Play Therapy Room Opens at High School

GRANADA HILLS — A play therapy room opened Friday at Kennedy High School in a resource center designed to serve 28,000 students and their families in the north San Fernando Valley.

By playing with dolls, toys and stuffed animals in the Children’s Play Therapy Room, troubled children will provide adults with clues on how to help toddlers and teenagers cope with their problems, psychologists said.

“I hope [the therapy room] can help prevent tragedies,” such as suicide, said Benita Chaum, a school psychologist and director of the Kennedy/Monroe Family Resource Center. The center provides free services to families from the 29 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District cluster.

About 50 supporters dedicated the brightly colored room full of stuffed animals, games, a dollhouse and a rocking horse in honor of Chaum’s late husband.

The play therapy room contains a two-way mirror to allow researchers and students from Cal State Northridge to observe the children. Students from the Health and Education and Educational Psychology departments will participate in the program.

Psychologists will work with children and teenagers ages 3 to 18.

“Play therapy is a way to understand what’s bothering a child,” said psychologist Richard Saneda, a coordinator of off-site programs for the Children and Family Guidance Center, a nonprofit group based in Northridge. “Adults have a hard time verbalizing what’s bothering them, but for kids, it’s even harder.”

When playing with plastic dinosaurs, for example, children might pretend the beasts are fighting.

“We can then help them with their aggression,” Saneda said. “A therapist can play with a child and talk about the consequences of hitting.”