Takeaway: Maybe there’s been a big change in your household and your child is struggling with behavioral issues as a result. Maybe you have an emotional kid who needs a new way to express themselves. No matter your situation, play therapy can be a way to help your child feel better. In this post, I’ll share my favorite free play therapy activities for children and offer expert advice for when your child might benefit from working with a professional.

Play therapy has become more well known in recent years, but it can still be a bit of a mystery. Isn't therapy hard work? What does play have to do with it?

If you've ever tried talking to a young child about their feelings, you might have noticed that it's not that easy. "How was your day?" is often met with short answers such as "fine" or "bad" and when you ask a follow-up question, you hear a lot of "I don't know." It's often not that your child doesn't want to tell you things, it's that they are still learning how to communicate verbally.

Ask your child to play however, and a lot of the time it's difficult to redirect them to anything else! This is because children learn and process their experiences through play. Play therapy utilizes this natural tendency to help child clients to build the skills they need to be more successful. And family members can also more easily "talk" with the kids in their lives by incorporating playful techniques as well.

It's important to note that the activities for children I'm going to review can help with some children's concerns, but they are not a replacement for child therapy. The following activities are provided with the understanding that I am not rendering professional services. If mental health or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. With that in mind, I'll also discuss signs that your child may benefit from seeing a play therapist.

What is play therapy?

Play therapy is a developmentally responsive type of therapy for children. Young children are still learning language and are unable to understand and talk about their feelings the way adults do. The way kids explore and make sense of their world is through play. In play therapy, the toys function as the child's "words" or means to communicate what they are thinking about. Like talk therapy for adults, play therapy utilizes children's most natural means of expression to help them in a way they understand.

You might be thinking that your child plays all the time, but they are still struggling in school or misbehave at home. But play therapy is different from regular childhood play. Although it may sound like it's "just play," play therapy is a structured, theoretically based approach to helping children achieve optimal growth and development. Play therapy techniques build on children's natural inclination to explore their world and learn through experience. By using this natural medium for children, play therapy supports children's mental health by encouraging them to develop and practice new skills for resolving their own problems.

What play therapy can help with

Play therapy is effective across modalities, settings, age, and gender. Based upon several different types of research, the Association for Play Therapy concludes that play therapy can help with:

anxiety
obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors
depression
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
autism spectrum disorder
oppositional defiant and conduct disorders
anger management
trauma
grief and loss
concerns related to life stressors (such as divorce and family dissolution, domestic violence, relocation, etc.)
academic underachievement
social skills
physical and learning disabilities

Benefits of play therapy for children

Because play therapy is specifically developed to help children discover, rehearse, and implement new methods in a naturally rewarding way, there are numerous different benefits, including but not limited to:

Emotional Adjustment

Young children in counseling improved their ability to acknowledge and communicate their experiences. Aggressive, withdrawn, and anxious behaviors associated with emotional concerns decreased while children's self esteem increased.

Behavioral Adjustment and Social Skills

Child counseling can reduce the frequency and duration of a child's classroom disruptions. Play therapy improves on-task behaviors, personal control, and assertiveness. Social skills, including overall social-emotional competence, empathy, and responsibility also improved.

Academic Performance

Child counseling not only helps those who are already struggling with attendance and grades, but also those who are at risk of such problems. Play therapy helps with overall academic achievement, reading, language, and math.

Through play therapy, kids become more self aware and responsible for their own behavior. When a child changes their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, it benefits not only the child, but the entire family as well. As children learn new ways of experiencing and expressing emotions, their more successful relational and communication strategies can reduce parental stress and sibling conflict.

Play therapy requires extensive training, but there are ways to incorporate playful activities for children at home to help them develop more emotional awareness, positive self esteem, attention skills, self control, and problem solving skills.

Eight activities to try at home today

You're probably interested in how you can utilize some of these therapeutic powers of play with your own child. Many activities for children incorporate useful skills already, and just changing how you talk about them can really help kids to learn more about their thoughts and feelings!

