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CLINICAL EDITOR’S COMMENTS: "I


Infant play therapy provides both preventative and responsive care for the youngest people and their caregivers.


t is never too soon to provide appropriate play-based


intervention to young children to help them adapt successfully to their environment and family” (Schaefer, et al., 2008 p. ix).


The Importance of Early Intervention Many play therapists are desiring to take their play therapy practices to our youngest of populations—infants. But what does that really mean and how can we do that? Why has it taken us so long to address the needs of infants? What is even meant by infant play therapy? This article will attempt to answer some of these questions.


One of the problems for infants is that there has been a long-standing societal myth of attitude that babies do not experience any form of lasting emotional trauma—a typical reframe might go: “They were so  in the blank with any imagined possible infant trauma]!” As adults, it is hard for us to imagine a state of consciousness so different from our own that we fail to see the infant as a wholistic human being with their own rights, needs, opinions, and feelings of response. Since we have lost touch with our own inner infant-self state of being, it is hard to comprehend the needs of infants and very young children. Being pre- verbal does not mean that babies do not have anything to say about   cues of an infant’s specialized language of communication—mainly the language of body.


Unfortunately, these myths of infancy have caused great harm as we have predominantly failed to address the vital emotional  neuroscience has undeniably opened our eyes to the inner workings of the relational brain and the understanding of implicit memory   must be given to the Adverse Childhood Experiences research carried out at Kaiser Permanente or what is commonly known as the ACE  and revealed strong correlations between the number of risk factors that an individual was exposed to as an infant or child and how that related to later life stress, trauma, and disease.


Infants are whole body sensory-based beings that are highly attuned to what they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. Their immature nervous systems are extremely sensitive and can be quickly triggered into states of hyperarousal or hypoarousal, leaving infants vulnerable to a range of emotional states of confusion, anger, depression, fear,  and childhood developmental trauma can impact areas of the brain which can then lead to social, cognitive, emotional, and executive   informed, “whatever happens to a baby contributes to the emotional and perceptual map of the world that its developing brain creates”  internal working model, as Bowlby  The responsibility then falls upon the caring adults in the infant’s life to act as external regulators to stabilize infant arousal states, reduce suffering, and ensure emotional and physical optimal health.


With this previous discussion in mind, let’s consider the following potential infant trauma scenarios and how a play therapist might be involved: —A two-month-old is placed in foster care when she was observed with bruises all over her body in the emergency room. A few months  and you are assigned to facilitate the visits. —A preemie baby arrives home from the hospital after a two-month stay in NICU. With the infant appearing so fragile, the parents are afraid to hold or even touch the baby. As the play therapist, your treatment plan is to help facilitate bonding and attachment in the infant-parent relationship through attuned playful gentle-touch engagement. —Staff in a mother’s residential substance abuse treatment program are concerned when a depressed mother in court-ordered treatment  baby. A referral is made to you to assess the situation and implement infant play therapy interventions.


www.a4pt.org | December 2022 | PLAYTHERAPY | 5


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