Blog
Trauma-Informed Parenting: Using PACE (Dan Seigel) and TBRI Trust BasedRelational Intervention (Karyn Purvis) to Support Your Child
Parenting a child who has experienced trauma can feel overwhelming at times. Big emotions, sudden reactions, and challenging behaviour can leave Caregivers wondering what to do next.
Trauma-informed parenting offers a different lens: instead of asking “What’s wrong with my child?” we ask “What has happened to my child—and what do they need right now?”
Connection Over Punishment: Understanding What’s Behind Challenging Behaviour
Parenting is, and probably always has been, a total minefield of opinions. Social expectations, cultural norms, and our own inherited ideas about what counts as respect, kindness, “good” behaviour or “bad” behaviour all swirl together in ways that can feel impossible to untangle.
Lately, it can feel even louder. A constant stream of advice, commentary, and contradiction — those million whispering voices from our internalised bank of social media “parenting experts.” It becomes very difficult to keep things simple. To quiet the noise long enough to actually see the child in front of us.
Supporting the Sibling of a Child in Therapy: A Family Systems Perspective
When one child enters therapy, it’s easy for families to organise themselves around that child’s needs. Appointments, emotional energy, and daily routines can begin to revolve around the “identified child.”
From a family systems perspective, however, no individual exists in isolation every change in one part of the system influences the whole.
This includes siblings, whose experiences are often quieter but no less important.
Still On Their Side: Parenting Teens Through Independence, Uncertainty and Change
There is a particular tenderness in parenting teenagers. Our young people are no longer little children, yet they are not quite adults. They are stretching toward independence, forming stronger opinions, seeking privacy, testing limits, and trying to understand who they are apart from us. And while this growth is expected, it can still feel unsettling for parents.
Understanding the Language of Play: What Your Child’s Play Might Be Telling You
Children often don’t have the skills to say what they feel but they often show it in their play. If you watch closely, play can give you powerful clues about what is going on inside your child’s world.
Play is often described as the language of childhood. Play can be easier to recognise than define but when we pay attention, we start to understand just how meaningful it is.
Co-regulation with Adhd and Autistic Children
As a Therapist who is also an autistic parent to two autistic and ADHD children (aged 5 and 9, one with PDA), co-regulation has been an ever changing and steep learning curve. When I first began using co-regulation, I felt like I should be able to do it easy! I’m a therapist I know this stuff! I was a little over confident.
Supporting Healthy Communication with Your Teen: A Guide for Parents
Navigating the teen years can be challenging for both parents and teenagers. As they strive for independence and begin to form their own identities, communication can sometimes break down, especially during tense moments.
However, with the right strategies, you can improve communication, build understanding, and foster a stronger connection with your teen.
Here are some key tips to help you support healthy communication with your teen, even when disagreements arise.
Bullying: The Bully and The Bullied. How Do We Support Our Children?
Bullying is a concern for many us as parents/caregivers, whether it’s our child that is experiencing it or engaging in it. It can have long-lasting effects on a child’s emotional and mental wellbeing. As a parent/caregiver, knowing how to respond effectively can make a significant difference in helping our child navigate these challenges.
Art And Wellbeing - How Art Facilitates Expression To Positively Impact Our Children’s Wellbeing
Art is not just a creative outlet for children; it’s a powerful tool for expression that can unlock numerous developmental benefits. Through drawing, painting, sculpting, experimenting with materials and other forms of art, kids explore their feelings, ideas, and perceptions of the world in ways that words sometimes cannot capture. This creative expression plays a significant role in shaping their emotional, social, cognitive, and even physical growth.
The Mind Body Connection is Real; Exploring The Intertwined Nature Of Our Mental And Physical Health.
In recent years, the concept of the mind-body connection has gained quite a bit of attention. This relationship has been recognised for centuries across various cultures and medical traditions, but western medicine has focused more on the physical aspect of health and treated the brain and body quite separately.
We continue to learn more about this mind-body connection and understand that the mental wellbeing of ourselves and our children is just as important as physical health, and the two are inextricably interlinked.
