Play Therapy

Book by Axline Virginia M

1.
Some Children Are Like This
 
 
I
“IT’S FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT—ALL DAY LONG!”
 
The distraught teacher hurried down to the principal’s office a few agitated steps ahead of Tom, who followed with sullen resentment.
 
“Wait out here,” she informed him crisply, while she went in, on a teacher’s priority, to present her complaint to the principal. This defiant, disobedient twelve-year-old boy was driving her to distraction. He kept the class in a constant state of turmoil. He was continually reminding her that she was “just a substitute teacher” and remarking that “no one could boss him around.”
 
Tom was bright enough to do satisfactory school work, but he refused to apply himself to the assignments. If he had his way he would read all the time. He resented criticism. He was antagonistic toward the other children—complained that they “picked on him.”
 
And now the group had just come in from recess and there had been another fight. Tom said the boys had all ganged up on him; and the boys said that Tom had spit on the American flag. When they had returned to the classroom, Tom showing signs of having been severely beaten by the gang, the teacher had reprimanded them for fighting on the playground. The other boys had said they were sorry and had related the flag episode. But Tom had glared at her in defiance, had swept his book off his desk with a gesture of utter contempt and anger, and had said, “I’ll do as I please! They started it. They ganged up on me. I hate the whole bunch of them. I hate their very guts and I’ll get even. Damn them all!” His black eyes blazed. His voice trembled. Yes, he even cried—big hulk that he was—and scenes like this were so upsetting to the class and made her so nervous she was all shaky and could just cry! She couldn’t stand it much longer. She just couldn’t!
 
Then, after she had finished her complaint, Tom was summoned into the inner sanctum.
 
“Miss Blank tells me you’ve been fighting again.”
 
“Well, they ganged up on me.”
 
“She tells me you were disrespectful to the American flag.”
 
“I really didn’t spit on it. I just said that.”
 
“She says you were disrespectful in class, threw your book down on the floor, and swore.”
 
“I can’t stand this place any longer!” Tom cries out—and once again the tears come to his eyes. “Everybody picks on me and lies about me and—–”
 
“That’s enough! I’m getting pretty tired of all this trouble we have with you. Every day you are brought down to the office. Every day you are reported for undesirable behavior. It’s fight, fight, fight—all day long. Words don’t seem to do you any good. Well, perhaps this will!” The principal gets out his strap and applies it wearily, despairingly, but effectively, where he thinks it will do the most good.
 
Tom and his teacher return to the classroom. The principal goes on about the business of being a principal. In the afternoon the teacher reports that Tom is absent. The principal calls Tom’s home. His mother does not know where he is. She thought he had returned to school. He is truant from home and school for three days.
 
Everyone concerned with the case feels futile and inadequate. This does not seem to be the solution to this type of problem, but what can a person do? There must be order and discipline and control or the place would soon become a bedlam. Tom is certainly a difficult problem child.
 
II
“SO YOU’RE GOIN’ HOME, ARE YOU?”
 
The matron of the Children’s Home stood on the side porch of one of the cottages and watched Emma and the other children standing out in the yard. Emma was dressed to leave the grounds. She had her small overnight bag packed and waiting on the porch. The other children were standing apart from Emma. They made faces at her and she made faces at them. There was a tenseness—almost a grimness about her bearing as she waited there. Her handkerchief was twisted into a string. She stood first on one foot and then on the other.
 
“Ole Emma thinks she’s smart ’cause she’s going away,” calls one of the children in a taunting voice.
 
“Shut up your sass,” Emma retorts, “you stinky old polecat. You filthy, old, moldy-faced, double-jointed rat!”
 
“Don’t you call me names!” angrily shouts the first child.
 
Emma leans toward her tormenters.
 
“Yah! I’ll spit on you, see!” She does. There is an immediate clash.
 
“Children! Children!” calls the matron. They draw apart. Emma tosses her head defiantly. She watches the road eagerly for an approaching car. Her mother has promised to come after her and take her away for a short vacation.
 
