Some kids can tell you exactly what happened and how it made them feel. A lot of kids can’t, not because they’re hiding something, but because the words simply aren’t there yet. That gap is where sandtray therapy tends to help.
DBT of South Jersey now offers sandtray therapy for children and teens, alongside our existing DBT and trauma-focused services, as school gets back underway and old and new stressors start to surface.
How Sandtray Therapy Works
In a sandtray session, a child works with a tray of sand and a collection of small figures, animals, people, houses, fences, whatever catches their eye, building whatever world they need to build. Nothing is assigned. Nobody hands a child a prompt or asks them to make a scene about “the hard thing.” The child picks up what they pick up and puts it where they put it, and the therapist follows that lead rather than directing it.
The therapist’s job in the room is mostly to watch and stay present, not to interpret out loud or explain what a figure “means.” Over a session, or across several, certain things tend to show up: a friendship that fell apart, a change in the house nobody fully explained, a worry that turns into a stomachache every Sunday night. The therapist is watching for what our practice describes as clinically relevant updates, and for the meaningful themes and patterns that repeat, not decoding a single scene like a puzzle with one right answer.
What surfaces in the tray is often the thing that would not come up in a straightforward conversation. Ask a seven-year-old directly why she’s been crying at drop-off and you’ll usually get a shrug. Give her a tray and a fence and a small figure standing outside it, and something closer to the truth tends to appear on its own.
Sandtray is a form of expressive, play-based therapy, and its research base is smaller than some other approaches at our practice, built more on case literature and clinical practice than large controlled trials. We describe it as evidence-informed rather than evidence-based for that reason, and it is offered as one option among several, not a replacement for anything else. That distinction matters to us. We would rather tell you plainly where the evidence stands than oversell a new offering.
We added sandtray because a real number of the kids and teens (and even adults) who come through our doors need a way in that doesn’t start with “so tell me what happened.” Talk therapy assumes a certain amount of verbal fluency and a certain amount of readiness, and plenty of children have neither yet, not because anything is wrong with them, but because they’re still kids, or because whatever they’re carrying is too new or too big to put into words on demand. Sandtray meets a child where they are instead of asking them to arrive somewhere they can’t get to yet.
Who Tends to Do Well With Sandtray
Sandtray often fits kids who go quiet when asked direct questions, kids who have been through something hard and are not ready to narrate it, and younger children who still process mostly through play rather than conversation. It also tends to fit autistic or ADHD kids who find open-ended talk therapy hard to organize or sustain; sitting still and producing a verbal answer on demand is its own kind of task, and the tray gives them something to do with their hands while the harder material comes out sideways.
That fit is based on the clinical reasoning behind the approach; sandtray asks less of a child’s verbal processing and executive function than a conversation does, rather than on sandtray-specific outcome research for those groups in particular. We’re careful not to promise more than the evidence supports, but the reasoning holds up in the room session after session. A child who cannot organize three sentences about their day can often organize a scene with a wolf, a fence, and a small figure hiding behind a rock, and that scene tells you something real.
Not every child needs this. Some kids talk easily and do well in a more traditional format from the start. Sandtray is one door among several, and part of what our Intake Coordinator does is help figure out which door makes sense for your child before you commit to a course of treatment.
Older kids and younger teens can benefit too, even ones who are perfectly capable of talking. A thirteen-year-old might be able to describe her week in detail and still avoid the one thing bothering her most, because naming it out loud feels too exposed. The tray lowers that exposure. Building a scene doesn’t feel like confessing something, even when it ends up saying just as much.
What a First Sandtray Session Looks Like
Parents often ask what happens the first time. There’s no test to pass and nothing your child has to build or say. A first session is mostly about your child getting comfortable in the room, meeting the therapist, and seeing the tray and the figures without any pressure to do something specific with them right away.
Some kids dive in immediately. Others touch a few figures, ask a question or two, and leave the sand alone for most of the hour. Both are normal, and neither is a sign that sandtray “isn’t working.” The therapist isn’t scoring the first session. They’re building the kind of trust that lets a child eventually use the tray the way it’s meant to be used, as a space that belongs to them and follows their pace, not the clock.
For parents, this often means the first session looks less dramatic than expected, and that’s the point. A child who feels rushed or watched too closely tends to shut the process down before it starts. We’d rather build slowly and get somewhere real than move fast and get a performance.
Patterns and themes tend to surface over a series of sessions rather than in any single one, the same way a person’s handwriting starts to look familiar only after you’ve seen enough of it. One tray rarely tells the whole story. A handful of them, spaced out over weeks, usually starts to.
