REMOVABLE from home environment for the first time, for example when a child was first educated at kindergarten, is not an easy task, both for children and parents.
One common problem that arises is a sense of anxious children to be separated from parents or caregivers. Psychologists call it with separation anxiety disorder, namely fear and excessive stress on the child when asked to separate from the main adhesive figure.
This voltage can appear in the form of concern about the security of people who parted from him, refusing to go to school, sleep disturbances, and complaints of physical pain. Barlow & Beck (in Weems & Carrion, 2003) explains that anxiety in children generally occur because of the role of learning, thinking, and physiological aspects of anxiety disorders.
When problems like this happen to your child, then do not force the child to quickly adapt to his new environment because it can increase children’s negative experiences that have an impact on the emergence of the next series of problems. Besides need to know the main cause, you also need to immediately do something before the next problem appears.
One of the things you can do to achieve these two objectives is to ask him to play. Axline (1947) says that the play is a natural medium for children’s self expression. The game you do with this child can become a therapy, called play therapy (Schaefer, 2003).
With play therapy, children have the opportunity to ‘play’ feelings and problems, the child feels to be the most important, manage the situation and him, no criticism and rules, and can be received in full (Axline, 1947). Situations like this are very conducive to a child who is experiencing anxiety, so that safe feeling fulfilled.
This paper introduced a kind of therapy that can be done to cope with anxiety disorders, ie, play therapy, particularly cognitive approach perilakuan.
The steps that can be done in stages play therapy with this approach include:
Building a sense of security
When children experience anxiety because they have to relate to the new world, this child needs is a sense of security, then create a sense of security in children’s self with the school waited for some time.
Changing thinking is wrong
Children who experience separation anxiety usually have developed the false notion that his new world, for example with regard mischievous new friends, teachers fierce, hard lessons, or other negative things. Thinking this kid needs to be changed by facts showing the opposite way.
Encourage children to play together
Games are used depending on the choice of the child. Make sure that the child becomes the main actor in the game and give the opportunity to play many roles. Through its role as the main actor, the child has freely express what is being experienced. Take advantage of this child’s expression to explore what is actually a major cause of anxiety of children.
From here, you can change the false idea of children indirectly through conversations with key actors. In order to support the effectiveness of this therapy, do this therapy at school with classmates, so that positive feelings toward school may be formed.