The cottage door opens and out comes another matron. The two women talk together for a few minutes and then the first matron picks up Emma’s suitcase and calls to her.
 
“Emma. Emma, dear. Your mother just called. She won’t be able to come for you this week-end.”
 
Emma turns toward the matron as though electrified. Her green eyes seem to be on fire. She glares at the matron.
 
“Come on, Emma. Take off your good clothes.”
 
The other children shriek with glee.
 
“Yah! Yah! Smarty! So you’re goin’ home, are you?”
 
“Children! Children!” cry both matrons.
 
Emma turns and with the fleetness of a deer runs across the grounds until she comes to an isolated spot. She flings herself face down on the ground and lies there tense and silent. The matron finds her there and finally coaxes her back to the cottage. This has all happened so many, many times before. The mother promises to come for Emma and take her away. She disappoints the child and never keeps her promise.
 
Back in the cottage Emma cannot eat, cannot sleep, cannot even cry. She becomes sick and is placed in the hospital room. When she recovers—as she soon does—and goes out among the other children, she is hateful and mean and sullen. She, too, is a problem child.
 
III
“THIS BOY DOESN’T NEED MEDICINE”
 
Timmy and Bobby hadn’t felt solid ground under their feet since their mother and father had separated and the children had been placed in a foster home.
 
When his mother had come to take him home for a short visit, Timmy had been reluctant to go with her, but she had insisted. Timmy had been having trouble eating and retaining what he ate. It didn’t seem natural for an eight-year-old boy to be without an appetite and to be so babyish. He cried easily, was difficult to get along with, fought with his younger brother, Bobby. He seemed tense and nervous.
 
Timmy’s mother took him to the doctor and the doctor diagnosed it as a “case of nerves.”
 
Timmy nibbled his fingernails as his mother discussed his case with the doctor. Then, in a moment of silence, Timmy exclaimed rapidly, in a high, shrill voice, “I saw my daddy yesterday. He came to the house. They’re going to get a divorce. They’re not going to live together any more. My father doesn’t love my mother and my mother doesn’t love my father and maybe he’s going to be married again and we won’t hardly ever see him, mother said, because she said she wouldn’t let him have me and Bobby ever and he said that he would show her!”
 
“All this was discussed before Timmy, I suppose?” the doctor asked.
 
“Well,” the mother said defensively, “he’ll have to know about it sooner or later. He might as well know it now!”
 
“Bobby and me are living in—–now,” Timmy said. He was screaming at the doctor. “We live with Mother R. We like it there!”
 
“Can’t you give me a prescription—or something?” Timmy’s mother said. “He doesn’t sleep well at night. He vomits almost everything he eats. The woman he stays with says he is nervous and acts so wild.”
 
“I’ll give you a precription,” the doctor replied, “but this boy doesn’t need medicine.”
 
In disgust, the physician wrote a prescription. He added caustically, as he handed it to the mother, “He needs a home and congenial parents more than he needs a nerve sedative.”
 
Timmy returned to the foster home. He sought out Bobby. “Mom and Daddy are going to get a divorce, and she said he couldn’t ever have us if she could help it and—–”
 
Timmy and Bobby are problem children.
 
Tom and Emma and Timmy and Bobby are all described as “problem children.” They are tense, unhappy, thoroughly miserable youngsters who sometimes find their lives almost too much to bear. Those who are interested in the personal adjustment of such children regard them with genuine concern. The environmental forces are unfavorable, and little help can be expected from parents or others who are responsible for them. What, if anything, can be done to help them to help themselves?
 
There is a method of helping such children to work out their own difficulties—a method which has been used successfully with Tom and Emma and Timmy and Bobby and with many other children like them. This method is called play therapy. It is the purpose of this book to explain just what play therapy is and to present the theory of personality structure upon which it is based, to describe in detail the play-therapy set-up and those who participate in the therapeutic process, to present the principles which are fundamental to the successful conduct of play therapy, to report case records which show its effectiveness in helping so-called problem children to help themselves in making their personal adjustments, and, finally, to point out the implications of play therapy for education.