How Sandtray Therapy Fits Alongside DBT-C
DBT-C is our program for children roughly ages six through twelve, and it teaches the same four skill areas used in comprehensive DBT, adapted for kids: mindfulness, or noticing feelings, thoughts, and actions as they happen; distress tolerance, or coping with a hard moment without making it worse; emotion regulation, or shifting an emotion once it’s identified; and interpersonal effectiveness, or communicating needs and keeping relationships intact. A defining feature of DBT-C is that parents are in the room for it. You participate alongside your child in both individual sessions and parent training, and you leave with the same skill language your child is learning so you can coach them through it at home, the same way a coach runs drills alongside an athlete rather than from the sidelines.
Sandtray is not a replacement for that skills work. It sits alongside it. Skills give a child something concrete to do when emotions get loud, a way to pause, name a feeling, or get through a hard five minutes without it turning into an hour. Sandtray helps a child work out what those big emotions are underneath, at a pace that does not require them to explain it out loud before they’re ready to.
Think of it this way: DBT-C hands a child tools for the moment the wave hits.
Sandtray gives a therapist, and eventually the child, a clearer picture of where the wave keeps coming from.
Used together, one informs the other. A theme that shows up in the tray for three weeks running, say, a figure that keeps getting left outside the fence, might tell the therapist exactly which interpersonal effectiveness skill to focus on next, or flag a family dynamic worth bringing into parent training.
Families who want two dedicated therapists working the same DBT-based skills in parallel, one for the parent and one for the child, sometimes ask about our Skills for Supersensers program as well. It’s a separate dual-track option, and our Intake Coordinator can talk through whether it makes sense alongside sandtray or DBT-C for your family.
What Parents Can Expect While a Child is in Therapy
You will not get a transcript of what your child built in the tray. Your child’s therapist will share what’s clinically relevant, in plain language, and flag anything worth paying attention to at home: a theme worth watching, a shift in mood, a pattern connected to something happening at school. But the moment-to-moment content of a session stays your child’s, the same way a private conversation with a good friend would.
Play therapy works in part because it gives kids a space that is theirs, and preserving that space is part of what makes it effective. If a child suspects everything they build is getting reported back word for word, they stop putting anything real into the tray, and it stops doing its job. That’s true for adults in therapy too, but it’s especially true for kids who already feel like every part of their life gets narrated by someone else.
If you’re not sure whether sandtray, DBT-C, or some combination of both makes sense for your child, that’s a completely normal place to be starting from. It’s exactly the kind of question our Intake Coordinator is there to help you sort through, and a short call is usually enough to get a clearer sense of direction.
It also helps to know what won’t change. Your child still has a say in what they build and when, the tray doesn’t come with homework, and there’s no pressure to “make progress” on a timeline that doesn’t match where your child is right now. Kids can tell when they’re being managed toward an outcome, and it tends to backfire. The goal is a space that feels safe enough to be honest in, not a checklist to get through.
Sandtray Therapy for Kids and Teens in Moorestown or Voorhees, NJ
If you think your child might do better with something other than direct conversation, especially with the demands of a new school year already piling up on top of whatever else has been going on at home, it’s worth talking it through rather than guessing on your own. We see kids and families at our offices in both Moorestown and Voorhees Township, and DBT-C sessions and parent training are also available virtually for families who need that flexibility, though sandtray itself works best in person, given the tray.
DBT of South Jersey provides therapy for children, teens, adults, and families throughout South Jersey. Virtual and in-person options are available, and our Intake Coordinator can ask a few questions about what you’re seeing at home and in school, walk you through whether sandtray, DBT-C, or a combination fits your child best, and get you scheduled with the right therapist rather than the next available one. Follow these three simple steps to get started:
- Book a call to speak with our intake coordinator to see if therapy is right for your family.
- Begin meeting with a skilled child and teen therapist.
- Help your child build the skills they need to thrive!
Other Services Offered at DBT of South Jersey
Sandtray and DBT-C are part of a larger set of services we offer families and individuals across South Jersey, and a lot of families end up using more than one at different points. If something below sounds like it fits your household, mention it when you book a call, and we’ll help you figure out where to start.
At DBT of South Jersey, we offer a wide range of therapeutic services to support your mental health journey. Specializing in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), we help individuals manage intense emotions, build healthy relationships, and develop effective coping strategies. In addition to supporting you with DBT, we provide individual counseling, therapy for teens and children, trauma therapy, therapy for OCD and anxiety, therapy for anxiety, sadness, and self-doubt, as well as couples and family therapy. We are also proud to offer LGBTQIA+ affirmative therapy, veterans services, holistic healing, Reiki, and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) to help clients heal from trauma and emotional distress. Whether you’re navigating personal challenges or looking to enhance your well-being, our compassionate team of expert therapists is here to help you create the life you deserve.