Play Therapy

I'm asking myself this question as play therapy went awry yesterday.

Session I

Playing with a doll house and a ten year old client, trying to create scenarios which will enable her to form healthy opinions of family and relationships ended up with her yelling at the "males" in the house, forcing me to discipline them. Then the males broke the females' dolls and ruined their bedroom.

Now I know that this scenario may not be far from the truth, but the more that I tried to encourage her to play nice, the worse she made the males roles. By the end of the session, the males, who were to be the little brothers, were running away and a newscast came over the TV with a story about how these little males hit an old lady and stole her purse.

We put the doll house away and ended the session.

Session II

While doing therapy with an 8 year old, we decided to jump on the trampoline and build her self confidence and trust. Unfortunately, her wiener dog would not leaves us alone and yelped to be on the trampoline. We obliged and brought him on with us only to find that the client jumped real high, on purpose, sending a rippling effect to the extent of sending the wiener's dog ass into the air while his front paws stayed firm on the trampoline. Over and over and over.

Let's hope that my administrative skills are better at school than my therapy skills with clients.