Language and Narrative Play Therapy Within a Therapeutic School

by Ann E. Densmore, Ed.D., CCC SLP/A, Consulting Speech & Language Pathologist/Audiologist

Children with language delay/emotional issues/autism or other disabilities—like all children––have the capacity to use meaningful language, play, and tell stories. I believe that all children develop the tools of language, play, and narrative through interactions with others. As a speech/language and play therapist consultant to Community Therapeutic Day School, I collaborate with specialists and teachers about ways of relating and teaching language within this interactive school setting. In this small classroom situation, trained therapists dedicate their time to developing a relationship with a child. It is through this meaningful relationship that children learn how to express their emotions and ideas and how to develop play with peers. They learn to connect language with emotions and develop strong relationships within a community.

Typically developing children naturally relate to others and use language to express ideas and emotions. Children with autism/language delay/emotional issues need much more than exposure to the social interactions of family and peers; they need help from their teachers and therapists on a daily basis. Children with emotional and language issues need early, long-term, intense treatment that encourages them to engage in the social interactions with a trusted therapist/teacher or parent.

There are several ways to intervene and to join the child in a play therapy process that moves him out of the isolation of self-talkmy work with children and teachers for over 30 years, I have developed Narrative Play Therapy––an intervention for children with autis(Densmore, A. 2000. Speech on location: A Narrative play technique to teach expressive language and communication to children with PDD/autism/language delay. Journal of Developmental Learning Disorders, 4, 2, 209-239). The goal of Narrative Play Therapy within and relating child.

Typical children, if given the opportunity and time, will acquire language that allows them to develop and communicate with competence.

• A child’s perception of sound is evident from birth and speech abilities are evident by 6 months of age with an infant’s first vocalizations of cries, vegetative sounds, and isolated vowel-like sounds.(Emias, P.D., Siqueland, E.R., Jusczyk, P., & Vigorito, J. 1971. Speech perception in infants. Science, 171, 303-306.)

• The beginning of babbling occurs between 6-8 months, a development that is a precursor to sequencing syllables/words.

• In the process of acquiring language, the child attaches to the parent and responds in order to get the parent’s attention. In language development.

• By the time children are 1, they use gestures, body language and one-word approximations as they point on their own to gain an adult’s attention. They keep checking to see whether the adult has responded as they point and then gaze back to change the adults’ attention (Bretherton, I. 1992. Social referencing, intentional communication, and interfacing of minds in infancy. In D.Frye & C. Moore (Eds.), Children’s theories of mind: Mental states and social understanding. New York: Plenum Press.)

• By pointing to and naming objects, a parent expands the child’s incomplete utterances that accompany nonverbal gestures.

Reciprocal, playful interactions between parents and children are important to language acquisition. Play becomes an important therapeutic situation for language interactions to occur in a natural way. Through the relationship during play, a child learns to read facial cues, see gestures, hear phonological sounds, listen to intonation patterns, and negotiate in a social world. The two systems, language and play, become one system. They learn to connect.

A child with communication and emotional issues needs support to develop his language and play skills in order to create a story structure with figures and themes that are meaningful. Often the child with emotional/language delays wants to use figures for repetitive non-meaningful actions instead of for a narrative. When he creates a story, it is often a fantasy that he cannot distinguish from real life. For example, he might talk about Thomas trains, repetitively naming them and counting them, and not be able to create a reality story about what he did with his father that day on a visit to a real train yard. A child with the complex profile of emotional issues, senLearning to follow a narrative often quiets a child and brings his real world into focus with the therapist/teacher.

Even a child with autism/language delays/emotional issues brings innate capacities to a social environment; he has the ability to use meaningful language, to play, and to tell cohesive stories that create dramas about real and symbolic life events. In play interactions within a therapeutic school, a child bonds to a therapist/teacher in order to experience the interactive nature of a relationship and the communication that is integral to that relationship. Once a child finds that sharing a relationship is more meaningful than staying within his isolated world of playing alone, he will venture into the social world and relate. As his social capacities begin to appear, he becomes a part of the social world. He develops expressive and receptive language abilities, play actions with intentional themes, and meaningful narratives.

The final phase of Narrative Play Therapy in a therapeutic setting is to encourage the child to use reciprocal interactions during play with a peer, keeping the peer within their play area and communicating with the peer about their relationship. The child can alschanging play themes as well as following others are integral to the child’s play. Using language to express ideas, plan, negotiate, relate, and bring others into a relationship––the child feels emotionally connected to his home and school community. This is our goal at CTDS. Ann Densmore © 2005.

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