PLAY THERAPY

	Play is a child’s natural medium of expression just like talking is an adults’ natural form of communication. It is difficult for children to understand their emotions, and even more difficult to express. Since play comes naturally to children, it provides a non-threatening way to express themselves. Play allows children a safe psychological distance from their problems and allows them to express their true thoughts and feelings in ways best suited to their developmental level. Play is considered symbolic in the sense that children will act and reenact the perception of their environment, issues they struggle with, their thoughts and feelings. Jean Piaget, the noted Swiss psychologist, believed that play could heal through its compensating and cathartic characteristics. For example, if a child has lost a pet, the child can play out a sick pet that is cured by the child. The child plays this game many times and in the process tries to understand death. Every time, he/she re-enacts this play, his anxiety decreases and he feels more in control.
When a child is angry, he/she may spank his doll and send her to bed without dinner. This way he is expressing the anger that he has at his parents or sibling. Piaget believed that when children use symbols, they relive a painful situation and thereby liquidate it. Thus they may enact forbidden actions and neutralize their fears by doing in play what they would not dare do in reality.
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