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Abstract
ll children have a right to play. Play is spontaneous activity in which a child engages with people and objects around him. It can be active or imaginative, quite or loud, engaged in alone or in group.
Play involves the whole child. Thinking, creative expression of thoughts and feelings, and physical demands all interact in the dynamic process of play. Children learn about relationships with peers, significant adults, and the world around them. They experience the full range of their senses and feelings, how their bodies move through space, and how their imaginations can create alternate worlds of existence. When children build with blocks or sand, romp through the modules of a playground superstructure, learn limits and bond through rough and tumble play, or express themselves and represent the world through hundreds of different materials, they reap the benefits of play in thousands of different ways. They are constantly learning and developing, becoming healthy, well balanced individuals through play.
Despite the numerous benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children. This trend has even affected kindergarten children, who have had free play reduced in their schedules to make room for more academics. An important message that good parents expose their children to every opportunity to excel, buy varying enrichment tools, and ensure their children participate in a wide variety of activities.
All of the main forms of play - physical, objects, pretend - have been described in a wide variety of human cultures, with no clear exceptions to date, although the detailed forms and relative frequencies do vary considerably according to cultural conditions.
A variety of environmental factors could influence a child’s preferences for play. Children must play with what they have available. Therefore, wealth or poverty, and community wellness or social struggle can impact development, play choices, and children’s overall participation in daily occupations.
Even with limited means, children find things to play with. If children are able to safely access natural landscapes, they will find something to play with. Although they have few toys, children living in hunter-gatherer societies use materials available to them to create a variety of outdoor games and playful activities
Children are exposed to enrichment videos and computer programs from early infancy as well as specialized books and toys designed to ensure that they are well-rounded and adequately stimulated for excelled development. Specialized gyms and enrichment programs designed for children exist in many communities and there is an abundance of after-school enrichment activities. These tools and programs are heavily marketed, and many parents have grown to believe they are a requirement of good parenting and a necessity for appropriate development. As a result, much of parent-child time is spent arranging special activities or transporting children between those activities. In addition to time, considerable family financial resources are being invested to ensure the children have what are marketed as the “very best” opportunities. It is clear that organized activities have a developmental benefit for children, especially in contrast to completely unsupervised time.
However, it was not until the early 1900s that play was introduced into a therapeutic setting as a means for children to express themselves.
Play is an appropriate therapeutic way because young children frequently have difficultly verbalizing their feelings. Through play children may lower their barriers and better express their feelings. Additionally play is an active process that may allow a child to play out stresses and trauma, and may eventually lead to a mastery over the stress or trauma.
Interpretation of children’s play behavior is vital in play therapy because it connects the way that children behave during play therapy sessions to the way they behave out of them. There are various issues that can keep a play session from being interpreted properly such as:
1- Viewing session as overly directive
2- Not having a well organized model of interpretation.
3- Not having a solid understanding of how interpretation is important to the play therapy process
Interpretation reinforces the therapy process by keeping each session problem-focused, which can shorten the length of treatment
Generally acknowledged as the originators of play therapy, Anna Freud (1928) and Melanie Klein (1932) used play as a substitute for verbalized free association in their efforts to apply analytic techniques to their work with children. The field of play therapy grew dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s as various theorists, academicians, and practitioners developed specific play therapy approaches based on their theoretical views and personal experiences with children—including gestalt play therapy, Adlerian play therapy, ecosystemic play therapy, and prescriptive play therapy. Child – centered play therapists believe that children have an innate drive toward independence and self direction and children need permissiveness and acceptance comes from significant people in the children’s life. By experiencing a therapeutic relationship in which they feel valued and accepted, children learn to accept and value themselves. Play therapy has evolved over its 100-year history to include a cluster of treatment methodologies and theoretical schools of thought. Though these may differ philosophically and technically, they all embrace the therapeutic and developmental properties of play “to help children prevent or resolve psychosocial difficulties and achieve optimal growth and development. The evidence provided by a comprehensive review of 93 play therapy outcome studies supports the efficacy of this intervention with children suffering from various emotional and behavioral difficulties.