Anne Muscatello Play Therapy & Holistic Counselling

19/04/2025

“It might seem counter-intuitive but assessments are starting to focus on a child’s strengths during this process. This can create powerful opportunities to improve child and family outcomes, particularly when too much of the focus is on challenges in the family home, school and play settings.”

A new strengths checklist aims to help parents, carers and clinicians more easily identify a child’s skills, talents and positive qualities.

08/07/2024

Many moments from Inside Out 2 could help spark a conversation with your child about the complex emotions that are normal when growing up.

23/01/2024

It's all about relationship❣️

We have to change the way we think about school. When we prioritise academics, it's like building the walls - because that's what we see - before fortifying the foundations.

So many teachers know this, but with the increased focus on reporting and academics, they aren't being given the time and opportunity to build the relationships that will ensure those foundations are strong and steady.

This is why too many kids are falling down at school - not because they aren't capable, but because the necessary foundations for them to do well haven't been laid.

Schools are spending the resources anyway, but reactively on behaviour management, disengagement, reduced capacity to learn.

If we can steer those resources towards building relational safety, so kids feel more seen, valued, cared for, rather than less capable or clever, we'll see a decrease increased academic success, greater engagement, less social struggles, and less behaviour issues. It's just how it is.

First though, we need to value relationships and the way kids feel at school, even more than how they do at school. All kids are capable of their own versions of greatness, but unless they feel safe and cared for at school, we just won't see what they are capable of, and neither will they.❤️

05/05/2023

The influence and power of play…thank you Mona Delahooke, Ph.D. 🙌🏻

27/04/2023

“We human beings are very social creatures. As a social species, our development in childhood and throughout our lives unfolds within the context of close relationships with others, particularly our early relationships with our caregivers.”

The care we receive as children echoes through our relationships into adulthood; psychologists call this “attachment theory”.

17/04/2023

“Unstructured play is critical for children's mental health, in addition to boosting confidence”

A recent study finds links between children's lack of play and declining mental health.

22/01/2023

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Even the most loving, emotionally available adult might feel frustration, anger, helplessness or distress in response to a child’s big feelings. This is how it’s meant to work.

Their distress (fight/flight) will raise distress in us. The purpose is to move us to protect or support or them, but of course it doesn’t always work this way. When their big feelings recruit ours it can drive us more to fight (anger, blame), or to flee (avoid, ignore, separate them from us) which can steal our capacity to support them. It will happen to all of us from time to time.

Kids and teens can’t learn to manage big feelings on their own until they’ve done it plenty of times with a calm, loving adult. This is where co-regulation comes in. It helps build the vital neural pathways between big feelings and calm. They can’t build those pathways on their own.

It’s like driving a car. We can tell them how to drive as much as we like, but ‘talking about’ won’t mean they’re ready to hit the road by themselves. Instead we sit with them in the front seat for hours, driving ‘with’ until they can do it on their own. Feelings are the same. We feel ‘with’, over and over, until they can do it on their own.

What can help is pausing for a moment to see the behaviour for what it is - a call for support. It’s NOT bad behaviour or bad parenting. It’s not that.

Our own feelings can give us a clue to what our children are feeling. It’s a normal, healthy, adaptive way for them to share an emotional load they weren’t meant to carry on their own. Self-regulation makes space for us to hold those feelings with them until those big feelings ease.

Self-regulation can happen in micro moments. First, see the feelings or behaviour for what it is - a call for support. Then breathe. This will calm your nervous system, so you can calm theirs. In the same way we will catch their distress, they will also catch ours - but they can also catch our calm. Breathe, validate, and be ‘with’. And you don’t need to do more than that.

17/08/2022

What therapy really is…the child sets the pace and the therapist creates the relationship and safe environment in which the child’s healing and growth can occur. Infographic by Robyn Gobbel 🙌🏻

25/07/2022

Prioritise connection 🙌🏻

When we punish, or do anything that drives emotional separation (shame) or physical separation from us, it teaches our children to avoid us, or please us. It teaches them that failure, falling short, or making a mistake is shameful. It doesn’t teach them anything about what to do instead, or how to learn, or how to deal with things not going to plan.

Rather than, ‘What punishment do they need to do better?’ try, ‘What support do they need to do better?’ What they need - what we all need - is someone who is calm, strong, loving, and who can handle them enough to stay when them and guide them through the tough stuff. When we focus on the relationship, it opens the way for us to guide behaviour.♥

27/06/2022

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07/06/2022

The gift in holding space for children ❤️

18/04/2022

The power of showing rather than teaching 🙌🏻

All children and teens want to do the right thing, but the ‘right’ thing won’t always look as it should because they also need to try new things, discover their edges, experiment with their independence, and feel connected with their peers. Sometimes these needs will clash with what’s right. Sometimes the battle will be mighty. As capable as our children are of making good decisions, and as much as they might intend to, occasionally good decisions can be left gasping for air on a cold concrete floor, stampeded by what feels important.

It will take time for them to learn how to get what they want in ways that don’t cause breakage. In the meantime, they’ll need plenty of guidance. The best guidance will come from you because nobody will care more about where they land than you. They know that, but they also know they don’t ever want to disappoint you. As the important adults in their lives, the challenge is to hold the boundaries strong, but with tender hands. We want them to know where the boundaries are, but also that when those boundaries are broken (and they will be, plenty of times) that we’re safe to turn to – even through the messiest of the messes.♥️