Is this a game or psychotherapy? and play and psychotherapy. We play with the child, but we play in such a way that the child develops, becomes less anxious, more sociable, masters speech faster, and develops thinking. How does play help? Often parents perceive a child as a small adult. But the world of a child is significantly different from the adult world. An adult lives in a world of culture based on norms, symbols, signs, language, ideals, values, norms. A child exists in nature, like any animal. It reacts to environmental stimuli emotionally or through action. Every word of language is a sign that refers to something else: a concept, thing or phenomenon. There are so many of these links and connections that a child masters this diversity only by the age of 11. Then adults say that he has developed logical thinking. Child development is the development of culture, social norms, the appropriation of cultural values, and the development of ideals. A child begins to speak a language very early, but thinking with the help of language means learning all the connections that exist between concepts, understanding through experience the meaning of the phenomena that words speak about. And this is a task for many years. Play is a transitional space between the space of an adult’s culture and the space of a child’s emotions and actions. In play, a child learns to symbolize the visible, audible, tangible world, to replace things with symbols and to operate with symbols. For example, a small car can symbolically replace the big one that dad uses to go to work every day. You can examine a small car, move it the way the child wants, not the dad, take it apart, break it. You can do whatever the child wants with it. There is a wide field for creativity here. The child gets the opportunity to act not with objects, but with symbols of objects, developing symbolic thinking. In play, the child transforms from a passive executor of the will of his parents into an active, creative being. In play therapy, not only the game is important, but also how the therapist accompanies the child in this game. The basis of therapy for adults is also important for the child. This is, first of all, a therapeutic relationship: 1. congruence of the therapist, that is, the consistency of his main manifestations, the integrity of his personality; 2. unconditional positive acceptance of the child, 3. empathic understanding, based on the inner world of the child, not the adult. The main means of working with the child: mirroring his actions in words, mirroring his feelings in words, mirroring in words the meanings that arise in the game . This is a rather difficult task - not to replace the child with yourself, not to impose your feelings and ideas on him, therefore, to conduct play psychotherapy you need a specialist psychologist.