Healing Through Play: Supporting Children’s Growth & Emotional Wellbeing
At SF Bay Play Therapy, we specialize in child-centered play therapy that helps children express emotions, process trauma, improve behavior, and build resilience. Serving families across the Bay Area, our licensed therapists use evidence-based approaches in a safe, compassionate environment where children feel understood and empowered.
At SF Bay Play Therapy, we specialize in child-centered play therapy that helps children express emotions, process trauma, improve behavior, and build resilience. Serving families across the Bay Area, our licensed therapists use evidence-based approaches in a safe, compassionate environment where children feel understood and empowered.
Whether using therapeutic board games to explore anger, puppet and role plays to express challenging social dynamics, painting and claywork to drop into stillness and see what arises in the quiet moments, Kimochis® explore feelings and temperament, or simply working through frustrations with losing, competition, and self esteem in a game of checkers your child will gain new tools in understanding himself and others through therapeutic play.
When challenges at home or school start to get in the way of those gifts being shared, creating rifts in relationships and friction in the family, working closely with a play therapist can help your child and family thrive, sometimes for the first time.
Our mission in supporting children is to help each child’s unique gifts be seen and their needs to be met. We believe that many of the children we see these days with learning and sensory differences or emotional challenges are here to teach us a more integrated way of educating and working in the world. Their job is to push us to explicitly understand and value things that have in the past gone unnoticed or deemed unimportant.
In individual play therapy, We create an environment in which your child can experience him/herself deeply, learn skills to navigate his world with success and fulfillment, and nurture his/her unique essence so that the fruits of her existence will move this world forward in it’s evolution.
Through a compassionate and understanding relationship, We work directly with your child to help him/her feel fully understood and develop communication skills and strategies to deal with challenging emotions. Through a collaborative relationship with you, the parent or caregiver, we uncover the roots of the problem and discover practical tools for meeting the challenges of parenting. As we support your family along the journey, each member has the opportunity to grow as an individual and as a harmonious unit.
When challenges at home or school start to get in the way of those gifts being shared, creating rifts in relationships and friction in the family, working closely with a play therapist can help your child and family thrive, sometimes for the first time.
Our mission in supporting children is to help each child’s unique gifts be seen and their needs to be met. We believe that many of the children we see these days with learning and sensory differences or emotional challenges are here to teach us a more integrated way of educating and working in the world. Their job is to push us to explicitly understand and value things that have in the past gone unnoticed or deemed unimportant.
In individual play therapy, We create an environment in which your child can experience him/herself deeply, learn skills to navigate his world with success and fulfillment, and nurture his/her unique essence so that the fruits of her existence will move this world forward in it’s evolution.
Through a compassionate and understanding relationship, We work directly with your child to help him/her feel fully understood and develop communication skills and strategies to deal with challenging emotions. Through a collaborative relationship with you, the parent or caregiver, we uncover the roots of the problem and discover practical tools for meeting the challenges of parenting. As we support your family along the journey, each member has the opportunity to grow as an individual and as a harmonious unit.
What is Play Therapy?
Children experience big emotions like anger, sadness, frustration, and confusion the same as we all do. Since verbal and cognitive skills do not fully develop until adulthood, understanding exactly what your child is experiencing and how to help can at times be quite a challenge, causing behavioral outbursts, overwhelm in parents, and distress at school. Difficulties your child experiences at home or school are often expressed through changes in your child's behavior and play. Understanding what your child is communicating and how to respond is what a play therapist is trained to do.
The natural language of children is play and behavior. A trained play therapist is like a translator from the world of the child to the world of adults.
As a play therapists we enter into your child's world from his or her perspective so that we can understand his or her experience. In the context of this caring, supportive relationship, we begin to identify and understand what your child is experiencing and develop better ways to express and cope with those feelings. This in turn supports your child's self-esteem, aiding in the development of pro-social behaviors that more effectively meet his/her needs and lead to positive feedback from others. Comprehensive support for these positive changes is provided through weekly play therapy sessions, consultations with parents, and contact with your child's teachers and other specialists. In this way the entire system around your child can learn and integrate new tools to affect lasting change.
The natural language of children is play and behavior. A trained play therapist is like a translator from the world of the child to the world of adults.
As a play therapists we enter into your child's world from his or her perspective so that we can understand his or her experience. In the context of this caring, supportive relationship, we begin to identify and understand what your child is experiencing and develop better ways to express and cope with those feelings. This in turn supports your child's self-esteem, aiding in the development of pro-social behaviors that more effectively meet his/her needs and lead to positive feedback from others. Comprehensive support for these positive changes is provided through weekly play therapy sessions, consultations with parents, and contact with your child's teachers and other specialists. In this way the entire system around your child can learn and integrate new tools to affect lasting change.
