What is sand tray therapy?

A sand tray is a shallow, rectangular wooden box, about the size of a dinner tray, half-filled with soft sand. Around it sit shelves of small figures — people, animals, houses, trees, heroes, monsters, soldiers, babies, wise old women, dragons, rocks, bridges, doors. Everything a small human might need to build a world.

That's the whole setup. The child builds. I keep it therapeutic.

It looks, at first glance, like play. It is play. And it is also therapy, because creative play — with the pressure and open acceptance at the right time — helps a child play into their inner world, where the turmoil and issues live. Their internal hopes, gifts, worries, and dilemmas; the whole landscape of who they are becoming and what is slowing them down.

Sometimes they narrate it. Sometimes they build it. In all cases, we find how to get through it in their best way and to move forward in their growth and development.

And this is the gift and difficulty of this work. Rather than “fixing” your child, I will work with them so that they can find what they need to create to successfully move forward.

What a sand tray session actually looks like

A typical 50-minute session runs like this:

1. Your child arrives. They say goodbye to whoever brought them — that adult can wait nearby in our shared space. We walk together to the tray.
2. They walk over to the shelves and the tray. Usually, they already know what they're drawn to. If they don't, they wander and pick up what catches their eye.
3. They build. Sometimes quietly, sometimes narrating like a storyteller, sometimes asking me to be a certain character. I follow their lead.
4. Sometimes the story has a beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes it's a scene that needs to be felt and known. Sometimes they knock the whole thing down and start again. All of that is fine.
5. Near the end, we pause. Look at the tray. Sometimes I ask about a figure, sometimes I just acknowledge what they made. We don't always "interpret" — often, the doing is the work. A child needs to find truth in their body first; meaning can come later, when they've grown into the words for it.
6. They wash their hands. We say goodbye. And once they have gotten into a routine, they’re usually lighter on the way out than on the way in.
7. You and I, and any other parent/caregivers will meet every so often to better find what can be adjusted in the therapy and at home for better support and to help things move along more naturally and productively.

Sessions are weekly.

If they aren't talking, how will we know what's wrong?

Ask a seven-year-old what's been hard about the move, the divorce, the new school, the scary thing they saw. Most of the time you'll get "I don't know" or "fine" or a shrug. Not because they're hiding something — sometimes they say what their parent wants to hear, because their job is to stay safe, and that often means helping the people they love avoid a stressful issue too. The wiring that turns feelings into sentences isn't fully built yet, and even when it is, the hard stuff often lives somewhere words don't reach.

My job is to stay close, to gently lean toward the harder places when a child is ready, and to make sure they do not have to go there alone.

Why won’t my child just talk to me?

This is the gift of a therapist and a therapy space. Done right, it does not dump straight back into a child’s everyday life. It is a safe container that cannot worry their parents, and cannot harm their siblings or themselves. They already have a life. What they need is a testing ground — and play therapy, especially sand tray, is where they can try things before they do them with the people who matter most.

In the tray, a child gets to try things out. They get to be bigger than the monster. They get to rescue the small one. They get to bury the thing and then dig it up when they're ready. They get to practice the ending they actually want.

Children are better served by finding the inner resources they can rely on throughout their lives.