TERAPI BERMAIN KELOMPOK UNTUK MENINGKATKAN REGULASI EMOSI PADA ANAK DENGAN PERILAKU AGRESI

Childhood is the most vulnerable period of physical and mental development. The emotional development that occurs during this period will play a very important role in the future of children. Children who suppress their emotions too often will affect their mental health conditions. Low emotional regulation and anger management will have an impact on high levels of aggressive behavior. Aggressive behavior appears as a form of expression of suppressed emotions, where children show aggression in response to feelings of fear, frustration or sadness that cannot be resolved in a healthy way. This research aims to improve children's emotional regulation abilities through play therapy in reducing aggressive behavior in children at the Islamic boarding school. This type of research is a quasi-experiment with a non-randomized pretest-posttest control group design approach. There were 12 subjects in this study who met the criteria for aggression. Subjects were also given the aggression questionnaire and emotion regulation questionnaire. Subjects were divided into two groups, namely the experimental group and the control group. Analysis uses the Wilcoxon test and Mann-Whitney test. The research results show that group play therapy can improve emotional regulation abilities in children with aggressive behavior, as shown by the Wilcoxon test results with a Z value of -2.201 and p 0.028.