Some time last year in 2021 we joined a waiting list to receive Play Therapy for children with a specific form of autism called PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance). Charlie fits into this category because he has autism with a demand avoidant profile. I wasn’t sure how we were going to manage this, as Charlie isn’t very good at managing structured play or taking demands so I am unsure how he would manage this but I think we needed to give it a shot as anything is better than nothing.

The charity that gave us this opportunity was Moonbeams Play Therapy and it was through a post on Facebook that one of my Guardian Angels tagged me in. See even years later, they are coming to my rescue and supporting our family. You can find out more about moonbeams here

Moonbeams Play Therapy

The benefits of play therapy are described below

What is play therapy? (bacp.co.uk)

To find a registered play therapist for your child see the link below for the official registered association.

Play Therapy - The British Association of Play Therapists (bapt.info)

Back to moonbeams though and our personal experience. I will not go into vast details as I would not like to take away from the amazing work that they do. Sessions are 10 if face to face or 7 if online. We did the online version as that is what works best for our family. It is a mix of both theory and structure in the sessions and by session 4 we have the play kit we need to be able to facilitate play therapy ourselves. The theory sessions are informative to know all about communications, the boundaries, time spent in sessions and how to support sessions that are becoming stale. The theory is as important as the play. And they work side by side really well.

Charlie wasn’t able to participate straight away in the play sessions, and I heard weekly from other families that they were actively having their sessions and I felt really sad that Charlie was not taking part and thought he was missing out. However, now we have got there in the end. Charlie has now taken part in his first play therapy session and he’s ready to take on that commitment and we can now make this part of our weekly routine. I am super excited about where this will take us.

Georgina x