For the Joy of Working with Children

That’s understandable. In my training, there was little in the way of a developmental psychology focus. When my internship supervisor at Jewish Family Services in Stamford, Connecticut, handed me a file about Sandplay, because I was working with youngsters whose parents were divorcing, I felt excited and unsure. What was I to do as a six-year-old dug deep into a sandbox to unearth her devastation about being dragged between warring households? Just sit there?

In the close to two decades that have passed since then, I’ve learned the whys and wherefores of working with children in play and have just written a book about what children 6-13 and their parents have taught me along the way.  First, the “Whys.” About 60-70% of children I’ve seen come from families where parents are in some sort of conflict. While that conflict often entails impending or actual divorce, it can also include different views on parenting, differences in political views, and the many iterations of inner conflict that come from raising kids in an anxious age, where everything from intense parental work schedules to job and economic uncertainty is in play.

These children and parents are finding their way through a childhood stage where psychologist Erik H. Erikson witnessed kids in school struggling with what he dubbed issues of “industry vs. inferiority.” Can a child produce what parents and teachers hope for, or will that child succumb to a nagging sense that they are “just not enough”? Ironically, parents at this age are often facing their own fears about their adequacy as caregivers. Will they and their family “produce” a child who reflects well on them in the eyes of others? As kids head toward adolescence, filled with ubiquitous phones, social media, and screens, which often divide children further from parents, how can these few precious years be spent in ways that promote deeper presence between the generations? While it all seems to be about “productivity,” I’ve come to believe that building flexibility in family systems is often best addressed when children and parents begin literally taking a deep breath and opening to play.

That’s where “embodied play therapy” comes in as a possibility for MFTs, whether you are trained in structural, strategic, narrative, multicultural, or other modes of therapeutic work. At Fairfield University, I remember my first day in class, where my professor brought in a mobile to represent a family and lightly tapped one of the dangling objects suspended on its own string. The entire mobile moved! While I was delighted then, I now know that putting the smallest part of a family system in motion can begin a process of profound second-order change where a family learns to question and play with new ways of being. It pays to work with children for a number of reasons. First and foremost, parents are invested in what will happen with the young people they are raising; the primary “product” they will have nurtured when they are gone. There is motivation here for change. Second, play therapy that supports children and parents to become grounded in their bodies helps family members be less reactive to each other and less likely to get stuck in difficult relational patterns. Third, play therapy, which builds a child’s emotional and expressive range, channels aggression into assertiveness and self-advocacy, helping a child grow towards adolescence, where powerful questions of identity can rest on a firmer footing.

I urge you to participate in a growing community of us who see the imperative of inter-generational healing

For those MFTs already working with children and those considering it, I urge you to participate in a growing community of us who see the imperative of inter-generational healing; individual and family growth that can be explored when we add play therapy to the mix. All the more so when parents join in for all or part of the journey. Apart from the progress often achieved, it’s just a fun way to work. Fostering joy. That’s a sustainable practice for families and for therapists, too.