One of the biggest play therapy techniques I explain to caregivers to help them connect with their child is reflecting feelings. It's actually often the basis of all other techniques in child therapy! Children aren't thinking logically yet. (Sorry parents, but it's usually not until the teen years that the part of the brain responsible for logic and reasoning really starts developing, and it doesn't finish until the twenties). Rather they are in their "feeling brain." By attaching a word to the child's experience and letting them know you see that feeling, it helps children develop the ability to label and communicate their own feelings. While adults may not like it if you go around saying "You seem sad" or "I can see you're angry," most children immediately latch onto these phrases and say "yes, I am angry!" And they may even elaborate and tell you more from there.

It's hard to go around reflecting your child's feelings all the time. But you can incorporate feelings into activities to help your child develop more emotional awareness.

Activities for children to develop emotional awareness

Sometimes your child might become upset or excited and neither of you know why. When engaging with feelings, it's important to understand that many children under the age of about eight-years-old are still learning nuance when it comes to feelings. The easiest ones for them to understand are the "core" feelings: joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. Sound familiar? The 2015 animated film Inside Out utilized psychologist Paul Eckman's original theory as part of the basis for the film. While the theory has evolved since and there are likely many more "basic" emotions, these six can be a good starting point when trying to help small children build emotional awareness.

1. Feelings Charades

Most people have played charades, and this twist isn't hard to guess from the title. In this instance, all of the prompts are feelings. Have each of you work together to come up with different feelings and make sure that everyone understands what they are. (It's probably not time to pull out "nostalgia" with your six-year-old.) Each player takes turns acting out a feeling and having others guess what the feeling is.

Because children are still learning to read facial expressions, be open to their guesses. You may think you're making a great scared face, but your child may take your wide eyes as a sign of surprise. It's okay to say "good guess, but not quite" and then discuss with your child what signals you were trying to give. Make sure that you don't just rely on your face either, but use other cues to help children understand how to recognize emotions.

2. Feelings Board Games

It's important to recognize whether your child can engage in a game based on their developmental level. Many board games may not be suitable for children under a certain age, but that doesn't mean all games are off limits!

A lot of children's games have colorful spaces. Assign a feeling to each color on the board and in order for people to move forward, they have to either make a face for that feeling talk about a time they felt that feeling (typically for children over the age of seven). Try to keep your examples lighthearted and not directly about the child ("I was so angry the dog chewed my new pair of shoes!" not "I'm so angry when you don't finish your homework!") and always offer to talk about the feelings that come up during the game.

By talking about the times that people experience different emotions, children can become more aware of how situations impact feelings. Again, children are paying attention to more than facial expression to begin to figure out feelings. Knowing the context helps children understand why someone would be surprised to see a cute animal, but not scared.

Creative activities for kids to manage feelings

It's great to be aware of their feelings, but how can kids actually manage their feelings? Children still think very concretely until around the age of 11 years old. This means that children understand their world and experience through things that can be directly observed. As a result, children often need something physical and real to manipulate in order to help manage strong feelings.

3. Glitter Jar

I know many people hear "glitter" and they want nothing to do with it. If your child is prone to throwing or breaking things, this might not be the activity for you. But if you think they just need a few minutes to calm down, glitter jars can be excellent tools. Kids also have a lot of fun knowing that they can use something they made if you create the jar together.

How does the glitter jar work for emotional regulation? First, the act of shaking the jar can help children get out some agitation. You may have heard the phrase "shake it off" as a metaphor for getting rid of something. That's because shaking or vibrating actually helps release muscular tension and ease an overstimulated nervous system. Once the glitter is all shaken up, it also takes several moments before it settles, like a snow globe. By focusing on watching the glitter settle, a glitter jar can help give kids time to calm down and regain self control.

