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     As a fresh-out-of-graduate-school social worker, I remember being open and excited about the opportunities ahead. The sky seemed to be the limit in all the prospects social work offered, and after passing my licensure exam, I was willing and ready to explore the vast and diverse landscape of social work as my career.  After noticing a posting for an early childhood mental health specialist, I reviewed my child development class notes and had a successful interview for the position. However, I quickly felt unprepared for and was challenged by how to apply the theoretical concepts and interventions I learned in graduate school to the young children on my caseload.

   It didn't take me long to realize that the social work principle of “meeting clients where they are” would require further training and some visits to yard sales and toy stores.  

 

     When we understand the brain and its development, we realize that children learn through experience. Just as young animals can be seen on National Geographic pouncing playfully on their mothers and pawing joyfully through foliage after insects, children also learn, explore, and heal through play. Through the repetitions of motor skills and behaviors such as in play-based behavior, brain activity is altered and the brain changes (Kolb, 2009). Truly comprehending this understanding of learning through experience and the undeniable power of play in learning, growth, and development changed everything for me about how I related with clients and families.

 

 

     As I received further training in play therapy, I began feeling more comfortable taking known concepts, theories, and therapeutic interventions and making them tangible. For example, instead of expecting a young child to talk about her day or process through stressful and traumatic experiences verbally, I began to use story stones. These are tangible rocks with small pictures on them that children can use to show the linear progression of an occurrence and identify the changing emotions in the story they are sharing. These visuals allow children to explore and identify what they could have done differently to change the outcome of the story (for example, take a stone representing yelling and throwing things and replace with a stone representing taking a walk). These pictured stones also became a sorting game in which clients would sort the pictures based on emotions they elicit for them, thus identifying triggers and leaving opportunities to process unresolved trauma-related experiences and gain self-awareness and self-perceptions. Who knew some little grey stones could be such a powerful tool in any social worker’s office?

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