Play Therapy: Evidence-Based & Trauma-Informed1. Extensive Research – Supports its effectiveness
Play therapy is grounded in a robust body of research that supports its effectiveness across a range of developmental, emotional, and behavioral challenges. Studies show it helps children express feelings, resolve problems, and build resilience through the language of play.
🔗 APT Research Summary
🔗 Meta-Analysis on Play Therapy Effectiveness (Ray et al., 2001)
2. Proven Interventions – Help children process difficulties
Play therapy integrates evidence-based interventions like Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) and Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (CBPT), both of which have been shown to improve children’s functioning in areas like anxiety, trauma, and behavioral issues.
🔗 APT Play Therapy Models
🔗 Evidence-Based Interventions in Play Therapy (Bratton et al., 2005)
3. Safe Environment – Promotes healing and growth
Play therapy offers a developmentally responsive space where children feel emotionally safe. In this space, they are free to explore difficult experiences, make sense of their world, and strengthen coping skills through the therapeutic relationship.
🔗 Creating Therapeutic Play Environments
🔗 The Power of Play: Supporting Children Through Play Therapy (APA)
4. Healing Trauma – Addresses emotional needs
Play therapy is inherently trauma-informed, allowing children to express and integrate overwhelming experiences non-verbally. It meets the core principles of trauma-informed care: safety, trust, empowerment, and cultural sensitivity.
🔗 Trauma-Informed Principles in Play Therapy (APT)
🔗 Using Play Therapy for Childhood Trauma (SAMHSA)
Play therapy is grounded in a robust body of research that supports its effectiveness across a range of developmental, emotional, and behavioral challenges. Studies show it helps children express feelings, resolve problems, and build resilience through the language of play.
🔗 APT Research Summary
🔗 Meta-Analysis on Play Therapy Effectiveness (Ray et al., 2001)
2. Proven Interventions – Help children process difficulties
Play therapy integrates evidence-based interventions like Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) and Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (CBPT), both of which have been shown to improve children’s functioning in areas like anxiety, trauma, and behavioral issues.
🔗 APT Play Therapy Models
🔗 Evidence-Based Interventions in Play Therapy (Bratton et al., 2005)
3. Safe Environment – Promotes healing and growth
Play therapy offers a developmentally responsive space where children feel emotionally safe. In this space, they are free to explore difficult experiences, make sense of their world, and strengthen coping skills through the therapeutic relationship.
🔗 Creating Therapeutic Play Environments
🔗 The Power of Play: Supporting Children Through Play Therapy (APA)
4. Healing Trauma – Addresses emotional needs
Play therapy is inherently trauma-informed, allowing children to express and integrate overwhelming experiences non-verbally. It meets the core principles of trauma-informed care: safety, trust, empowerment, and cultural sensitivity.
🔗 Trauma-Informed Principles in Play Therapy (APT)
🔗 Using Play Therapy for Childhood Trauma (SAMHSA)
What to Expect from Family or Child Therapy
Embarking on therapy for your child or family is a big step. You may be wondering what to expect from initial sessions and play therapy in general. This outline will help you understand the process towards healing that happens in family or individual child play therapy.
How Does Play Therapy Work?
Play is how children learn about and explore the world, freely express their thoughts and feelings and develop physically, socially, intellectually and emotionally. Children use play to process emotions and work out solutions to problems. Play therapy uses the child’s natural language of play to enable a child to work difficult experiences and learn new coping mechanisms. Issues may be approached directly or indirectly through metaphor, fantasy, and imagination. Once a child expresses and address their problems through play, it will be easier for them to find long lasting solutions in their everyday life. Play therapy is the modality of choice for children up to age 12.
How often will we meet?
You will meet with your therapist 4-6 times monthly.If child therapy is determined appropriate your child will meet with their therapist weekly and will schedule parent collateral sessions with you 1-2 times per month.
Initial Assessment Period: 5-6 sessions
• Intake Sessions: 60-75 minutes
• Family and Parent Coaching Sessions: 60 minutes • Child Sessions: 45 minutes
Why do we need so many sessions to start?
Family dynamics are very complicated and children learn much of how they are in the world from their family. It’s important that the therapist get to know your family and your child well enough to get a broad picture of contributing factors to the problem as well as factors of strength and resilience that can be leaned on in creating positive change. Change can begin to happen even within the Initial Intake Session, but lasting change in behavior and thought patterns happen most strongly through relationship. Trust in relationships takes time to build and children often take at least 6 weeks to begin to settle into therapy and trust the therapist to open up. These initial sessions also set the tone for therapy and serve to develop a trusting and open relationship with your therapist.
