“Allows children to explore a trauma that has occurred in their lives.”

“My personal favorite is the 3 headed dragon from Folkmanis. I use him a lot with trauma focused CBT to show thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well as in Child Centered Play Therapy.”

“I use my sets of both small and large red and gold dragon puppets to describe how anxiety grows and how the worry dragon gets free.”

Final Thoughts

In recent years, puppet play has become an important therapeutic tool by child therapists for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes (Drewes & Schaefer, in press). The wide-spread popularity of puppets is evident by the fact that they are found in almost every play therapy room across the world. As the findings of the survey indicate, they are employed by both directive and non-directive play therapists to treat a broad spectrum of childhood difficulties, including anxiety, fear, trauma, impulsivity, aggression, and attachment issues. We can all benefit from the clinical experiences of the respondents in this study as to the specific puppets they have found most useful, and the reasons they believe account for this finding. Puppets providing children with a sense of power, control, protection, and nurturance were particularly evident in this survey. These findings can support our current puppet collection, as well as suggest new possibilities for therapeutic puppet play. For best results, our puppets should be carefully selected, not just randomly collected.

References

Drewes, A., & Schaefer, C. (Eds.). (in press). Puppet play therapy: A practical guidebook. New York: Routledge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles E. Schaefer, Ph.D., RPT-S is a professor emeritus of psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ. He is Co-Founder, Director Emeritus, and former Chair of Board of the Association for Play Therapy. CESchaefer@aol.com

27 PLAYTHERAPY | September 2017 | www.a4pt.org