PLAY™
Play-based therapy
- PPurposeful movement
- LLots of repetition
- AAdapted challenge
- YYielding motivation
What it solves
PLAY reframes play as the clinical mechanism, not a warm-up and not a reward. It is the delivery system for motivation, repetition, and motor learning.
When to use it
Use PLAY when you design any pediatric activity. If a play activity is not doing clinical work, it has not earned its place in the session.
In practice
Every activity should have a clear motor target (purposeful), generate enough reps to produce learning (lots of repetition), sit at the edge of the child's current ability (adapted challenge), and pull the child in rather than push them through (yielding motivation).
PLAY™ is one of 14 frameworks in the Playbook
Read the full treatment in Chapter 5 of the Pediatric PT Playbook (The Role of Play in Pediatric PT), with the cases, scripts, and documentation to match.
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