What can I expect from each session?
Initial Intake Sessions: You and, if applicable, your partner will discuss with the therapist the history of your child’s difficulties as well as a detailed exploration of his/her physical, social, and emotional development. You will also discuss logistics, such as fee and meeting times. You and the therapist are taking the first steps towards developing a healthy therapeutic relationship in this session.
Family Play Sessions: The therapist will often offer one or two guided games or activities for your family to engage in, such as creating a world in the sand tray together or playing an emotionally expressive game, and allow time for your family to play as you wish. It may appear that your family is simply playing and the reason you are coming is not being addressed. This is due to the indirect nature of how play therapy works and may take some getting used to. Often addressing the problem directly is counterproductive and can lead to negative therapeutic outcomes, while engaging in more lighthearted play allows a safe and relaxed environment to be created in which your child feels free to open up. The unstructured play time also allows the therapist to observe supportive as well as difficult family dynamics that may be just below surface level interactions.
Child Therapy Sessions: This is the time for your child and the therapist to develop a relationship in which your child feels safe opening up. Informing the therapist of any challenges and goals prior to each child therapy session can help the therapist guide the play towards addressing challenges without needing to be overtly directive. You may simply drop your child off and pick him/her up at the end, or there may be some time at the beginning and/or end in which you talk and/or play together with the therapist.
Parent Consultation Sessions: This is the time to explore your initial impressions, including concerns and insights around the therapy process. Consultation sessions can serve to be problem-solving meetings around specific challenges or time to offload your own feelings and address challenges that obstruct your ability to parent in the way you wish. The approach in these sessions can vary in feel from directive coaching sessions on specific tools to individual psychotherapy addressing your feelings about your childhood or relationship with your spouse or children. The more that you are able to communicate your goals and which approach you find most helpful during and after sessions, the more effective the outcomes of therapy are.
What to Expect in play therapy ongoing:
Play therapy evolves through four general stages: 1) The warming up/investigative period when trust is developed, 2) The Dark side when difficulties arise, 3) The Regressive/ Vulnerable side when deeper issues of loss and attachment arise, and 4) The Mastery/ Competency phase when changes are integrated. These stages are not linear and can switch between one another throughout therapy as difficult issues in a child’s life occur or are experienced through the therapeutic relationship.
In general you will enter the room for the first 5-10 minutes as the therapist directs an activity for you and your child or you will drop your child off for therapy and return 5 minutes before the session is over in case your child wants to share anything that has come up in the session. You must stay on the premises the entire time. If you are engaging in parent- child therapy you will join for the full session. A full session is 45 minutes, as the child is encouraged to play with ease and any clean-up is left to the therapist after the child leaves. This lets the child know that the therapist most values emotional expression and connection as opposed to most adults in the child’s life whose role includes teaching manners and social norms.
It is important for parents to stay connected to the child’s therapist throughout the course of treatment. Your therapist will want to meet with you and, if applicable, your partner anywhere from 1-4 times monthly, depending on how long the issue has been a problem and other factors.
Therapy with children and families is complex. Although change can happen very quickly in certain circumstances, most children see the most benefit from 6 months - 2 years with a therapist. For the most effective outcome, be sure to keep in contact with your child’s therapist to inform them of any challenges that arise in your child’s life and to check in about your goals for therapy.
When you feel your child’s goals have been met or if you are not seeing the progress you want, talk with your therapist to discuss either modifying the methods or unit of treatment to better serve your family or beginning termination of therapy in a way that will still allow your child to feel in control and safe. Termination typically takes 2-6 sessions and involves reviewing what brought your child to therapy, the progress they made or what hindered it, and you and your child consciously saying “goodbye” to your therapist in a thoughtful and conscious way.
How Does Play Therapy Work?
Play is how children learn about and explore the world, freely express their thoughts and feelings and develop physically, socially, intellectually and emotionally. Children use play to process emotions and work out solutions to problems. Play therapy uses the child’s natural language of play to enable a child to work difficult experiences and learn new coping mechanisms. Issues may be approached directly or indirectly through metaphor, fantasy, and imagination. Once a child expresses and address their problems through play, it will be easier for them to find long lasting solutions in their everyday life. Play therapy is the modality of choice for children up to age 12.
How often will we meet?
You will meet with your therapist 4-6 times monthly.If child therapy is determined appropriate your child will meet with their therapist weekly and will schedule parent collateral sessions with you 1-2 times per month.
