ABSTRACT
The natural response of many adults to children is to question, command, or provide answers and is the consequence of an attitude that children only need to be told what to do to “straighten them out.” Responding to children in a way that communicates sensitivity, understanding, and acceptance and conveys freedom and responsibility is for many beginning play therapists like learning a foreign language and requires a drastic shift in attitude and a restructuring of words used in responses. A beginning play therapist expressed the change this way, “I know how to respond. I just don’t know how to put it into words.” From this new perspective, children are viewed as being capable, creative, resilient, and responsible. An objective of the adult-child relationship, then, is to respond to children in ways that release or facilitate the development of these existing capacities. The therapist genuinely believes children are capable of figuring things out for themselves, trusts their decisions as being appropriate for them within the boundaries of their developmental capabilities, and communicates this attitude through responses to children.
