My job has been life-changing. I learned to embrace my playful inner child again (after years of wanting to grow up immediately – get a career and raise a family). I’ve also learned to listen to my emotions and be my own therapy. And it’s all because of play!
I have the coolest job.
I mean, who else gets paid to ride horses, paint pottery, swim in pools, visit skateparks, hike up mountains…?
I’m a support worker. Basically, I hang out with kids all day and make sure their basic needs are met.
But it’s not always easy; due to trauma earlier in life, such as abuse and neglect, these kids have adopted behaviours to defend against combat and to acquire what they need.
Sometimes in saying “no”, you’re the earthquake that shook their house to the core and destroyed the castle of their dreams. Sometimes you’re the bad guy, the receiver of sideways looks and scowls, or…. worst of all, they tell the other support workers they don’t want to be with you next shift!
The Traumatised Brain
In my work training, I learned about Dr Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT).
Neuro, sequin – what? Don’t worry, I’m not a neuroscientist either. But learning about this model was super helpful in understanding the brain of the traumatised child.
(Shutterstock/Macrovector)
The theory behind NMT is that our brain develops sequentially, meaning in a specific order – bottom-up. First, the brain stem evolves, responsible for the most basic of survival skills, like breathing, sleeping, and arousal. Then the forebrain develops – the part of our brain that makes us distinctly human.
The forebrain contains the cortex (the wrinkly-looking outer layer of the brain consisting of four lobes – frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital). It is involved in the most complex of tasks – problem-solving, decision-making, and, you know, cracking the latest Wordle or finally getting on with that assignment you’ve been putting off.
The NMT is unique because it takes into account not only what a child has experienced but also when.
Traumatic experiences have a greater impact when they occur early in life. This is because of the rapid brain development that is taking place, especially in the lower parts of the brain; in fact, 90% of brain development occurs before the age of 4. “The younger you are, the bigger the impact on your development because it’s affecting the lower parts of the brain,” says Fiona Houston, my workplace’s Principal Advisor of Therapeutic Practice.
Fiona is in charge of the NMT training (she taught the people who taught me). The training involves learning how to build brain maps, pyramid-shaped grids made of little boxes, the specific space they occupy relating to the region of the brain and colour-coded to represent the degree of functioning. Green signals fully developed while red signals severely dysfunctional.
The kids I work with have pink and red-coloured boxes. Due to traumatic experiences early in life, their development is delayed. They’re most of the time operating in the lower parts of the brain rather than their forebrain.
“The younger you are, the bigger the impact on your development.”
Fiona Houston, Principal Advisor of Therapeutic Practice
Survival Mode
The limbic system acts as a bridge between the forebrain and the brain stem. It contains structures such as the amygdala and hippocampus and is involved in emotions, memory and regulation. This is the part of the brain that decides whether external information is worth paying attention to, and sends signals to the brain stem if we’re in danger.
Things that cause us to feel fear, like a barking dog or a racing car, imprint our long-term memory. They cause us to feel afraid of these things (or things resembling them) in the future. We react by fighting, fleeing or freezing.
Basically, traumatised kids are in survival mode. They tend to be highly reactive and can go from 0-100 in a second. Fiona says, “When we’re calm and regulated, we should be able to operate in the thinking part of the brain, but when we become dysregulated, we start to go down our brain – we function out of our brain stem, the survival part of our brain.”
The Big Impact
This has long-lasting effects, including on school performance. “If you’re living in the brainstem, it’s very difficult to learn. In education, you need to be able to access your cortex.”
Kids who’ve experienced adverse childhood experiences are more likely to experience depression, substance abuse, and unemployment. It is estimated that, in 2017, prevention of adverse childhood experiences would have eliminated 1.9 million cases of coronary heart disease, 2.5 million cases of overweight or obesity, and 21 million cases of depression in the United States.
The good news is that fear and other emotions are not permanent. They fluctuate, and behaviour can be unlearned and the pathways of our brain changed. Just like a faulty plug to your fridge can be fixed or replaced so your fridge can function better.