Get a small plastic jar with a good seal. I recommend having hot glue as well for extra protection. You don't want a kid to shake the jar and it go everywhere! Fill it up a quarter to a third of the way with distilled water. It's important not to use water with any minerals or additives so that the jar doesn't become cloudy over time. Next, pour roughly the same amount of clear glue into the jar. This helps keep the glitter from settling too fast so your child has more time to calm down. If you don't have clear glue, I have found that sometimes substituting glitter glue and reducing the amount of regular glitter added does work, but it might be a bit chunky for a few days. If you haven't added any glitter glue, add 1–2 teaspoons of craft glitter into the jar. Different types of glitter will look different when shaken, so it can be fun to play around with a combination of fine, standard, and chunky glitter. Top it off with more distilled water until the jar is fairly full. Add the top with a layer of hot glue under it and then the seal and check for any leaks.

Once you've made the jar, talk with your child to tell them about how sometimes big feelings feel uncomfortable and difficult to manage. When that happens, they might want to do something physical to get the feeling out of their body. Ask them to shake the jar and see how it feels. Then encourage them to watch the falling glitter to give some time for their feelings to settle before talking about them.

4. Worry Box

Another popular tool for helping children manage emotions is a worry box. You may tell your child not to worry about something, but even as an adult it usually doesn't help if someone tells you "don't worry!" And for children, if they don't physically do something with the negative emotions, it can be hard for them to let them go. A worry box gives your child a concrete way to physically do something with their concerns and move past them.

You'll need to get a box, ideally no bigger than a shoebox, and various materials to decorate it. Paint, markers, wrapping paper, and magazines to cut out pictures are great resources to have available for your child.

Let your child know that we all worry sometimes, but that when our heads get too full of worries it can make it difficult to do or think about other things. Show your child the box and explain that you’re going to make a special box where they can keep their worries so they don’t have to carry them around anymore. Let them know that no worry is too big or too small for the worry box, and that the worries can stay in there for as long as the child wants or needs. Encourage your child to decorate the box however they would like and that you will help if they want you to. The act of creating the box shows the child that they can have control over their thoughts and feelings.

Once your child has finished decorating the box, make sure that there is always paper and something to write with in the box. Talk with your child then about some of their worries from the day and encourage them to write them down (or help them if they can't write yet) and put them in the box. Set aside a time going forward where you and the child will open up the box and pull out the worries. If it is still a worry, invite the child to talk about the worry more if they would like. If it stops being a worry, then your child can take it out of the box and throw it away. This reinforces the feeling of it ending, as well as the message that they can take control of their worries. If it is still a worry, put it back in the box to come back to another time.

It’s important to regularly revisit and review the contents of the Worry Box with your child. Some children may be prepared to do this daily, while others may want to wait a few days before opening the box. Whatever timeline you decide, regularly reviewing the worries can help children to recognize and appreciate how they have been able to manage their worries over time.

Breathing activities for children

Everyone is different and breathing techniques may not work for everyone, but they can be an excellent resource for many people, including children. If there are any medical conditions present, consult a doctor before trying breathing techniques with your child.

free play therapy activities for children

5. Pinwheel Breathing

This can be a great experiential way to teach children about the value of deep breathing. There are a lot of different ways to make a pinwheel, or you could find or buy one instead. Once you make the pinwheel together, demonstrate taking a deep, slow breath through your nose. You might even compare it to smelling a flower. Then breathe out steadily to make the pinwheel spin. Explore how different breaths make the pinwheel move in different ways. Ask the child what they thought worked better: deep breathing, normal breathing, or quick breathing? Remind your child that they can always imagine having a pinwheel and breathing to make it spin to encourage deep breaths.

6. Bubble Breaths

Another way that can help with deep breathing is bubble breaths. Again, you can do this without bubbles, but especially the first time, bubbles are very helpful for showing kids exactly how it works. Try all different ways of blowing bubbles. Note that fast and hard breaths tend to pop the bubble before it even starts, and that too slow and nothing will happen. You can also say to breathe out different emotions. For emotions the child wants to keep, they can imagine being surrounded by them in a bubble bath. For emotions the child would like to let go, let the bubble drift away and encourage that it's only temporary and they can tolerate it while it's there.

