Play connects,
Play heals.
We specialize in working with preschool and elementary-age children who are struggling with big feelings, anxieties, traumas, and challenging behaviors that disrupt everyday life.
Child-centered play therapy (CCPT) is a therapeutic approach designed to help young children express themselves and process their feelings through play, the natural language of children.
Since children often communicate their emotions and experiences better through play than through words, a child-centered play therapist can help your child explore feelings, make sense of them, and feel better.
You will also receive monthly guidance and support from your child’s play therapist on how to understand your child's behavior and emotions.
Evidence-Informed Care
Research over the past 50+ years has demonstrated that child-centered play therapy helps children with many concerns, including: anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, conduct problems, aggression/anger management, trauma-related issues, social issues, and adjusting to divorce or other life changes.
You can read more about the evidence on the Association for Play Therapy’s website: https://www.a4pt.org/page/SocialEmotionalBehav
SchoolPlay utilizes the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to track your child’s progress.
Principles for Relationships with Children
by Garry L. Landreth in Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship
I am not all knowing.
Therefore, I will not even attempt to be.
I need to be loved.
Therefore, I will be open to loving children.
I want to be more accepting of the child in me.
Therefore, I will with wonder and awe allow children to illuminate my world.
I know so little about the complex intricacies of childhood.
Therefore, I will allow children to teach me.
I learn my best from and am impacted most by my personal struggles.
Therefore, I will join with children in their struggles.
I sometimes need a refuge.
Therefore, I will provide a refuge for children.
I like it when I am fully accepted for the person I am.
Therefore, I will strive to experience and appreciate the person of the child.
I make mistakes. They are a declaration of the way I am - human and fallible.
Therefore, I will be tolerant of the humanness of children.
I react with emotional internalization and expression to my world of reality.
Therefore, I will relinquish the grasp I have on reality and try to enter the world as experienced by the child.
It feels good to be an authority, to provide answers.
Therefore, I will need to work hard to protect children from me!
I am more fully me when I feel safe.
Therefore I will be consistent in my interactions with children.
I am the only person who can live my life.
Therefore, I will not attempt to rule a child's life.
I have learned most of what I know from experiencing.
Therefore, I will allow children to experience.
The hope I experience and the will to live come from within me.
Therefore, I will recognize and confirm the child's will and selfhood.
I cannot make children's hurts and fears and frustrations and disappointments go away.
Therefore, I will soften the blow.
I experience fear when I am vulnerable.
Therefore, I will with kindness, gentleness, and tenderness touch the inner world of the vulnerable child.