Unveiling the Magic of Attachment Play: A Guide to Healing Through Playful Connection
Children connect, understand, learn, and grow through play. It is one of their most natural languages. Attachment Play draws on this innate capacity, using playful connection to support emotional expression, strengthen relationships, and help children make sense of their experiences.
Through play, children communicate feelings that may not yet have words — sometimes through laughter, sometimes through tears, and sometimes through big behaviours. The most important ingredient in this process is not the activity itself, but the presence of a safe, attentive adult who remains connected throughout.
Laughter, in particular, can offer a powerful release for feelings such as fear, frustration, anxiety, or powerlessness. When laughter happens in the context of relationship, it can support the nervous system to soften and reorganise.
Understanding Attachment Play
Attachment Play refers to relational, play-based approaches that prioritise connection over correction. Rather than aiming to change behaviour directly, it creates conditions in which children feel safe enough to express, release, and integrate emotion.
Play here is not used as a reward or a technique. It is used as a shared language — one that allows children to explore power, closeness, separation, and repair within relationship.
Forms of Attachment Play
Attachment Play can take many shapes. The following forms are commonly described as supporting different emotional and relational needs. They are not strategies to apply rigidly, but invitations to connection guided by the child’s cues and capacity.
Power-Reversal Games
These games support the release of feelings of powerlessness. Allowing a child to “win,” gently knocking an adult over, or playing at being in charge can restore a sense of agency.
Nonsense Games
Silly, mixed-up play supports feelings around competence and control. Playful mistakes or absurd combinations can help release pressure about doing things “right.”
Separation Games
Games such as peek-a-boo or hide-and-seek allow children to explore separation and reunion in predictable, contained ways.
Contingency Games
Simple cause-and-effect play — for example, “when you clap, I jump” — helps children experience how their actions influence the world around them.
Physical Contact Games
Gentle physical play, including rough-and-tumble within clear boundaries, supports connection, body awareness, and shared joy.
Non-Directed, Child-Led Play
Allowing children to lead play without correction or direction creates space for autonomy, creativity, and inner expression.
Regression Play
At times, children benefit from revisiting earlier developmental needs. Play that allows nurturance, dependency, or simplicity can support emotional release.
Cooperative Games
Games that involve working together toward a shared goal support trust, collaboration, and shared rhythm.
Symbolic Play
Using toys, stories, or role-play to represent real-life experiences allows children to process events indirectly and at a manageable distance.
These forms can be woven into everyday moments — during transitions, after challenges, or when connection feels strained.
How Attachment Play Supports Adults
Playful connection does not only support children. Parenting can evoke frustration, exhaustion, and loss of autonomy for adults as well.
Shared laughter and silliness can help release tension and restore a sense of ease. After moments of rupture, light-hearted or power-reversal play can support repair, allowing trust and connection to be rebuilt without fear or explanation.
Listening Beneath the Play
Not all play leads to laughter, and that matters.
If a child disengages or tears begin to surface, it may signal that something deeper is ready to be felt. In these moments, the most supportive response is presence. Ensuring safety, staying close, and listening without trying to fix allows emotion to move through.
Sometimes children cry about something that seems small after moments of connection. This often reflects a sense of safety — the nervous system feels supported enough to release what has been held. Much like adults may cry after feeling close, children use these moments to process stored emotion.
Attachment Play as Relational Repair
Attachment Play invites slowing down and reconnecting — not as a method for managing behaviour, but as a way of strengthening relationship.
It reminds us that healing does not always look serious. Sometimes it looks like laughter and shared joy. Sometimes it looks like tears held safely in relationship. Both are part of emotional integration.
Related Resources
Important Information
This article offers a reflective, educational perspective on Attachment Play and its role in supporting connection, emotional expression, and relational repair. It is intended to support understanding rather than provide instruction or prescriptive guidance. The material shared does not constitute diagnosis, treatment, or therapeutic advice, and is not a substitute for individualised professional support.
References
Solter, A. (2013). Attachment Play: How to Solve Children’s Behavior Problems with Play, Laughter, and Connection. Shining Star Press.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. Routledge.
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind. Guilford Press.
