Children process emotions in many ways, but usually best
through play. It takes time to develop
an emotional vocabulary and to mature to the point to use it. In the meantime, play can help facilitate processing
emotions and communicating with caregivers.
Before children can adequately communicate feelings, they need to calm
down strong emotions. Play dough is a
great tool for this! Let’s explore some options:
Squeezing. I encourage children to squeeze the play dough
so that it oozes out of their fingers.
They typically enjoy this activity because it if fun, but it also is a
sudden release of energy. Anger builds
up as energy that needs to be released to help calm down. There are many options for letting out
emotional energy, such as exercise, squeezing a pillow, stress ball, etc.;
however, play dough is fun! I also like
the tactile aspect of using play dough.
Multi sensory play incorporates using grounding techniques in calming
down.
Smashing. Similar to squeezing, it is another way to
let out strong emotions. They can either
create things and then smash them or just smash balls of play dough.
Feelings
Faces. Kids who lack an emotional
vocabulary can use play dough to communicate feelings. They can use pieces of play dough to form
feelings faces, they can squish a ball of play dough and carve out facial expressions,
or they can use cookie cutters to stamp out feelings faces. A friend of mine was selling some super cute
emoji cookie cutters from Pampered Chef that I couldn’t pass up. They are a hit with the kids! They also stack up and click together to make
storage easy.
Cutting
with Scissors. Have you every cut play dough with scissors? If not, you are missing out! There is something strangely gratifying about
it. I have found the children who have a history of trauma are especially
intrigued by it. I’m not sure why, but they seem to love it.
Characters.
Sometimes I will form little people out of play dough and encourage kids to act
out situations with them. It can be
helpful to process frustrations about a situation, fears, or anything that is
causing strong emotions. Consider this
example: A child comes in and says, “Tommy made me so mad that I want to punch
him!” I could give him a couple of
play dough figures (or he could create them) and ask him to act out what
happened. He could then role play with
the figures to demonstrate the situation. It would also give me the opportunity
to help them process not only what happened, but to ask what he thinks would
solve the situation, discuss what he did say or do, what he could have said or
done, etc. It opens the door for
dialogue.
Creative
Play. Most children enjoy being
creative, building and designing things.
As they play I look for themes in what they are doing. I usually will watch for a while and then ask
questions and I pick up on themes.
Sometimes you will see a child venting anger through play. Or sometimes you may hear a cry for
help. They will often act out issues
that are heavy on their hearts, such as feeling rejected and desiring friends,
or fear of being hurt. Many times they
will act as a superhero overcoming difficult situations. There is usually something to be learned by
quietly watching a child play.
I hope these tips are helpful. I am a strong believer in helping children
learn many ways to cope. Play dough has
been good to me. It is one tool that can
be used in many ways. This is not a
comprehensive list, but a few ideas that I have used in my counseling
room.
