By Dani McClain, July 21, 2020, NYT.
Dee Ray doesn’t learn how children feel by listening to their words. Ray, a researcher and counselor in Texas, learns by watching them play.
She directs the Center for Play Therapy at the University of North Texas and often works in schools, where she sections off a 10 feet by 10 feet area in a classroom and fills the space with toys — a child sized kitchenette, puppets, a bop bag that a child who needs to work out some aggression can punch.
Recently, driven in part by a groundswell of public interest in trauma and trauma-informed care, academics and practitioners have been focusing play therapy’s potential for kids with Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. These children have been neglected, abused or exposed to violent conflict at home. They’ve often also experienced community-level ACEs, such as enduring poverty or racism, or witnessed violence in their neighborhoods. The effects can be long lasting. People with ACEs are at increased risk of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and chronic physical health conditions such as diabetes and cancer later in life.
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