Play Therapy

Overview                                          

Children in the 21st century are facing more stress and adjustments in the process of learning and growing up. Factors such as  extended separation from parents at a young age to attend school, school bullying, harsh disciplinary actions from teachers, sibling rivalry, parental divorce, illnesses requiring hospitalization, emotional neglect, sexual and physical abuse all contribute to this situation.

Children are not able to express themselves through words because of their limited vocabulary. When disturbed by emotional or internal stress, they often behave negatively such as throwing tantrums and objects.

Agape Promotes Play Therapy

In the year 2000, Mr. Ng Kee Seng, the founder of Agape, introduced Child Centred Play Therapy from America; and established the first Play Therapy service centre in Malaysia at Agape HQ with the intention of helping children to relieve their non-verbalized pressure and stress.

Since 2001, in collaboration with Play Therapy practitioners from America and Taiwan such as Dr. Linda Homeyer, Dr. Daniel Sweeney and Dr. Kao , Agape has been conducting training courses for the public in order to broaden and deepen their understanding of Play Therapy.  Since then, Play Therapy has been further expanded to help in the developmental growth of children, parents and teachers.

Over the last 8 years, the number of children requesting Play Therapy services has been on the increase. With children experiencing rapid social changes and challenging family dynamics, entering the world of children require creative means. What a better channel than Play Therapy.

What Is Play Therapy? 

According to the founder of Child-centred Play Therapy, Axline (1947), children play out their inner emotions through play therapy, like how adults express their inner struggles through verbal therapy.

Dr. Garry L. Landreth, founder of The Centre for Play Therapy in the University of North Texas, asserts that “Play Therapy is a dynamic interpersonal relationship between a child and a therapist trained in play therapy procedures. The therapist provides specially selected play materials and facilitates the development of a safe relationship for the child to fully explore his/herself (feelings, thoughts, experiences and behaviors) through the child’s natural medium of communication: play.”

Target Group

Age 2-12

Application Of Play Therapy

Play therapy can be applied to child- care centers, kindergartens, elementary schools, mentally retarded children’s  homes, community centers, children’s wards and special education centers.

The Purpose of Play

- According to Dr. Garry L. Landreth, Play Therapy is aimed at helping children to:
- Develop a healthy self-concept
- Promote self-acceptance
- Enhance self-confidence
- Experience a feeling of control
- Become more self-directing
- Become more self-reliant
- Develop an internal source of evaluation
- Assume greater self-responsibility and sensitivity

Result of Play

- According to research done since 1937, Play Therapy can result in:
- Reduction of negative emotions in children with divorced parents
- Decreased aggressive behaviors
- Improved emotional adjustment of abused & neglected children
- Relief of psychosomatic difficulties such as asthma, ulcerative colitus and allergies
- Better social and emotional adjustment
- Correction of speech problems
- Improved self-concept
- Reduction of separation anxiety
- Reduction of stress and anxiety in hospitalized children
- Decreased emotional and intellectual problems of mentally retarded children
- Increased academic performance in learning disabled children

Research and studies over the past 100 years have demonstrated the effectiveness of play therapy with children of all diagnostic categories except the severely autistic and out-of-contact  schizophrenic children.

The Importance of Play

- Reduce stress from learning and schooling
- Encourage children’s curiosity and discovery instincts in a concentrated and socialized learning process
- Provide children with opportunities to develop new skills in their intellectual, social, emotional & physical capacities
- Allow children to comprehend and understand an adult’s world for themselves
- Help children to understand another peer’s point of view, to learn how to cooperate and to help each other by sharing and solving problems
- Create a fun learning environment, which promotes creativity in coping with life