Page 33 - Meeting with Children Book

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Jennifer’s story
Jennifer, a 10-year-old girl, sat down in front of
the sandplay shelves where hundreds of
symbols were lined up. She reached over and
picked up a mesh-looking item and began to
give it shape. She pulled its edges until she
created a round sphere and placed it in the
sandtray. She then pulled out a small figure of a
girl and placed it inside the sphere. There, she
said, “That is me and I am trapped in this cage
and can’t breathe because they cannot stop
arguing over me.” She then chose two cats and
placed them close by, looking in. “These are my
cats and they are just watching what is
happening. They are my friends and they know
what is going on.” Jennifer later placed
characters around the cage and identified them
as her mother, father, and stepmother. She
said, pointing at the two female figures, “If I had
one wish, I wish these two could be friends.”
Jennifer later noted that she wished she could
spend more time at her father’s home, but her
mother hated her stepmother.

Jennifer was able to use both verbal and non-verbal
forms of communication to metaphorically express
her ideas. Through play, young children or children
with less advanced language abilities will often show
what they are feeling versus tell what they are feeling.
The function of ‘showing’ is represented in a series of
play sequences each linked to the other in a story-
board fashion, albeit, not always in a traditional linear
educational fashion used for teaching the sequencing