environment conducive for the clients. Children like engaging in fun things and a game is one of them. The use of games would make children comfortable and willing to participate in the therapy. The Feeling Word Game is one of the techniques that I am going to use when counseling children. The game has proven to be essential when helping children to deal with feelings that they undergo. First, I would ask the children to identify different emotions that they experience at their age. Second, I will tell different real or fictional stories that incorporate mixed feelings relatable to their generation. After the stories, I would say the children to identify the emotions in the story to make sure that they have a good understanding. Finally, I would encourage them to share their own stories until I discover the issues they are undergoing. Through this, I would be able to help them cope with different feelings. Other games active games that I can use in group therapy for children include Mad game, The Slow-Motion Game, and Second Story Technique.
Childhood is the first stage of human development. It runs from the age of one to around ten or twelve years, depending on the growth rate of an individual. This is the stage that most children learn new things in schools and at home. Children have a small body, and they are prone to physical abuse, mental abuse, and sexual abuse because they have little power to fight back. Because they are at the initial stages of cognitive development, they find difficulties in thinking, understanding things, and solving problems. This makes it efficient if I use an approach that is easy to understand for them. The reason why I cannot use dialectical behavior therapy is that young children have a problem expressing themselves verbally. The treatment will help children to understand their feelings and why they feel the way they think. Also, the approach is educative because it shows children how they should react to different emotions and what causes them.
The central theme for group therapy will be coping with emotions. As stated above, children are in constant learning of new things s and learning how to deal with emotions would be a significant boost both their cognitive and physical development. Anybody can experience emotions at any stage of development, but adults have a higher advantage of coping with them than young children. It becomes a necessity to counsel children to control their emotions and have much understanding of them. For instance, children need to understand that negative emotion like depression, angriness, and stress are not their weaknesses but are healthy, just like positive emotions. Also, they need to know how to cope with the feelings to ensure that they do not engage in harmful activities — for instance, telling children to avoid engaging in fights when they are angry because it may lead to injuries. Learning to manage emotions has a lot of importance to their current and future life. First, it enables children to be empathetic and supportive of other children when they are undergoing negative emotions. Secondly, emotions can affect child performance in schools. Therapists have argued that children who are unable to control their feelings tend to perform poorer in classes. This is because they are less attentive in lessons, and they lose focus quickly. Counseling children in coping with emotions teaches them to be less reactive to emotions. For instance, when children get angry with each other, a well-counseled child will opt out of fight though it might seem like the best way to solve the issue. Lastly, the ability to cope with emotions gives a child confidence, capable, competent as well as developing self-esteem. All these reasons prove that it is necessary to counsel children on how to cope with emotions at their young age. As a result, parents and teachers must organize for regular counseling sections in the schools or at homes.
Everybody is exposed to challenging activities at different levels of life. In adulthood stage, an individual is well developed cognitively. As a result, during therapeutic group sections, they can identify the issues, and at some point, they can also give suggestions on how they can help themselves out. On the other hand, in a children group therapy, children are unable to identify the issues they are undergoing, and it becomes the responsibility of the therapist to identify the problems. A therapist may need to trick children through the use of play techniques. They will be more attentive and cooperative because they are enjoying it. Also, the therapist should be keen on the keen on children’s facial expressions as they can significantly help in the identification of the issues. Play techniques cannot apply for adult therapies because they may seem tedious, and adults are not active in plays. Second, simple language is essential in children and adolescent treatments. The cognitive development level of children allows them to understand mostly when simple language is used. A person might need to use direct names for the children to understand. On the other hand, complex language can significantly work in adult therapy. Adults have a good understanding of complicated language styles like metaphors and sarcasm. It would be challenging for the therapists to use metaphors and irony on young children because they would not understand.
Therapies for children are different from treatments for adults. Play therapy is an essential tool for becoming a competent therapist when dealing with children. Plays, games, and acting tend to make children more engaging. In my group, I would like to talk about coping with emotions is a significant issue that affects almost every corner in a child’s life. This makes it a necessity to have therapies to teach children about different emotions and how to cope with it. In treatment, The Feeling Word game has proved to be effective.