Sand psychotherapy and the relevance of its application. The article will discuss exercises and games that can be used with the voiced method of working with children. Sand psychotherapy is a method that was described in detail by Carl Gustav Jung, is to work with sand to solve psychological problems. The voiced material has always been popular among people, because in itself it implies the availability of its acquisition and the effectiveness of its application in some issues. You should understand the voiced concept in order to use it in the future when working with children.
Description and tasks of sand psychotherapy
Sand psychotherapy for children is a fairly well-known technique that arose on the basis of analytical psychology. It allows the child to communicate not only with the world around him, but also with himself. In addition, when using it, there is a real opportunity to relieve internal stress in a depressed little person, which further leads to an increase in self-esteem in problem children.
Sand psychotherapy is a natural game for babies that does not make them alert and fearful.
However, with all the simplicity of such a technique, during the classes, the child's deep self is revealed and even the creation of a complete picture of the world in his imagination. With the help of the created sand figures, children acquire an important experience of getting out of crisis situations by solving the problem at the level of understanding the symbolism.
Each intervention in the inner world of the child must be unequivocally justified and regulated by people who are knowledgeable in this matter. Experts in the sounded field of psychology consider the use of sand psychotherapy as a necessary maneuver exclusively in these cases of helping children to solve their problems:
- Increased anxiety … A child may have certain phobias, which is not a deviation from the norm, even in the life of an adult. However, such connivance to the voiced problem on the part of parents can result in neurosis and nervous tics in children who begin to intensively cultivate their secret fears.
- Inappropriate behavior … Quite often, children allow themselves to demonstrate their direct protest against the dictatorship of adults. However, babies or adolescents do not always comply with the permissible framework, which should not be crossed through manipulations in the form of tantrums and provocations to achieve the desired result.
- Low self-esteem … This mental pathology is dangerous in that it entails a large number of complexes in the child when he enters adulthood. At the same time, sand psychotherapy will help to correct the self-esteem of a depressed little person to the maximum.
- Conflict with society … With the voiced problem, complex relationships can form with both adults and children. In some cases, the child enters into confrontation with parents, representatives of the teaching staff or peers.
- Depression … In some situations, such a depressed state can even lead to suicidal thoughts. Therefore, calming sand therapy will help children get rid of the voiced problem.
- Child abuse … This psychological trauma can be formed as a result of moral or sexual pressure on an unformed little personality. In many cases, sand therapy alone will not do, but it will be very useful in the form of an accompanying correction technique.
These factors are the main reasons for parents to think about mastering a similar technique for working with sand for their children. However, in some cases, the child himself may want to attend such exciting activities for him without any essential prerequisite for this. Parents themselves are able to conduct them, but it is still better to seek help from a specialist at the first stages of studying the sounded method.
Sand therapy material and equipment
Any master of his craft knows how important it is to use quality raw materials when working to achieve the best result. To conduct classes with sand, it is necessary to provide for the following components of success in the sounded process:
- Exercise table … In this case, you cannot do without visiting a store where materials are sold for lovers of art and creativity. It is better to choose a sandbox from raw materials in the form of conifers. You can save in this case by purchasing plastic products. However, in this technique, the child's tactile contact with the tree is very important. If parents want to carry out such exercises at home themselves and do not have the opportunity to purchase a sandbox, then you should not be upset. In any hardware store, it is quite possible to purchase wood, from which then dad or familiar families will make a worthy analogue to the voiced serial product. However, it should be remembered that the interior of this self-built structure must be painted either blue or light blue. Psychologists are convinced that it is these tones that help a child, when in contact with sand, create the most successful models of compositions. If you wish and financial opportunities, you can connect your children to sand animation. To do this, you will have to purchase a sandbox with special lighting and a transparent screen.
- Therapy sand … Usually, with this method of working with children, quartz sand is used, the color of which can vary from white to red. At the same time, the material for such psychotherapy is soft and flows easily in the hands of the baby. However, you can replace it with sea or river sand, which is thoroughly sieved, washed and then dried before that. If you intend to use wet sand, then you should purchase a special spray bottle. 5-6 kilograms of sand is quite enough to carry out the described session.
- Figures for psychotherapy … The foundation for creating sand models must be made of different materials. In this case, it is worth purchasing similar products made of metal, plastic, clay and wood. In shape, the figures can be on various topics: animals, people, birds, characters from famous works. If you wish, it is possible to purchase whole thematic sets of all kinds of items for working with sand in a special store. At the same time, do not forget about the use of natural materials in the form of pebbles, shells, fruit seeds and twigs.
Sand psychotherapy technique
After acquiring the material necessary for classes, it is worth understanding the very scheme of the proposed event. The technique in this direction includes many different options for its implementation.
