Why Children Often Show Us What's Wrong Rather Than Tell Us

Many parents expect that if a child is struggling, they will tell us directly.

Sometimes they do, but more often they don't. This is often less a matter of not wanting to talk and more a matter of not yet having the words, understanding or developmental capacity to explain what they are experiencing.

Instead, children may show us through their play, behaviour, relationships or seemingly small changes in everyday life. A child who is worried may become unusually controlling in games. A child who feels overwhelmed may become angry over minor frustrations. Another may withdraw, become quieter, or seem uninterested in things they once enjoyed.

This can be confusing for parents and it is only natural, wanting so dearly to help, to ask questions such as:

"What's wrong?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Can you tell me what's bothering you?"

Yet children rarely have the words to answer in the way adults expect. Where they are in their development means that many experiences are still being understood through action, play, relationships and the body long before they can be put into language.

Play as a Language

The pioneering play therapist Virginia Axline observed that children naturally express themselves through play in much the same way that adults often express themselves through conversation.

Play is not simply a way of passing time. It is one of, if not the primary way, children explore experiences, relationships, fears, wishes and frustrations.

Just as adults often use conversation to think, reflect and process their experiences, children use play in a similar way.

A child may repeatedly build and destroy a tower. Another may bury objects in the sand and dig them up again. One child may spend weeks creating stories about heroes and villains. Another may carefully organise toys, set rules and become distressed when those rules change.

What continues to surprise many parents is that children often begin to work through difficulties in play long before they are able to explain them in words. Given the right conditions, children frequently find ways of expressing, understanding and integrating experiences through play that would be difficult to reach through conversation alone.

For many children, play offers enough distance from a difficult experience that it becomes possible to approach it. A child may not be able to talk directly about feeling frightened, lonely or angry, but may be able to explore these experiences through stories, toys, art materials, sand or imaginative play. Play provides a language that is often safer than direct explanation.

Looking Beneath Behaviour

In recent years there has been increasing recognition that behaviour is more than simply how a child acts. If we look with enough care and compassion, it can also be understood as a form of communication.

This does not mean, of course, that all behaviour should be accepted or that boundaries are unimportant. Children need clear and consistent limits.

However, a child's behaviour often tells us something that they cannot yet explain in words.

Garry Landreth, one of the leading figures in Child-Centred Play Therapy, often described play as the child's natural medium of communication. Rather than asking children to enter the adult world of explanations and insight, play therapy meets them in a form of expression that is already natural to them.

From this perspective, one might think of a child's behaviour not simply as a problem to be corrected but as an attempt to communicate something that has not yet found words and does not require the child to explain something they cannot yet explain.

Most adults can remember being asked to explain something as a child and not quite knowing how. Modern child development research and play therapy approaches increasingly recognise that children need support that fits their stage of development rather than expecting them to communicate in the same way as adults.

The Importance of Relationship

For me, one of the most powerful ideas running through the work of Axline, Landreth and many contemporary child-centred practitioners is that change does not come primarily from technique or insight on the part of the play therapist.

It comes through relationship. A living, dynamic relationship between the child and the play therapist.

Children, like adults, begin to understand themselves more clearly when they experience being understood by another person; when they feel seen, heard and witnessed.

This is one reason why the therapeutic relationship itself is considered so important. Before a child can talk about difficult feelings, they often need to experience safety, acceptance and genuine interest from another person. In many ways, this is something we all need.

As Dennis McCarthy has written, play is not merely an activity but a way of being in relationship. Through playful connection, children can begin to explore aspects of themselves that might otherwise remain hidden.

Regulation Before Reflection

Contemporary approaches such as those developed by Lisa Dion have also highlighted the importance of emotional regulation.

Many children are not avoiding feelings because they are unwilling to talk. They may simply be overwhelmed by experiences they do not yet know how to manage.

Before children can reflect on their emotions, they often need help feeling safe enough to experience them.

In this sense, play can become a bridge. It allows difficult experiences to be approached indirectly, at a pace the child can manage. Rather than the adult deciding where the child should go, the child often shows us where attention is needed and the therapist's role is to accompany and support that process.

What This Means for Parents

It is understandable that parents, teachers and carers want to know what is going on when children do not seem themselves. The urge to ask questions such as "Can you tell me how you are feeling?" is a natural attempt to reach them.

But perhaps the most helpful starting point is not finding the perfect explanation.

It is becoming curious.

What might this behaviour be communicating?

What is changing in the child's world?

What might they be trying to show us?

Children do not always tell us what they are carrying. Very often they show us.

When adults learn to notice and become curious about these communications, children frequently discover that they no longer have to carry them alone.

Every week I am reminded that children are often communicating far more than they appear to be. When adults become curious about what is being shown rather than focusing only on what is being said, new possibilities for understanding and support often begin to emerge.