How Child-Centred Play Therapy Can Help Children With Emotional Regulation Skills
Children who experience difficulties with regulating their emotions can sometimes find it challenging to identify emotions that they experience and can also find it challenging to choose appropriate coping strategies to manage their emotions in different situations in their lives, such as at home or at school. When children have difficulty managing and expressing their emotions in healthy ways, they may display behaviours such as tantrums, emotional outbursts, withdrawing or isolating themselves, refusing to participate in activities, aggression, or difficulties with their self-care. Emotions such as sadness, anger, anxiety, irritability, low mood, or low self-worth can impact on a child’s cognitive, emotional, social, behavioural and physical wellbeing and development, including impacting on a child’s sense of self, their relationships with their peers, siblings and parents as well as on their engagement and success at school. If children experience challenges with their emotional regulation skills, they may also find it difficult to maintain positive relationships with others such as peers at school, their siblings, or their parents.
Play is a child’s natural way of learning and expressing themselves, so child-centred play therapy (CCPT), which is a child-led and non-directive play therapy, is considered a developmentally appropriate approach in assisting children to improve their emotional regulation skills, empathy skills, impulse control skills and self-expression skills and is used to assist children who experience a variety of behavioural and emotional challenges. As a child develops skills such as empathy and self-regulation, this can assist them to improve their skills to manage their feelings and emotions with more independence and can also assist to improve their skills to inhibit their expression of aggressive behaviours, which can reduce behaviours such as violence and aggression that a child displays as they develop their self-regulation skills.
As a child engages in child-centred play therapy sessions, the play therapist reflects the quality of empathy towards the child to empathetically understand what a child is experiencing internally instead of trying to alter the behaviours that a child shows during play therapy sessions. Through focussing on trying to understand the internal emotions that a child may be experiencing, this can allow the play therapist to understand the purpose the behaviours that a child may show as a way of expressing their emotions. As well as assisting the play therapist to understand a child’s current emotional wellbeing, a child’s behaviours and actions they show during their play therapy sessions can also help the play therapist to understand how the child is reflecting their current sense of self.
In play therapy sessions, the play therapist also aims to create a safe space for the child by showing empathy and acceptance towards the child to help them to feel seen, heard, understood and accepted as they are, rather than focussing on the challenging behaviours that a child may be experiencing. Through the play therapist consistently reflecting the qualities of empathy and acceptance towards the child, this can assist a child to develop improvements in their skills to be more caring and accepting towards themselves and others, and can also assist them to develop improvements in skills such as empathy towards others. Through developing improvements in their empathy towards others, this can also assist a child to develop an increased understanding that their actions and behaviours can impact on other people, such as their friends, siblings or parents. Through the play therapist reflecting acceptance and empathy towards the child, and through creating a safe space for the child, this can assist a child to have the freedom to freely express their emotions and experiences associated with challenging emotions that they experience, and can also help a child to develop a more positive sense of self.
A child having the freedom to freely express their thoughts, feelings, emotions and experiences through their play actions can assist them to improve their skills to express, explore, process and understand what they are experiencing in different situations in their lives as they engage in their play therapy sessions. During play therapy sessions, the play therapist also reflects on the different emotions that a child expresses as they engage in different play actions during their play therapy sessions, which can also assist the child to develop an improved understanding of their own thoughts and emotions that they may be experiencing.
References
Blalock, S.M., Lindo, N., & Ray, D.C. (2019). Individual and group child-centered play therapy: impact on social-emotional competencies. Journal of Counselling & Development, 97, 238-249.
Burgin, E.E., & Ray, D.C. (2022). Child-centered play therapy and childhood depression: an effectiveness study in schools. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 31, 293-307.
Wilson, B.J., & Ray, D. (2018). Child-centered play therapy: aggression, empathy and self-regulation. Journal of Counselling & Development, 96, 399-409.