Play Therapy ... an Intern's Perspective

Hello all, my name is Hunter McCullough. I am an undergrad Psychology student at Georgia Southern University.  Ever since I was in middle school, I knew that I wanted to work with kids after college. Majoring in Psychology has led me to be able to do just that. A few weeks ago, I started helping out around the office of Brave Tomorrow, just to start learning the ropes of running a private practice in the world of counselling.  I knew little about play therapy, but after my few weeks of observing, I have come to understand just how important it is to counseling. I have come to learn that children always want to tell you what is going on in their life, but sometimes they just might not know how to tell you in words. Such situations could include:

• Being selectively mute.
• Bullying.
• Poor attendants at school.
• Overly fearful or anxious.
• Attitude problems. 

These are just a few of the situations that play therapy could help with. Some of the beneficial things that come from play therapy are:

• Learning how to cope with changes in life.
• Learning how to deal with change. 
• Helping to become more responsible for making better choices.
• Helping to learn self-respect and respect for others.
• Helping to become more confident. 
• Help develop creative solutions to obstacles in life. 

Play Therapy is for children the ages of three to about sixteen years old. However, something that a lot of people don’t know about play therapy is that it can also help young people in late teenage years, all the way to older aged adults. I hope to continue to learn in my time at Brave Tomorrow, and I am so thankful for this opportunity.

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Special thanks to Hunter, our guest blogger.  We are thankful for all you bring to our office!

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