A Comparison of the effectiveness of child-centered group play therapy and parent group play therapy on correcting social maladaptation and loneliness in preschool children

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of child-centered group play therapy and parent group play therapy on correcting social maladaptation and loneliness in preschool children. This research is a quasi-experimental design of pre-test-post-test with control group. For convenient sampling method, 30 parents, 15 people in the experimental group, 15 people in the control group and 30 preschool children, 15 people in the experimental group and 15 people in the control group were assigned. The experimental groups underwent 8 sessions of play therapy. The instruments used were Asher and Wheeler's loneliness questionnaire and Sinha and Singh social adjustment questionnaires. The results showed the effect of play therapy on children and parents respectively on improving social maladaptation (P 0.05) and children's loneliness ( P> 0.05) were not statistically significant. Therefore, child-centered group play therapy and parent group play therapy were effective on improving social maladaptation and loneliness of preschool children, but there was not significant difference between the two groups.