Has anyone had Play Therapy before?

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Hi,
we are looking at schools for my 3yo in Septemeber. The school psychologist mentioned that they also offer play therapy (we would need the district to approve it though). I would like to anyone has every used it before. Also, do you think it helped, and if so, how. We were given the option of putting DS in a 8:1:2 or a 10:1:2 class (by the school district) I am also wondering if anyone has any experience with one over the other.

Is play therapy where they teach autistic children to play in typical ways, i.e. pretend play? And at the same time extinguish autistic play like arranging objects in patterns?

If so, then I vote NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

I cannot begin to eggspress the amount of NO that I am feeling, so I will stop with voting this many NO.

There is nothing wrong with autistic play. For me, pretend play would have confused and bored the begeebus out of me, and my brain would have shut down from doing it with a therapist or anyone else or by myself, and my brain would not have developed in the way that it needed to develop to make sense of the world, and I would have ended up intellectually disabled.

As you can see, my feelings about modifying the play behaviors of autistic children are rather strong. If play therapy is something else entirely that is not harmful to autistic children, then please ignore this message and the strong sentiments herein. However, I would still recommend against any therapy that modifies autistic behavior without considering autistic cognition and what the child naturally likes to do.

Edit: If your child enjoys pretend play already and is interested in playing with other kids, then there could be benefits for social development from being with kids in a play group that is run by a therapist, as long as he is allowed to do what he likes to do and is not forced to do what he does not like to do or is meaningless to him. Sorry for over-reacting earlier. I was thinking of myself when I was little, and your son could be totally different and might like play therapy.

There is a PLAY therapist in the same office with the OT that we see. I see some of her clients coming and going while I wait for DS. I don't know what the therapy actually consists of but the kids all seem happy to arrive. It might be worth checking it out. They should be happy to have you observe the sessions so you can know first hand what is going on. I would hope the goal would be to improve communication and interaction and not to teach the child to play in "normal" ways.

no experence with play therapy. I would ask them what they will be doing with your son. If your son isnt playing appropriate with toys or peers, I can see the benefit. I know PP said dont teach these skills, but I can see benefits in teaching play. it is just another skill to learn, it deosnt mean that autistic play like lining up or doing puzzles, etc...is bad or to stop it, but teaching how to play with a car, or how to play with a toy kitchen, etc...can be helpful in the school and home, and useful on plyadates, ets.

I would ask what skills they will teach him, and go from there.

good luck!

We don't get any professionally, but I think play therapy might be using play to teach other skills. I do that at home, and that is what I think of it as. I interject teaching moments into the play he already has us doing as a tool to teach about feelings, and how others think etc. He is very into imaginary play right now. It took him awhile, but he did want it, eventually. He uses it to tell me things about his day.

If that is what you mean, I learn a lot from my son this way, and I would assume if you have a good professional that this would probably be more effective than a mommy/daddy-based go at it.

I do not restrict my son's autistic style play at all. When he brings me into it, I may try to add new elements to it, but I always let him return it to familiar ground when he wants to.

I did try to add pretend play when they told me to at the pediatrician's office, but it never worked, until he was ready, and I never pushed too hard, when he did not want it. I would occasionally bring it up, and back down if it was rejected and try again another time. I don't know if that was the right call, but that was what I did.

Thanks so much for all your responses.

My son loves to read and whe he plays by himself, he will usually re-read his books, with a good amount of improvising or summarizing. He also begins them and says "the end!" to signal that book has been read. he has delays with receptive and expressive language and the play therapy is supposed to help with that.

It would be more like an extension of ST. He has a hard time following his peer conversation. The play therapy is a group therapy and is supposed to help with that also. No one said anything about changing how he plays. How it was explained to me was that it's supposed to help him express himself, however, they do it through play. The therapist also said play therapy is different for all children. The therapy focuses on the area that the child needs the most help with.