Initial Assessment Period: 5-6 sessions
- Initial Intake Session with parents only (1-2 sessions)
- Family Play Therapy Session
- Individual Child Therapy Sessions (no parents)
- Parent Consultation Sessions (no children)
- Individual Child Therapy/Family Therapy/Parent-Child Therapy session as determined by initial sessions
• Intake Sessions: 60-75 minutes
• Family and Parent Coaching Sessions: 60 minutes • Child Sessions: 45 minutes
Why do we need so many sessions to start?
Family dynamics are very complicated and children learn much of how they are in the world from their family. It’s important that the therapist get to know your family and your child well enough to get a broad picture of contributing factors to the problem as well as factors of strength and resilience that can be leaned on in creating positive change. Change can begin to happen even within the Initial Intake Session, but lasting change in behavior and thought patterns happen most strongly through relationship. Trust in relationships takes time to build and children often take at least 6 weeks to begin to settle into therapy and trust the therapist to open up. These initial sessions also set the tone for therapy and serve to develop a trusting and open relationship with your therapist.
What can I expect from each session?
Initial Intake Sessions: You and, if applicable, your partner will discuss with the therapist the history of your child’s difficulties as well as a detailed exploration of his/her physical, social, and emotional development. You will also discuss logistics, such as fee and meeting times. You and the therapist are taking the first steps towards developing a healthy therapeutic relationship in this session.
Family Play Sessions: The therapist will often offer one or two guided games or activities for your family to engage in, such as creating a world in the sand tray together or playing an emotionally expressive game, and allow time for your family to play as you wish. It may appear that your family is simply playing and the reason you are coming is not being addressed. This is due to the indirect nature of how play therapy works and may take some getting used to. Often addressing the problem directly is counterproductive and can lead to negative therapeutic outcomes, while engaging in more lighthearted play allows a safe and relaxed environment to be created in which your child feels free to open up. The unstructured play time also allows the therapist to observe supportive as well as difficult family dynamics that may be just below surface level interactions.
Child Therapy Sessions: This is the time for your child and the therapist to develop a relationship in which your child feels safe opening up. Informing the therapist of any challenges and goals prior to each child therapy session can help the therapist guide the play towards addressing challenges without needing to be overtly directive. You may simply drop your child off and pick him/her up at the end, or there may be some time at the beginning and/or end in which you talk and/or play together with the therapist.
Parent Consultation Sessions: This is the time to explore your initial impressions, including concerns and insights around the therapy process. Consultation sessions can serve to be problem-solving meetings around specific challenges or time to offload your own feelings and address challenges that obstruct your ability to parent in the way you wish. The approach in these sessions can vary in feel from directive coaching sessions on specific tools to individual psychotherapy addressing your feelings about your childhood or relationship with your spouse or children. The more that you are able to communicate your goals and which approach you find most helpful during and after sessions, the more effective the outcomes of therapy are.
What to Expect in play therapy ongoing:
Play therapy evolves through four general stages: 1) The warming up/investigative period when trust is developed, 2) The Dark side when difficulties arise, 3) The Regressive/ Vulnerable side when deeper issues of loss and attachment arise, and 4) The Mastery/ Competency phase when changes are integrated. These stages are not linear and can switch between one another throughout therapy as difficult issues in a child’s life occur or are experienced through the therapeutic relationship.
In general you will enter the room for the first 5-10 minutes as the therapist directs an activity for you and your child or you will drop your child off for therapy and return 5 minutes before the session is over in case your child wants to share anything that has come up in the session. You must stay on the premises the entire time. If you are engaging in parent- child therapy you will join for the full session. A full session is 45 minutes, as the child is encouraged to play with ease and any clean-up is left to the therapist after the child leaves. This lets the child know that the therapist most values emotional expression and connection as opposed to most adults in the child’s life whose role includes teaching manners and social norms.
It is important for parents to stay connected to the child’s therapist throughout the course of treatment. Your therapist will want to meet with you and, if applicable, your partner anywhere from 1-4 times monthly, depending on how long the issue has been a problem and other factors.
Therapy with children and families is complex. Although change can happen very quickly in certain circumstances, most children see the most benefit from 6 months - 2 years with a therapist. For the most effective outcome, be sure to keep in contact with your child’s therapist to inform them of any challenges that arise in your child’s life and to check in about your goals for therapy.
When you feel your child’s goals have been met or if you are not seeing the progress you want, talk with your therapist to discuss either modifying the methods or unit of treatment to better serve your family or beginning termination of therapy in a way that will still allow your child to feel in control and safe. Termination typically takes 2-6 sessions and involves reviewing what brought your child to therapy, the progress they made or what hindered it, and you and your child consciously saying “goodbye” to your therapist in a thoughtful and conscious way.