The integration of play with family therapy strengthens both therapeutic interventions in Play therapy and Family therapy. The reason to focus on children's play is simple and straightforward. Play is the child's language and medium of communication.
Through play, underlying thoughts and feelings are exposed, and children and their families can have collective pleasure and joy at the same time. As well as gaining a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the family, clinicians also realized that play can bring people together in a common, pleasurable task, which inherently promotes disinhibition and enjoyment.
When play is included in family sessions, clinicians treat children as equally important family members with valuable information to provide and to assimilate. Play also unlocks a deeper level of interaction in which fantasy, metaphor, and symbol can emerge.
When adults limit themselves to respond only to verbal cues from children, they are imposing the adult world on them. When adults are able to relate to children and enter their worlds, a dimension of contact is achieved which solidifies natural relatedness or emotional connectedness.
In Family Play Therapy, a therapist assesses the family's functioning by using expressive play techniques, identifies the problem and solutions the family has attempted, symptom origins, the purpose and maintenance of problems, as well as interactional patterns that create or support the symptomatic behaviours. In this process, the therapist integrates Play Therapy with Family Therapy by using playful modalities such as puppets, miniatures, artwork, and sandtray or sandplay.
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