Mental Health Over Education: Why The Goal Shouldn’t Be Getting Our Struggling Kids To School, But Exploring Why They’re Struggling In The First Place.
We all aim for a smiling face and a wave as our kids walk into school, but that’s just not always the case. It’s normal to experience a struggle day sometimes, but when it becomes frequent, and intense emotional school refusal becomes your normal, our goal posts need to shift.
“Why All Of The Tears And Tantrums At Christmas Time?”- Exploring How The Christmas Period Can Provoke More Emotional Dysregulation For Our Children and How We Can Help.
The festive season is often perceived as a joyous time filled with warmth, family, and special traditions. However, for some children, particularly those with high anxiety, sensory processing issues, developmental challenges, or neurodiverse conditions like autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the holiday season can bring about overwhelming stress and lead to more emotional meltdowns.
Understanding the reasons behind these reactions is very important in order to support our children and create a more peaceful environment during this busy time of celebration.
Why Does My Child Do That? – Understanding Impulsivity In Children
Grabbing toys off other kids, finding it hard to wait their turn, interrupting others during conversations, rushing into tasks without listening to directions and frequently learning through the mishap that has already happened. Sounding familiar? Our children, along with their beautiful curiosity, boundless energy and fun are also very impulsive. As frustrating as it may be for us parents and caregivers, it’s actually very normal at certain ages, so understanding where this impulsivity comes from and gaining a broader knowledge on what to expect throughout our child’s development, will give us the awareness we need to allow us to support our child in gaining impulse control, or acknowledge when we need professional support.
Is This ‘Normal’? Exploring The Social And Emotional Development Of Our Children, What To Expect And How We Can Support Them.
When our children were babies, we may have felt some impatience for them to say their first word or start crawling or walking, but we knew we had to continuously support them until they were ready. The same can be said for social and emotional development; sometimes we may find that we’re expecting them to show more empathy, share with a friend, or be ok with simple changes. We might also become frustrated when they seem to say ‘no’ to everything, don’t respond to us straight away, have to win every game, or insist that they know best.
Having some understanding of the developmental goals that our children are working towards can give us the insight we need in order to respond and support in a way that is more appropriate, as we don’t take these behaviours personally.
The Selfless Parent – Why Always Putting Everyone Else’s Needs Before Your Own Is Detrimental For Your Family
As parents, we often find ourselves putting our children's needs above our own. We do this on a daily basis often leaving no time to do anything nourishing for ourselves.
While this selflessness is necessary at times when our children are struggling, chronically neglecting self-care can have unintended consequences.
Divorce And Separation – The Impact It Can Have On Our Children And How We Can Support Them Through It.
Divorce is a big life-changing transition that can bring emotional upheaval and significant changes for everyone involved. There are such big practical, financial and emotional struggles for the adults, but the emotional struggles for the children are just as big.
Disappointment; Supporting Our Child Through Disappointment And Why These Experiences Are So Important.
As parents and caregivers, our natural instinct is to protect children from negative emotions like disappointment. It can be so hard to see our children get upset, withdraw or lash out and sometimes we may do whatever we can to avoid a negative behaviour that we know will occur when that disappointment is felt.
Why Can’t My Children Just Get Along? – Navigating Sibling Rivalry
It’s the most beautiful thing to witness when our children demonstrate support and care for one another, but this certainly doesn’t happen all the time. Some days our children can’t seem to be together without someone screaming, getting hurt or protesting that the other has done something wrong.
Sibling relationships are among the most complex and enduring bonds we experience in our lives and the path can often be bumpy.
Why Is My Child So Angry And Aggressive? Exploring Anger and Aggression And What We Can Do To Support Our Child Through These Big Emotions.
Children, like adults, experience a range of emotions, including anger. Anger is a normal and natural emotion, but it can become much more challenging when it becomes aggressive. While anger is an internal feeling, aggression refers to behaviours that are intended to cause harm or damage and can manifest in physical, verbal, or relational forms.
Self-Worth – What Exactly Is It and Why Is It Important for My Child?
Self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence; they are terms that are frequently used interchangeably. While they do overlap, there are significant differences that, I believe, makes self-worth the foundation for how we view ourselves.