A Sandplay Treatment For Children With Insecure Attachment

Attachment is a special affectional coupling between foster-mother and children. Infantile attachment is divided into three kinds by Strange Situation Procedure, they are secure attachment, avoidant attachment and ambivalent attachment. Avoidant attachment,ambivalent attachment and disorganized attachment are all called insecure attachment.Sandplay Therapy is a type of play therapy and that is very suitable for children who cannot communicate well verbally. Clients use toys freely in a special box filled with clean sand, which helps from a framework for progress in self-expression. This process can exert within the clients potential and ability for self-healing.This study evaluated effectiveness of individual sandplay therapy and filial sandplay therapy in promoting the attachment security of children with insecure attachemnt.The one-way complete randomalized equal-group research design used both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative research:Measure of attachment scores were obtained from a questionnaire named Waters & Deane's Attachment Q-set made by Waters & Deane, and the results of different groups were compared. The qualitative research: Researchers tried to identify the effectiveness of promoting attachment security of children with insecure attachment by description of and comments on the process of sandplay therapy. Feedbacks from teachers and parents was also included in the qualitative research.Conclusions:(1) After filial Sandplay Therapy, the data revealed that the attachment security of insecure attachment children was significantly different from those children who participated in individual sandplay therapy and the control group.(2) In promoting attachment security of insecure attachment, there is no significant difference between the individual sandplay therapy group and the control group.(3) Sandplay Therapy can help both children and their mothers with catharsis and alleviate stress effectively. It is can also promote and develop the parent-child relationship.