—And, contemplate how you would work with the infant in this situation written by Terr in her landmark book, Too Scared to Cry   help a withdrawn hospitalized eight-month-old baby that had been neglected and beaten by a severely depressed mother.


In her hospital crib, the infant lay on her back with her little hands   placed over her crib to keep her busy. She paid scant attention to Hospital procedures that would have brought shouts of protest from any ordinary child provoked hardly a complaint from this one. There was no brain damage. The damage resided only in the baby’s still rudimentary, but benumbed, personality style. (Terr, 1990, p. 85).


 Armed now with our awareness that infants are absolutely impacted by their life experiences, the question arises: How can we as play therapists help?


The therapeutic powers of play as originally conceptualized by


Charles Schaefer (Drewes & Schaefer, 2014) provide us with a perfect working model framework that


supports our understanding for how play therapists can take our unique understanding and skills to our youngest of populations…


Enter Infant Play Therapy  recently that has been extended to include infant mental health up  traditionally been known to provide treatment interventions geared            on the healing power of symbolic type play—with carefully planned developmentally appropriate playrooms to allow for a child’s innate abilities to play out their worries, traumas, frustrations, and so forth. Whereas play for infants may be considered predominantly pre- symbolic. a parent and baby—such as patty-cake or sing-songy types of early developmental games—or what this author calls “FirstPlay” activities because it is truly the  type of play that we engage in 


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


 theoretical approaches work with children at the pre-symbolic level    the symbolic models, have mainly trained therapists to work with children primarily three to four years and older.


When thinking about the idea of play therapy for infants, this author often likes to provide the following outlandish scenario: A mother  then takes the baby from the mother’s arms while the mother stays in the waiting room. As the practitioner is heading into the playroom for a play therapy session with the baby, the play therapist then tells the  One might get a little chuckle from this notion accompanied by a disapproving head-turning-no-way-frown. But I provide it to drive home the point that the way in which we provide play therapy services to infants must be very different than how we work with pre-school children and older. The practice wisdom is that all infant mental health interventions are relationally oriented and therefore must include the parents or caregivers within the therapy sessions.  of infant mental health distinguishes it from work with older children 


Let’s return now to that original question of “What is meant by infant     is interdisciplinary with many different professions converging that carry their own unique expertise coming together to support           mental health conference, you are participating with pediatric nurses, pediatricians, occupational therapists, speech therapists, mental health practitioners, and others. Infant play therapy would be found to fall under the umbrella of infant mental health, and it brings to the table a very specialized expertise—that being the healing powers of play. The therapeutic powers of play as originally         provide us with a perfect working model framework that supports our understanding for how play therapists can take our unique understanding and skills to our youngest of populations—even         in the book, Infant Play Therapy: Foundations, Models, Programs and Practice     


 and infant mental health, are systemically culturally sensitive, and utilize the therapeutic powers of play to effect positive change for the infant and parental (or caregiver) relational system and social environment (p. 7).


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44