Replays: Using Play to Enhance Emotional and Behavioural Development for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

I'm a fan of any book that opens with a quote from Jerry of Ben and Jerry's ("If it's not fun, why do it?"). I'll officially say he's my second favorite hippie-Jerry. This is a nice guide to a specific technique of play therapy for enhancing emotional and behavioral development for children on the PDD spectrum. The idea is to use repetitive play as a symbolic reenactment of events associated with intense emotional and behavioral reactions. This is not a new idea, but Drs. Levine and Chedd describe a specific approach in which variation is gradually introduced into the repetitive play, the individual changes too subtle to be easily noticed but ultimately introducing some flexibility into the behavioral repertoire. Not unlike the slow movements of a Philip Glass symphony. The Replays approach combines aspects of traditional play therapy as well as elements of CBT, and borrows from other intervention approaches as well. I can't do it justice here, but this Levine and Chedd's text is actually a concise, quick read, with lots of examples to help illustrate how it actually works. There are also some chapters on tailoring the technique for specific problems and specific situations as well as suggestions for adapting the technique to different settings such as sibling groups or classrooms. Thumbs up, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in autism spectrum disorders, works with this population of children, and to parents of children who might benefit from these techniques.