How two UAE therapists opened a play centre to heal kids through toys

Where did the father doll go?

Dubai-based Mandy Conley (name changed on request) had lost her husband, when her daughter was around three years of age. Somewhere, in her grief, she hoped that the child would be less affected and scarred.

Time is kind to children, she wanted to believe.

It seemed as if she was right. Her daughter, Carly, appeared to be cheerful after a few months. She played with toys and she went out with other children to play. On her fifth birthday, she received a doll house and she was thrilled. Every day she played with dolls, planning tea parties and dressing them up.

One day, Conley discovered the father doll hidden in the cupboard, when she was cleaning the house. “I asked her about it, and she said that she didn’t like it. She looked confused and upset, and kept saying she didn’t want it. I asked if she needed a new father doll, thinking it was this particular one that she didn’t like. She started crying and said, ‘I don’t want any father doll,” recalls Conley.

And that’s when Conley realised that children don’t need to cry to show trauma and grief. It just seeps quietly into their daily lives, melding into their behavioural patterns and conversations.

How a child plays—and what they choose to play with—offers deep insight into their inner world. It’s this behavioural language that Dubai-based play therapists Stella Antoniou and Gemma Hookins set out to decode when they launched their Play Therapy Centre.

Children communicate by playing’

Children can’t give articulated list of reasons why they’re upset. If they yell, push the furniture or just keep crying, it’s highly unlikely that they will provide a profound description of what’s bothering them: And that’s where playing comes in.

Antoniou, who started the play therapy centre with Hookins last September, explains their rationale. “Play is the most natural form of communication. They say so much in how they choose to respond with toys, music or even pets. It’s how they choose to express themselves.” At their centre, the children are in the room with a variety of toys and musical instruments. Both Hookins and Antoniou don’t ask questions; they allow the child to play freely. “The signs are so clear, and we see the clues,” explains Hookins. For instance: A child in a divorced family treats a doll house differently, as compared to one who isn’t in one.  A child dealing with suppressed rage issues might use a drum differently, by banging it constantly, and creating noise, giving the therapists an idea of what they are really going through. Sometimes, they choose plastic words and keep pretending to go for battle too. Dolls may be made to fight, or entire pretend scenarios revolve around conflict.

While the parents are not allowed in the play room as such, both the therapists discuss with them later about the insights and how to address deep underlying issues. “Parents are our partners in the process,” explains Antoniou.

The sand tray

And there’s the concept of the sand tray, as Hookins explains. It’s a popular technique for child therapy, combining both art and play as the child creates unique scenes with toys in a tray filled with sand, creating their own worlds that allows for therapists to understand their internal conflicts and struggles. The clues and symbols lie in how they were arranged, why they were chosen and what could it all mean.

There’s a science behind this form of play, and studies back it up: In Korea, researchers found that sandplay therapy, when used in school counseling, helped boost self-esteem and ease emotional struggles in fourth- and fifth-graders.  Another study focused on younger children—4- and 5-year-olds who had externalizing behaviour issues like aggression. After just 30-minute group sandplay sessions twice a week over 16 sessions, the children showed noticeably less aggressive behaviour.

That’s not a bottle, that’s a spaceship!

It’s almost fascinating to watch children play sometimes, concede UAE parents. You uncover bits and pieces of their personality that you might not consider otherwise.

For instance, Dubai-based Molly Coughlan, a sales professional, would listen to her five-year-old’s endless chatter about rockets and spaceships. “He wouldn’t talk about anything else for a while. So one day, I joked with him that he would be on a shuttle too, if he ever wanted to go to space. He was excited by the idea at first. And then, I noticed that his ‘shuttle’ was never leaving the ground. I asked him what happened, and he kept saying that it’s best close to the ground, otherwise it will crash.”

As she finally understood, he had developed a fear of heights---and imagining himself in the skies was actually scaring him. “We had a really difficult time with him on his first flight, because he was so scared,” she says. Nevertheless, after much comfort and soothing, he is more comfortable on flights. And now, his rockets leave the ground.

Similarly, Abu Dhabi-based Nick James’s six-year-old daughter crafted a game of her own, where she played with a purple elephant and tiny dolls, imagining them to be her classmates. “I was a little concerned when she tried to trample one of the dolls with the elephant, and then realised that they were having fights in school. So, I had to find a way to calm her anger down about them, and understand why she was so hurt,” he says.

It has been over a year, and the purple elephant doesn't trample the dolls now.

So, as Antoniou says, there’s so much you can learn by just watching how your child plays. The doll fights, the rocket malfunctions, the silent father figure—all speak a language of their own. Behind every game, every imaginary world, there’s often something real.