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University of Wyoming

Play therapy program expands counseling options

    Helping clinicians and educators understand and draw upon the power of play in therapy is an ongoing goal for the University of Wyoming Department of Counselor Education.

   “Play really is the language of children,” assistant professor Michael Morgan says. “They don’t have the cognitive or verbal ability to articulate their emotional states and what they need. How they play is how they communicate, how they wrestle with emotional issues.”

   “It’s a medium for doing therapy with the child. Instead of using words, we use play.”

   Department faculty members took a significant step toward building a play therapy program when they hired Morgan in 2003. A play therapy specialist, Morgan took the lead in launching the biennial Wyoming Institute for Play Therapy, scheduled for July 29-30 in Laramie. He also is developing a three credit hour play therapy course, offered for the first time in the spring 2006 semester, that will become a regular part of the counselor education rotation. In addition, other counselor education faculty members have interwoven play therapy principles into existing child and adolescent and marriage and family courses.

   Expansion in this area is likely, as practitioners explore play therapy’s potential and express a need for additional information. Certification preparation is one possibility, should demand exist for advanced training. So, too, are opportunities to train new groups, such as the Our Families Ourselves CLIMB Wyoming Program for Young Parents.

   Play therapy has a long history, tracing back to Anna Freud.

   “It’s become a pretty rich field,” Morgan says. “There are multiple theories of play therapy, different styles that people will use – probably as varied as any other type of psychotherapy.”

   Whether or not one pursues a specialization in play therapy, which requires extensive study and certification, counselors and early childhood educators could benefit from learning to use therapeutic play in their professional settings.

   “There’s a great role for play therapy training for both school counselors and community counselors,” Morgan says. “To begin to use play therapeutically takes some basic knowledge of child development and how they use play, and a real passion and desire to want to do it.”

 Community counselors, early childhood educators and others who work with children may find value in developing a basic foundation in play therapy principles – particularly if they practice in a rural setting.

   “We don’t have the luxury of being specialists,” Morgan says. “When you’re in a community where there’s only a handful of practitioners, you have to become competent in working with many types of clients, and in a variety of ways.”

   Finding himself in a similar setting sparked Morgan’s own “almost accidental” involvement in play therapy. A 5 year school counseling internship during his doctoral program put Michael in daily contact with youngsters.

   “I realized that I couldn’t just sit and talk with the children – I needed to work with them at their level,” he says of that experience. “My interest and development in play therapy was really born out of that necessity.”

   For more information on the Wyoming Institute for Play Therapy, or to register, contact Adrienne Zeller at the UW Conferences and Institutes Office, 1-877-733-3618 (toll-free) or 1-307-766-2124.