At Tŷ Hafan, Play Therapy is one of the ways we help children facing bereavement, whether that’s for a sibling who’s dealing with their brother or sister’s death or for a child who’s going to have a short life.
Play Therapy is child-led, child-centred psychotherapy that helps children process and work through their emotions through play in healthy, age-appropriate ways.
“In the beginning, Play Therapy is all about using play and creativity to express emotions and story-tell experiences, and then we help the children connect the play to their reality,” explains Anna, our Senior Play Therapist.
“The toys we use are chosen carefully and, after a few weeks, the child displays what we call a ‘narrative thread’, which means we see them repeating and building on the same storyline through their play.
“Often, what they choose to do in the session relates to their lives, even if they don’t realise it. When they make that connection with their own reality over time, they can use play to experience being victorious in difficult situations that they have been in.”
We sometimes see that children with life-shortening conditions want to explore their own death in the Play Therapy room. Our Play Therapists have specialist toys that can represent what a child might want to express, including coffins, gravestones and ambulances.
This type of play creates a bridge between imagination and real life. It can have huge benefits for children who deal with the unimaginable reality that they’re going to die in childhood.
It’s common to see children come out of the Play Therapy room and want to talk about their funerals, even asking to have a certain colour flower on their grave or to be visited on a certain day of the week after they’re buried. This can really help parents who often struggle to have those difficult conversations with their child.
Comprehending your own death is huge – even for adults – and for children it’s much harder. Our Play Therapists allow children to talk about death as much as they want – it’s completely led by the child. This type of play gives children a sense of control and empowerment over something that can make them feel out of control.
For siblings, Play Therapy gives them space to explore traumatic events in their lives, like their brother or sister’s hospital admissions, medical emergencies in the home and so much more. After their brother or sister has died, Play Therapy gives them a way to express their grief however they need to.
Thanks to you and your kind support, all our services including Play Therapy are completely free of charge for children and families to access.
There are lots of ways that we support families through bereavement, and one of those is through memory making activities. Click here to read all about Sophie’s memory jar making activity!