Developing Play Skills

Play Therapy Melbourne uses a combination child-centred play therapy techniques with a more directive approach to help facilitate children’s use of play, while fostering their emotional literacy.

Many children with an autism spectrum disorder struggle with more advanced pretend play skills. These advanced play skills are linked with language development, social interaction and emotional regulation (the very areas many children on the spectrum have difficulty with). That’s why it is important to help children develop play skills.

The clinician focuses on pretend play during sessions (also known as imaginative play, symbolic play or make-believe play). Pretend play is the most complex form of play, and occurs when children inject their imagination into their play. For example, they might play with a puppet who is being mean to a friend and hitting them, or they might lay a blue blanket on the floor and pretend it is a river, or maybe they might dress up as a prince who rescues all the soft toy animals from a storm that is on its way.​

Pretend play is linked to:

• language development
• abstract thought
• social competence with peers
• emotion regulation
• social and emotional wellbeing
• creativity