How To Set Up A Play Therapy Room

Therapeutic Design in a Children'due south Play Room

Today I want to talk virtually therapeutic blueprint. I was recently asked to bandage a vision for a makeover of a therapeutic play room for children being served past Afraid.

Some of yous may remember the annual Bella Rustica befouled sale that I supported and promoted in years past? That event was founded to help heighten funds for Agape.

AGAPE is a non-turn a profit agency that serves the needs of families and children in Middle Tennessee through adoption, foster care, unplanned pregnancy back up services, and organized religion based counseling and psychological services with a focus on agape (Greek for transcendent, unconditional love). This year the agency will conduct over 12,000 counseling sessions in seventeen locations beyond the region, and at whatever given time will be serving 15 to twenty families through adoption, foster care and maternity support.

Here are the pics I snapped when I first visited the intake and play room for AGAPE:

therapy room earlier

The room is quite modest – but 10 feet by 11 anxiety – and is currently total of donated toys used for play therapy. Even though there are some absurd toys in here, it isn't exactly a welcoming or soothing space. The therapists run into this room every 24-hour interval – sometimes looking at something familiar afresh through a photo makes it easier to see what it appears similar to someone new to the infinite (e.grand., the incoming children). This room is currently over-stimulating and disparate. An already broken-hearted or sensory defensive kid may be overwhelmed with the current infinite and the visual chaos here.

Since I spent a decade as a psychologist developing interventions for these kinds of children in the school system, I had more than than a few ideas for this therapeutic pattern. The goal for this space is to create a calming, friendly environment for children who may have experienced trauma and abandonment and who may also take sensory and attentional problems.

Choosing a paint color that looks fresh, soothing, child-friendly, and gender-neutral was first on my listing for the pocket-sized infinite. Paint color affects a visual surroundings more than any other design detail, considering it's inside your visual field no thing where you are in a room or what direction you lot are facing. You can't say that about a chair fabric or even a rug. If the pigment color isn't pleasing, the room pattern is a bust. This is particular the case in therapeutic pattern.

Benjamin Moore Smoke 2122-40 in an eggshell finish would be a good kick-starting time to lessen the institutional vibe in this room. I suggested painting both the walls and the ceiling the same color. A professional person painter tin spray the ceiling, rather than rolling information technology on. I've done this before on commercial drop ceilings, and it's the best thing you lot can do to soften up the await of an part or institutional setting without replacing the entire ceiling.

The therapeutic design needed a flooring option that is depression maintenance, cost effective, and stylish. These laminate planks have a textured oak finish that provides the expect and experience of real hardwood. At $one.29 a foursquare foot, the planks feature a beveled edge and easy locking installation. This kind of flooring absorbs sound better than hard woods or ceramic tile, which will help calm the auditory environs.

become information technology hither

In club to visually at-home down the small room, many of the toys should be stored behind cabinets. This IKEA unit features closed cabinets on the bottom which kids tin easily access and open shelving for books and a few fun items to add interest and color.

I love the sliding doors on these units – the one below offers all closed storage. Likewise many toys options at 1 time in this kind of therapy room tin can exist actually overwhelming and overstimulating for kids with sensory issues. Finding ways to decrease visual distractions is often a goal in therapeutic pattern.

In such a modest space, yous might besides make the decor multi-functional if you can. That's why I fell in honey with this therapy rug from The State of Nod – not just does it soften and brighten the space, but information technology's as well swell for play therapy. It tin be difficult for traumatized children to look adults in the eye when answering difficult questions. Children can run cars and boats over it and even build upwards little villages on its surface while going through intake interviews with kid therapists.

Equally part of the therapeutic blueprint of this room, I suggested a thorough editing of existing toys/items. There is too much for a kid to choose from in its electric current state. I recommended measuring the shelves in the cabinets and purchasing all white (non clear) bins to firm like items, labeling them all clearly. I also suggested they commit to fewer "stations" that are nearly useful for their purposes. The sand and the rice table may be redundant – they could choose one and remove the other. Any new therapy toys or additions to the room should be less varied in color as to visually calm down the space, using the proposed color palette as a guide for that going frontwards.

They also need a table that can be pushed upwards against the wall or two-fashion mirror where kids tin play a game or put together a puzzle with a therapist, or where they can easily be observed through the glass while playing or drawing. This set from IKEA is perfect – check out the color of the chairs!

Bright curtains will soften both large window and the two-manner mirror, and they will help blot the harsh auditory echoes that are often an issue in spaces lacking soft goods and fabrics. When we were restoring our present dwelling house 16 years ago, I distinctly remember the auditory calming that occurred when nosotros finally got rugs, window treatments, and upholstery in our home. Our one-year-former'southward high pitched cry was easier to bear when soft effects finally relieved the echo effect that we experienced the first couple of months living there!

Equally the therapy play room began coming together in my mind's eye, I decided to add a simple but playful element to the room's blueprint with a geometric wall treatment. The base of the walls volition still exist painted Benjamin Moore Smoke, but two other blues and a white will be added to the painted wall handling. The ceiling will all the same exist painted solid Smoke.

Below is the last concept lath. I call back this will be a wonderful therapy play room for the children that come up through Afraid'southward programme:

therapeutic design at agape therapeutic design

Color and pattern can exist surprisingly therapeutic. Whether in a therapy play room for children with specific emotional or sensory needs, an assisted living facility for the elderly who can no longer stay in their homes, or the home of a newly widowed or divorced woman starting her life over on her own, creating environments that soothe and comfort can be a tremendous gift to the inhabitants of those spaces. How has color or design been therapeutic for you?