It sounded really good but I wanted to see what others experience was like.

I would ask what the goals of the group play therapy sessions are, what is the structure level, and how they plan on meeting those goals? Then I would decide if the goals they were attempting in play therapy were goals I wanted to work on and if it was the best use of my time at this stage of my child's development and difficulties. I would also ask how they involve the parents so the skills learned in the group can be reinforced and generalized to other settings. This is something typically difficult for children with ASD and so while they may learn to use the skill in therapy, they don't automatically generalize.

My son age 13yrs went to play therapist 2 yrs ago, I found it was the best decision has he had difficulty in expressing himself verbally. He still goes to her now on and off when there are new issues to deal with. He still likes to play and chat!

MomofThree1975, Your story of how he plays is very cute.

This sounds like a productive thing to me. I would try to see if you can check in with them regularly to see what information they are getting out of him, or at least what themes seem to work for them, so you can do some of it at home, as well.

The reason I say that is while I am sure they are mainly doing it so he can increase his communication skills (which is a good thing) you will want to be able to have access to the information, too.

Autistic kids are often so hard to read/get information from and I have found in my experience, especially when my son was less communcative, but even now, that I get a lot of really good insight into how he is feeling, through play.

Thanks so much for all of your responses! I sent an e-mail to the administrator, asking for this service. I am waiting to hear back from her. I feel like anything that will help him to communicate will be useful. I am not trying to remake my son, I am trying to help him communicate. He does get frustrated when he cannot find his words so I know he wants to learn to communicate.

My new battle now is to try and get the administrator to give him the services he needs. I met her and she has a serious God complex. She was even trying to push us into a school we didn't want to send him to. When she realized that we were not going to dudge on that, she backed off. Now I need to see if I can get services for him outside of school until September, when he starts school.

Has anyone worked with a horrible administrator? Do you have any advice?

The administrator we are currently dealing with is not "horrible" but her failure to really SEE DS's needs certainly led to a delay in him getting an IEP and the services he needs. All she saw was a charming bright boy who was reading 2-3 grade levels above his current grade and could talk both her ears off! What she wasn't seeing was the daily struggle in the classroom to get him to participate and the very real anxiety and dis-regulation he suffered from every day. The only suggestion I have to offer is to be persistent and enlist the help of any other staff members who agree with you about the services your son needs. If the admin hears a consistent story from you repeatedly, and especially if she hears your story backed up by members of her own staff, the right message should get through to her.

He has not started school as yet or received any services as yet so there is nothing that I can really point at. The neurologist didn't give us a diagnosis (except for "autistic traits") so that doesn't help much either. However, I have been home with him for 2 months now and see where he needs the most help. Admittedly he is not the worst but I think he is at that point where the therapy could really help him to grow. I am at that point where my limited knowledge is showing. I really need a professional to help us so that he is even more prepared come September.

My son did play therapy with a psychoeducator for 6 months starting when he was around 15 months. She didn't try to force him to play differently, but she tried to take his interests and show him that there were other ways to play. She would play with different toys around him until something she did caught his attention. It was very unobtrusive. When he first went in he never made eye contact, he played with only one or two toys and he would spend the hour stimming by spinning the wheels of cars and making a kind of humming noise. She never took anything away or forced him to do anything else but she would show him how to roll the car and how to play music to replace the vocal stim. She exposed him to a lot of new games and toys. Basically she exposed him to possibilities and it helped him a lot. He still stims a bit which I don't mind, but it has gone down a lot and he's more aware of the environment around him. He stims mainly when he's overwhelmed and it serves an important function in helping him cope with whatever he's feeling. He learned how it can be fun to include people in his games and now he often comes to get me to play with him because he doesn't always want to be alone anymore. I don't know if this is the type of play therapy that is being considered for your child but if it is I have nothing but wonderful things to say and I am so glad we had the opportunity to do this because it helped my son to expand his universe and start enjoying human connections.