Why Play Matters: Understanding Play Therapy for Children | Embrace Play Therapy

Introduction

For centuries, play has often been viewed as light, frivolous, and primarily childlike. While play can certainly be enjoyable and absorbing, it also carries significant meaning, intention, and emotional depth, offering a window into an individual’s inner world.

Even in adulthood, play remains an integral part of everyday life. Whether through five-a-side football after work, a card game with friends, creative hobbies, or shared laughter, these moments serve important functions: connection, expression, and emotional regulation.

If play continues to serve these purposes throughout adulthood, its significance in childhood becomes even more profound.

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Play Does Not Disappear - It Evolves

Play does not disappear as we grow older; rather, it changes shape. What may once have looked like imaginative play with toys becomes social interaction, creativity, movement, or humour. Despite this, play is still frequently underestimated, particularly in relation to children’s emotional wellbeing.

Too often, play is dismissed as a distraction from serious work, rather than being recognised as serious work in its own right.

This misunderstanding can lead to an underestimation of how children communicate, process experiences, and make sense of their emotional worlds.

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The Psychological Meaning of Play

The significance of play is not a new idea. Long before play therapy became an established therapeutic approach, psychologists were already exploring its role in emotional life.

In his 1908 paper Creative Writers and Daydreaming, Sigmund Freud suggested that children’s play functions in a similar way to adult fantasies, offering a gateway into the unconscious. He later described play as a means through which children work through anxiety and distress, illustrated through his observations of his grandson’s repeated cotton reel game during his mother’s absence.

Rather than viewing play as random or meaningless, it can be understood as a form of communication, one that allows children to express experiences that cannot yet be put into words.

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Why Play Matters Now More Than Ever

In an age shaped by social media, artificial intelligence, and constant productivity, play can easily be overlooked. It is often seen as secondary to achievement, structure, or measurable outcomes.

However, the emotional function of play remains remarkably consistent across the lifespan.

For children and young people, whose capacity for verbal expression is still developing, play offers a vital way of:

• making sense of experiences

• communicating distress

• restoring a sense of control and understanding

When play is dismissed, there is a risk of overlooking how children are trying to tell us something important.

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Embracing the Power of Play

As a play therapist working with children and families, this is something I encounter regularly. When I describe my work, or speak about the role play can have in emotional healing, it is often met with a moment of pause, followed by uncertainty. Questions such as “Is that not just playing?” or “Can children not just play at home?” reflect how deeply ingrained the belief remains that play is trivial, rather than therapeutic.

However, when we pause and really consider this, it becomes clear that play is far more than it first appears. For children, play is one of the most natural and powerful ways of communicating. Through play, children express feelings, experiences, and worries that may be difficult, or even impossible, to put into words.

Perhaps there is also something for us, as adults, to reflect on here:

• To notice where play still exists in our own lives.

• To recognise the ways it supports connection and wellbeing.

• To begin to let go of the idea that play is something to outgrow.

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Final Reflection

Play should not carry shame or embarrassment at any stage of life. It is not simply an activity, but a meaningful process - one that supports understanding, connection, and emotional growth.

Perhaps it is time to embrace the power of play, not only for children, but for ourselves!