Therapy Board Games Online: Climb & Slide, Four in a Row and Roll & Talk

About the technique

Child therapists and school counselors have long adapted classic board games for therapy by adding question cards about feelings, family, school and coping to familiar rules. Charles Schaefer and Steven Reid collected this practice in Game Play, a handbook on the therapeutic use of childhood games first published in 1986 (Schaefer & Reid, 2001). The game supplies structure, turn-taking and a shared focus, so talking about a hard topic becomes one move among many rather than the whole session.

Games also give children practice in following rules, waiting, handling frustration and winning or losing well, and they give the therapist a live view of how a child copes (Schaefer & Reid, 2001). Games built for social and emotional learning offer repeated, low-stakes practice in a setting children enjoy (Hromek & Roffey, 2009). There are few controlled trials of therapeutic board games, so the evidence is practice-based: the game is a vehicle for conversation and rapport, not a treatment on its own.

They suit school-age children, preteens, families and groups, in the office or over video. In family sessions a shared game shows how members take turns, encourage each other and respond to losing. Keep questions age-appropriate and allow a pass every time. If a child finds losing hard, name it and use the moment to practice coping. Follow up outside the game on anything that suggests harm or abuse, and act on your reporting duties.