Why play and art in therapy for children?

Unlike adult therapy where talk is the main way of processing, at Silver Star Counseling we use play and art as the primary means of helping your child process what’s going on inside. Violet Oaklander, a Gestalt child therapist, states that play is like a map to the child’s inner self. Play honors a child’s unique way of looking at the world. It is a child’s primary language. Play also helps the client and therapist develop a relationship, one that is natural to the child.  In the book Playing and Reality, Winnicott says, “It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child [or adult] is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.”

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