Warm-up with sand psychotherapy
The first steps in such classes should be clearly coordinated and look like this:
- Induction training … Before starting to get acquainted with a new type of activity, it is necessary to interest the child, causing him to desire for further cooperation. To do this, you can come up with any image in the form of a Sand Fairy or a Loose Man. The next step is to familiarize yourself with the rules of visiting a fairy-tale character. It is necessary to explain to the kid that you cannot be careless about grains of sand. Therefore, it is forbidden to throw them outside the sandbox or take them into your mouth.
- Getting to know the sand … First, you need to ask the child to express their emotions after the first tactile contact with the sand. He must say how he felt the given granular substance and what he felt at this contact. Then you can play a trickle, drawing smooth lines on the sand. After the first acquaintance with the described unique material, you can try it for strength. To do this, you need to clench it into a fist, and then pour it back into the sandbox. Next, it is worth starting a blind acquaintance, in which the child is invited to close his eyes. After that, the psychologist or one of the parents of the baby should start pouring sand on the fingers of his ward. The task of children during the described action on the part of adults is to identify and voice the finger where the described substance has got.
- Collective assessment of sensations … With this exercise, the parents of the child must definitely be present. The technique of performing manipulations called "Sand prints" is quite simple. It is necessary to take turns plunging your hands into it and then voice the impressions of the performed action.
- Rain against aggression … Especially anxious and conflicted children will benefit from this exercise. In this case, the child needs to pour sand first from palm to palm, and then into the container itself for such activities. Parents can join this process, who must support their beloved child throughout the entire psychotherapy of this kind.
- Association with animals … Each child should imagine how a certain animal moves. At the same time, you need to imitate these movements on the sand, trying to achieve maximum reliability during the exercise.
Children play with sand
After the warm-up exercises, it's time to play around with some sand and additional items. This can be done as follows, using figures when playing:
- Hide and seek … The purpose of this method of finding contact with a child is to learn about the reasons for his inner discomfort. In this case, you need to offer him from the 12 offered items to choose several (2-3 pieces). Then the baby must bury the selected figures in the sand, hiding his preference from the adult to the last. After hiding objects, the child needs to find them by touch and tell the psychologist and parents about each find.
- Association game … With the help of sand and figurines, children are invited to build a composition on a specific theme. At the same time, the child must explain why what he has done with his own hands looks exactly this way. Children love to fantasize about their future, family, friends and existing professions.
- Sand paintings … In this case, the expression "castle in the sand" will not seem like an unreasonable factor. You can try to invite your child to play an exciting game with adults. Many children watch films on a historical theme with enthusiasm, so it will not be difficult for them to describe, to the best of their ability, the castle of those times with all its knightly attributes.
Analysis of sand compositions
When considering the connection between the conscious and the unconscious, one should not think that the compositions constructed by the child are meaningless. The territory of the sandbox itself can be roughly divided into two parts. At the top, you can observe what children clearly perceive in reality. At the bottom, a "dead" zone of the subconscious begins, which is not visible to an outside observer with the naked eye.
Decoding of some sand compositions may look like this:
- Arrangement of items … The specific placement of the figures can tell a lot about who designed them for a given structure. The subject in the center of the composition should always be associated with the little author himself. The second laid out figure clearly has a comparison with some significant event in the child's life. When burying an object in the sand, the psychologist and the parents of the baby should think about the fact that this is probably how the children deal with the factor that frightens them.
- Motivation … If the baby is in a depressed state, then he will choose the first figures he comes across and will react sluggishly to inventing any situation in the game. In a state of heightened aggression or with a heightened sense of justice, the child will willingly support the psychologist and even himself will develop the proposed topics regarding the struggle between good and evil.
- Characteristic of temperament … Many people are amazed by the fact that by the location of the sectors in sand psychotherapy it is possible to calculate the voiced aspect in the younger generation. If the child prefers to act in the upper part of the sandbox, then we can assume in him the predominance of a romantic nature. Usually this factor is observed in melancholic people who are prone to some daydreaming. When the figures are located at the bottom of the sandbox, one can assume children who are not used to idealizing the events around them. These are one hundred percent sanguine people with an appropriate demeanor for them.
Symbolism in sand therapy is no less important than the procedure itself. When building certain compositions, you can see much more than when talking heart to heart with a child.
What is sand therapy - watch the video:
Sand psychotherapy is not just a method to identify the causes of dysfunction in the body of children. With the voiced methodology, both psychologists and parents can clearly understand the cause of the child's problem. There is no need to be afraid of new solutions in this area, because they are the ones that carry quite promising ways of dealing with many mental ailments in the younger generation.
