It is clear that in recent decades awareness of the diversity of ways in which human beings can perceive reality and experience life experiences has greatly increased. In addition, going to psychotherapy has also become very normalized, something that less than a century ago meant suffering a stigma associated with mental health problems.
However, today there is a paradox: many of those who believe that we must normalize the idea that anyone may need to see a psychologist, take for granted that what is done during these sessions is to talk and reflect on very abstract concepts… However, Realize that this implies ignoring the reality of many people with intellectual or verbal limitations. Play therapies applied to boys and girls with Down syndrome is a clear example of this, as it shows to what extent psychological intervention can be adapted to very diverse realities and call into question what is usually taken for granted about the work of mental health professionals.
As their name indicates, play therapies are forms of psychotherapeutic intervention that are developed through play as a medium; However, since they are intended as a therapeutic resource, here fun and leisure are not the fundamental objective, and in any case they appear as a secondary consequence, a by-product. The fundamental purpose is provide support for the correct development of cognitive and emotional management skills, taking advantage of the resources offered by a recreational context by creating an environment of trust, security and free expression with the help of objects and narrative elements provided by the therapist.
In this sense, play therapies have not been specifically designed to treat children with Down syndrome, and it is normal for them to be applied to minors with various problems and needs.
However, among children who have developed this genetic alteration it takes on special importance, and it adapts very well to the limitations of those who have little ability to process very abstract concepts or articulate and understand more or less complex sentences. We must not forget that Down syndrome presents with various degrees of impairment in intelligence, and while some children need relatively little special attention, others are totally incapable of speaking or understanding simple sentences.
What are the benefits of play therapies in children with Down syndrome?
The main pillars of the play therapy intervention are three, corresponding to the type of skills and aptitudes that contribute to training. They are the following:
In this sense, the most important benefits that play therapies provide to children with Down syndrome are the following:
1. Socialization
The game is a great way to train basic social skills from a series of rules based on a narrative fiction. In other words, it creates a “testing ground” in which to experiment and practice in a simpler reality than what exists outside the framework of the game. And furthermore, the fact of associating play with having a good time makes children open up more to others, whether they are other boys and girls or the therapist himself.
2. Practice of body expression
Play provides opportunities to behave in a way that is different from those dictated by the social conventions to which even young children are subject to a greater or lesser extent. This allows them to be encouraged to dance, sing, practice non-verbal communication, etc.
All forms of languages are based on symbolic expression, and even people with very limited communication skills often have the ability to think in relatively abstract terms. Therefore, another benefit of play therapies for children with Down syndrome consists of act as a bridge between that ability to think about concepts, on the one hand, and the possibility of expressing them through symbols. The game provides symbolic elements that can be reviewed and redefined by the little ones. In the same way, it provides materials for artistic expression.
4. Helps improve learning skills
Learning to play is also an experience through which children learn about their ability to learn; It offers puzzles, riddles with clues, challenges to solve by creating narrative arcs, etc. And all this without having to reflect or do anything more than that, but through interaction with the environment.
