What is it?
Sand therapy, or Sandplay, is a method for children and adults to work together, developed by Dora Kalff, a student of Carl Jung.
Does your child need this?
These sessions are necessary for impulsive, anxious and hyperactive children. Sand therapy is useful for children that do not speak (speech delay, autism, delays in psychological development), also for children that struggle to communicate with adults and other children, and for those who have underlying psychological problems that prevent a harmonious development.
During Sandplay, children receive an additional impulse to develop vocabulary, improving sound pronunciation and speech.
How are the sessions conducted?
A special tray, water and miniature figures (people, animals, trees, fairy tale characters and so on) are used for Sandplay. The equipment allows a child to independently create three-dimensional images that are optimal to its spatial-visual ability, playing out various scenes in the playground and do a voiceover of them. All children can play with sand, even those that have poorly developed fine motor skills.
What are the results?
During the sessions, the child transform his subconscious worries into visible images that it can then change and manipulate. This is why sand therapy allows a child to relieve built up stress and open new paths for development.
Play with sand can also
- Develop tactile sensitivity and fine motor skills
- Improve spatial-visual orientation and visual-motor orientation
- Enable the development of memory and thought process
- Develop communication skills and roleplay skills
- Allows negative emotions to be “grounded”, removing aggression
The only contradiction to using this method is if the child is suffering from a sand allergy.