Here’s where play preferences come in.
Play Therapy
Sensory input (things we see, touch, hear etc) can be super calming for kids operating in their brain stem.
For kids who are anxious and dysregulated, they allow them to enter their forebrain – to think more rationally, to feel calmer and have more of a hold on their lives and emotions.
My job as a support worker is to build a therapeutic relationship with kids. I choose activities for us to do together, according to their play preference – that is, their preferred sensory input (that’s how I got to go horse-riding!)
The Play Preference Assessment involves ticking yes, no, or avoid beside a list of activities associated with different types of sensory input. The sensory stimulation that has the most ‘regularly initiates’ and ‘frequently repeats’ indicates your preferred input.
Examples of activities for the types of sensory input (in an assessment for children from 0-10 years) include:
- Whole body deep pressure (firm touch to whole body) – tight spaces, weighted blanket, pillows, hugs
- Proprioception (body positioning via heavy work) – running or jumping games, digging in sand, wrestling
- Vestibular (orientation, balance and movement) – swing, trampoline, hammock
- Tactile (touch) – soft toys, water play, slime, finger-painting
- Oral somatosensory (mouth) – chewing gum or non-food items, sucking thumb
- Manual somatosensory (hands) – fiddling with toys, playing with buttons, chewing nails
- Auditory stimulation (sound) – music, singing, mechanical noises
From the results, a plan is developed that suggests a list of optimal activities. These activities should be practised regularly throughout the day, for 5-10 minutes at a time. The goal of play preferences is to “keep them regulated” rather than waiting till the kids are dysregulated, emphasises Fiona – “to keep them in the cortex (the top part of their brains), so they don’t have these big meltdowns.”
The activities should be regular, rhythmic, relational and rewarding.
How to Embrace Your Inner Child
The ‘inner child’ is a subjective phrase.
For some, the inner child refers to their unhinged, wild side or their curiosity and imagination. In psychology pop-culture, it often refers to the vulnerable sides of ourselves – our automatic emotions or behaviours (the work of our lower brain).
Many of us have learned to push away our inner child. Our caregivers didn’t teach us how to cope with big emotions or allow us to feel them at all (examples of what clinical psychologist Dr Lindsay Gibson calls the ‘Emotionally Immature Parent’ as mentioned in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago).
Inner child therapy is the radical acceptance of our emotions. Listen to that quiet voice; allow yourself to need what you need.
And play!
Many of us have lost that wild side of ourselves. We wake, work, go home, sleep and repeat.
But play is good for us. We know this instinctively – the football team we joined, or the painting we do inside on a rainy weekend (what we call ‘hobbies’).
Working with kids has taught me that play is fun. I remember the 10-year-old me who would cartwheel and back walkover on the school field at lunchtime, or compete with my brothers in the obstacle courses we built in the back garden (for reference, my play preferences are whole body deep pressure and vestibular movement).
Play is Essential
For kids, play is an important component of cognitive and social development. Biologically, they’re not yet capable of higher-level reasoning or abstract thought.
Play is also regulatory; it allows us to be in a more calm state, not operating so much in the lower parts of our brains and allowing us to enter our forebrains when we need.
When I asked Fiona whether the NMT and play preferences are relevant to adults, she said an emphatic, “absolutely!”
“Life is difficult. We all have different sensory needs.”
So How Do You Discover Your Play Preference?
Note what activities you do often, or activities you enjoy or find calming.
Choose a specific place or time of day – the important thing is you don’t wait till you’re dysregulated, but that you do the activities regularly throughout the day to maintain a calm and peaceful state.
See @jacey.adler’s post on Instagram about how to build a sensory environment.
Jacey’s account is dedicated to promoting the importance of setting aside time in our day to do creative hobbies. You could look at her account to find ideas for sensory activities, such as these ‘Hobby ideas for every mood.’
The thing is, play doesn’t have to be productive. It’s simply a way to feel calmer and brighter and to enjoy life a little more. It’s an essential component of self-care!
You might not need therapy, but everyone needs regular sensory activity.
