Therapeutic Play Therapy

697 Words2 Pages

After grasping the various ways therapeutic play is beneficial to vulnerable, pediatric populations undergoing long-term hospitalizations, I assumed that the many benefits of play may translate into the scope of everyday life. For example: how does the scope of therapeutic play extend to everyday experiences or reoccurring traumatic events, such as vaccinations or extended periods a child is without their attachment figure? Pontes and peers posed the same question. In her study, Pontes and team aimed to uncover if the therapeutic play decreased the anxiety of children undergoing routine vacations. Her findings, while simple, demonstrate the nature of play as a mechanism for self-regulation and the ability to not only face fears, but cope and …show more content…

Play therapy is conducted by psychologist to retrieve a specific therapeutic purposes, while therapeutic play (implemented by an individual) utilizes normal play to guide natural coping mechanism in facing traumatic events. She describes how instructional play is utilized in helping school aged children, whose development is best filtered through fantasy or magical thinking (Ponte, et.al, 2015). Thus, Ponte aims to uncover rather the introduction of a toy (as the means of communication between the child and professional) will lessen anxiety and change visible behaviors in this …show more content…

Thus, therapeutic play not only reduced anxiety for the child in this study, but demonstrated no evidence toward psychological harm (Ponte, et.al, 2015). Ponte (2015) then bolstered her argument by cross-referencing similar data of additional studies where children benefited from instructional play prior to procedures. Therefore, Ponte calls for instructional play to become a routine event in hospital and clinics who serve pediatric clients (Ponte, et.al,

Open Document