Activities for encouraging problem solving skills

Children have very active imaginations! Engage in their pretend to learn more about how your child is thinking. If you can make a difficult situation playful, it usually makes it less of a struggle.

7. Role Play

Role playing offers children the opportunity to solve problems in a non-threatening way. For example, many parents struggle to get their kids up and out of the door in the morning. Mornings become a stressful time for everyone in the family, and no one wants to deal with them.

Instead of trying to troubleshoot in the morning when you actually need everyone to get out of the house on time, role play the morning routine some other time. Make it a game! Say something like "Let's play morning. Everyone pretend to be asleep. What happens next?" Mimic the different steps of your daily routine, such as getting dressed and brushing teeth. Maybe it's just that your child is forgetful, and by practicing a few times, they get the hang of what they need to do. Or maybe as you're role playing, you notice that there's a certain part where people are getting stuck. Brainstorm with your family what you could do differently to make it run more smoothly.

8. Free Play

Okay, so free play might not be an "activity" per se, but it is helpful. Oftentimes kids have so much structure in their days that they end up with little time to experiment. They have to practice their instrument and their sport and do homework, each of which has a "correct" outcome. Letting children do something without instructions and encouraging them that they can figure it out helps them learn that they are capable and not only helps with problem solving skills, but also self esteem. Crafting, Legos (without instructions), or pretend play are all different activities for children where they can practice figuring out how to do something on their own.

Filial Therapy

There are many ways that family members can be helpful for children. Filial therapy is one way that parents can learn to be therapeutic agents for their children. In filial therapy, a trained child therapist teaches parents specific skills to help build their relationship with their child and more effectively respond to their child's underlying needs to address symptoms. Rather than working directly with the child, the therapist provides coaching, detailed feedback, and support to the child's caregivers.

Although I do not provide filial therapy as there are many difficult logistics (some models recommend 6 months to a year of weekly play sessions between the parent and child), I do want to help caregivers feel more empowered to make positive changes in their children's lives. When I am working with children and their families, I often utilize part of parent meetings to teach parents some of the skills that I use in therapy sessions with their children. This way parents can learn play therapy techniques to help facilitate progress at home and manage their child's concerns independently.

Understanding when your child may benefit from working with a play therapist

So, how do you know if your child's challenging behaviors are typical of their stage of development or a sign that they may need some extra help from a play therapist?

For one thing, if you are feeling overwhelmed and experiencing a significant amount of stress in your own life, it can be difficult to focus on the needs of the child and provide a therapeutic environment. If you've ever been on an airplane, it's like the oxygen mask rule: you need to put on your own mask before you help anyone else. If you don't have the resources within yourself, you can't extend them to someone else.

Other potential reasons to seek out child therapy include:

Your child experiences a significant change (for example, parental divorce, death of a family member, or other loss or a medical emergency such as a car crash or significant health diagnosis).
Your child's behavior or abilities seem significantly different from their peers.
Your child has extreme changes in mood or experiences frequent, severe, and/or long-lasting anxiety or sadness.
Your child demonstrates highly aggressive behavior.
Your child struggles to establish and maintain friendships, or seems uninterested in playing or connecting with others.
Your child has significant difficulty in school or becomes very discouraged when learning new things or skills.
Your child is experiencing bullying.
You need parenting support to feel more secure in your relationship with your child.

Play therapy in Dallas, TX can help your child thrive.

Life can be hard at any age. It is hard to imagine your child struggling, but there are going to be challenges in their life, and learning how to deal with them early sets your child up for success. With a holistic approach to counseling, I can help your child—and your family—feel better. Whether they are dealing with emotional meltdowns, high risk behaviors, academic concerns, low self esteem, or trauma, everyone is more than their struggles. By focusing on building on existing strengths as well as learning new strategies to manage difficult emotions, I help children feel more confident, secure, and capable.

You can learn more about my approach to play therapy here. If you're interested in starting play therapy for your child, you can reach out through the Contact Me form for a free consultation.

Eight Best Therapy Activities for Kids