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A reflective review process can lend insight for fledgling and experienced play therapists alike. Self-awareness can enhance therapists’ informed, ethical practice and standard of professionalism (Bolton, 2010). After years of working as a Registered Play Therapist, I stopped to consider how I arrived at this point in my professional life. I asked myself the following questions: • What are the building blocks of my understanding of play therapy practice?
• What influences contributed to who I am as a play therapist? • What have I learned from academic studies? • What were the sources of inspiration for the practice of play therapy?
Reflecting on these questions proved to be a valuable
exercise in integrating lessons learned from earlier professional experiences and academic study. Reflective review gave me an understanding of the roots of my practice. In this article, I share my journey to becoming a play therapist and offer an outline for other play therapists to follow for their own review.
A Consideration of Early Play Experiences A backward glance at childhood play experiences can heighten therapists’ appreciation of the significance of play. Predating elementary school, I remember modeling clay into human shapes. I enlivened the figures with my imagination. Now I understand I used dolls as characters in stories I invented. They expressed sadness and joy through my play narratives. Sometimes I enacted actual circumstances of my life, repeating words spoken and actions taken in order to gain control of my world. Other times I created wishes for outcomes. Years later as a therapist, I realized I had felt the healing power of play (Campbell & Knoetze, 2010). Play served as an emotional balm and an outlet for self-expression and growth. Remembering childhood play integrates a theoretical understanding of the meaning of play with a visceral acknowledgement of its value. Therapists recollect the holistic quality
of play and respond to children at play with an understood and felt empathic appreciation. Therapists appreciate that children’s play is not goal directed,
but is a satisfying and important means for developing self-awareness.
Identifying Precursors to Play Therapy Practice My interest in play continued from childhood into adulthood. With an undergraduate degree in education, I began teaching in early childhood classrooms. For 10 years, I had a front row seat watching how children express their feelings through play and behavior.
I noticed how my preschool students used metaphor in their
play to express feelings too difficult to state directly. I recall one occurrence in the classroom when I glimpsed the power of a child’s use of metaphor. A timid child, who often had difficulty communicating with other children, placed an owl puppet on his hand. Flying the owl puppet over the heads of the other children, the owl hooted, “Whoo are you? Whoo can play?” Repeating his call in the owl’s voice, this child attempted to connect with other children. Teachers in early childhood classrooms provide puppets for imaginative play, and therapists use puppets as a staple in the therapeutic playroom. Children taught me not to interrupt or interpret their play.
They corrected me by saying things like, “No teacher, I’m not the baby; I’m the dog.” Or, “Teacher, he’s not crying. He’s the siren!” My role was a non-judgmental, respectful observer. Years of watching how children played laid the foundation for what evolved into the therapeutic practice of witnessing. Witnessing is more than noticing what children do; it is being fully present with the child. From a deep sense of self, therapists are open to an emerging sense of self within children. In her book, Mindfulness-Based Play-Family Therapy, Higgins-Klein (2013) referred to this shared space of connection as the Zen of Play Therapy. An enduring memory illustrates the act of witnessing long
before I appreciated its importance. One day in the classroom, we did not put clear plastic tubing, funnels, or water wheels into the water table as we normally did; therefore, only water filled the table. I observed from a small distance away. A four-year-old boy standing at the table appeared to be in his own little world. He rippled the water with his hands and blew across the water’s surface with his breath, much like blowing a feather. He plunged his hands into the water, as if diving from a diving board. He lifted his hands out, held them in front of him, and surveyed his hands, front and back. He exclaimed with delight, “My hands are alive!” He smiled at me and I smiled back. I witnessed this child make a profound connection with self. In therapeutic practice, therapists attune themselves to the
inner state of children. Crenshaw and Kenney-Noziska (2014) suggested, “The advantage of honoring presence as an essential ingredient is that it encompasses attunement with the child, with the self of the therapist, and with the relationship” (p. 35). Attunement and presence are characteristics of witnessing.
Academic Study of Child Development and Play From the early 70s to the 80s, books about how children learn gained notoriety. The importance of learning from direct experience challenged rote learning and emphasized process, not product (Holt, 1995). The educational currents of progressive education primed my understanding of meeting and following the child’s lead and interests, similar to honoring a child’s choices in therapy. Child play is self-driven and
September 2014 | PLAYTHERAPY 13