Global Courant
White Coat Black Art26:30Mourning is child’s play
Zach Bulger enters the playroom at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in Vancouver and chooses from an assortment of toys.
There are knights, dragons, polar bears and many more to choose from. He decides to play with a toy ambulance, airplane and police car.
“They’re all getting ready for their next mission. They’ve just come back from a fire,” says Zach, 9, as he sits down to play with his handler. He wears a hat that says “How Great is our God” and a Black Panther necklace that belonged to his older brother, Cameron.
Cameron died of aggressive brain cancer three years ago and Zach has been participating in play therapy ever since. It is an approach in which children can process difficult emotions in a playful way, with the help of a supervisor.
And Zach’s mom, Sharon Bulger, says it’s made a big difference to her son.
“Over time, you could tell he was starting to develop a language. He was starting to develop words that would express actual feelings,” Bulger told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of White Coat Black Art.
Zach goes through the toys he’s going to play with as his therapist Emily Watson watches at Vancouver’s Canuck Place Children’s Hospice. (Brian Goldman/CBC)
According to Kevin St. Louis, president of the Canadian Association for Play Therapy, children don’t have the tools to express themselves verbally the way adults do.
Play therapy instead allows children to communicate through how they play. It can take the form of art, music and just playing with toys. The counselor sits and plays with the child and observes what they are going through.
St. Louis says he used to be able to treat only children nine and older with talk therapy. But play therapy has enabled him to work with younger children, including children from the age of two to age 16. It’s even effective in adults, he said.
“What kind of lemonade are we going to make today?”
Sharon Bulger says her oldest son loved hockey, played with Beyblades and watched Marvel movies.
“He was the lover of life. That kid was funny — and I mean downright hilarious,” Bulger said. “He loved his people, as if his heart were big.”
And he loved his brother, Zach. Every night, Cameron begged his little brother for a goodnight kiss. Bulger says Zach would pretend he didn’t want to, but would always give in.
“Zach used to go in and obey and give him a good squeeze and they would giggle. And that was Cameron. He loved his brother,” said Bulger.
Sharon Bulger, at her home in Surrey, BC, says she didn’t know how to help Zach as he mourned his brother’s death, but play therapy made a big difference. (Brian Goldman/CBC)
In 2017, when Cameron was six years old, he started having vocal seizures in class and became unresponsive. He was rushed to hospital, where they discovered a mass in his brain.
“I was handed a bowl of lemons, and I had to figure out how to navigate that and do it in a way that would bring him the best days anyway,” Bulger said.
“We had a saying that we kind of embrace as a family. ‘What lemonade are we going to make today with the lemons we get?’ And we really lived in that, because if we didn’t, what are we living in? Fear? Despair? That’s not life. We can’t, we couldn’t do that.”
He lived two-and-a-half years after his diagnosis.
Game therapy
At Canuck Place, Zach has put together a bunch of first responder toys to go with whatever vehicles he’s chosen. Zach was four when his brother was diagnosed and six when Cameron died.
During that time in between, Zach hasn’t seen his brother much. Taking Zach to the hospital would have compromised Cameron’s weakened immune system.
“When Cameron died, Zachariah probably asked us for about six months, almost every day, ‘Please tell me he’s coming back today. Why can’t he come back? Can we please go to the grave and dig him up to bring him back’ ‘ said Bulger.
“He didn’t get it. And we went through that grief with him day in and day out…because he didn’t understand.”
Zach wears a necklace from the movie Black Panther that belonged to his brother, Cameron, at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice. (Brian Goldman/CBC)
But play therapy helped Zach realize the permanence of death. Even before Cameron died, Zach received counseling at Canuck Place, in the form of play therapy.
Zach’s counselor, Emily Watson, says this could look like a child playing with a toy dog that they say is very sad, giving Watson an opportunity to reflect on those feelings.
“I could think, ‘Wow, the dog is so sad and he feels like no one can help him, even though so many people are trying to help him.’ And I might reflect what I’m noticing about the dog’s experience,” Watson said.
Bulger said that as Zach developed ways to communicate his feelings, his anger diminished. She says he has been able to tell people what he needs.
Growing practice
It’s an option that St. Louis says more people are turning to. He has been working as a therapist for over 20 years and says he used adult methods while working with children for the first half of his career.
But when he saw play therapy at work, he knew he had to make a change.
“I’ve seen it work. I’ve seen some really positive results come out of the playroom and I’ve seen how it can impact families in a positive way,” said St. Louis.
St. Louis says using play therapy has helped him reach more children, at a younger age. According to The National Child Traumatic Stress Networka grieving child can often be more angry and irritable, develop new fears and become socially withdrawn. But St. Louis says play therapy allows therapists to actually help children, not just treat behavior problems.
He says play therapy is becoming more accessible across Canada. The Canadian Association for Play Therapy now has about 500 registered play therapists and he hopes that number will continue to rise.
Zach’s counselor, Emily Watson, says kids can express their feelings through play. She works at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice. (Brian Goldman/CBC)
Meanwhile, Zach will continue to receive care at Canuck Place as he grows up. When he decides he’s done playing, he gets other forms of guidance.
For now, the process is slow but steady, and Watson says it’s making a difference.
“As he got older, he got new questions and new opportunities to explore those questions. And I’ve seen him gain confidence in his ability to understand everything that happened and everything that he’s experiencing in his mind and his heart,” he said. Watson.
“(Grief is) not something to be solved, it’s not something to let go. It’s something to gravitate toward. It’s something to learn to cope with and adapt to in different stages of life.”
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