Mending Memories - EMDR Therapy and Counselling

26/09/2025

Due to last-minute cancellations: 2 tickets available for tonight's Support Group for Parents of PDA kids & teens!

Both are free.

First come, first serve. Please send me a DM if you're interested.

Details:
Support group
6.00pm - 8.00pm
Woolloongabba substation
45 Logan Rd, Woolloongabba

Includes a meal and non-alcoholic drinks.

24/09/2025

It's school holidays. A lovely relaxing time for lots of parents. Go on holidays, have a break, relax right?

Well, not for most parents of PDA kids (or kids with other types of Neurodivergence or challenges).

As I type this, I am sitting on the side of one of those adventure play venues, being super hyper alert, scanning the environment for any sign that my child isn't OK. I can't relax. I can't just watch my child have a good time. It never stops.

We were supposed to be at a gymnastics clinic from 9-1. But that attempt failed. He lasted about 40 minutes and by then, his autonomy had been threatened so many times, his little bucket started to overflow.

So we left.

I decided to take him to Jungle Adventure Play to help regulate him back to a sense of safety through offering opportunity for full autonomy (he can do whatever he wants). To make it even more autonomous and add in full equality, I joined and let him decide wherever he wanted me to go.

A lot of PDA kids love doing fun and exciting social things, but they are also overwhelming at the same time. For my son to be able to play anywhere, I actually have to go in there with him as a back-up nervous system as his safe person, so he feels safe enough to explore. I have noticed this from a young age and his dad and I often have to go places no parent has gone before 😉. So, here I was crawling through the smallest gaps in my dress and going off crazy slides!

Now he is OK. We explored the place together and as usual, he has made a new friend (because he is really good at that!). And now he is familiar, he has another person to play with and he knows where he can find me, he is OK to play without me for a little bit.

Regulation techniques used:
- Full autonomy in choosing where to go, what to play with and when to leave.
- Full equality in deciding for me where to go and what to do.
- Safe person for nervous system regulation.
- Dopamine / novelty offering.
- Play / silliness. Make things more fun by keeping things light.

11/09/2025

Update: tickets have been sold.

Due to a cancellation there are 2 tickets available for the Parenting PDA kids & teens support group. If you are keen to come along on Friday the 26th of September from 6.00pm - 8.00pm in Woolloongabba, shoot me a PM!

What is included?

For $25,- per ticket, you will get an opportunity to:
- share experiences with other parents
- have your feelings & experiences validated
- ask questions
- receive advice & support (only if you want this)
- make social connections & build new friendships
- have some time for yourself
- eat a nice meal made by a local Malaysian restaurant (I promise, it is really good food!)
- have drinks included

This event was sold out within 24 hours. This is a great opportunity for anyone who missed out on tickets.

First come, first serve.

Send a message to learn more

22/08/2025

UPDATE 4.30PM TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT!

Original post:

The tickets for the next Parents of PDA kids & teens support group for 26 September went on sale last night at 8pm and there is only 1 ticket left!

If you were thinking to come along, jump on board now before it's sold out :)

21/08/2025

This is so well said, I could never write it like this. But I wholeheartedly agree with what is written, so I had to share this important message!

OPEN LETTER: Minister Butler — Autism Is Not Mild, Temporary or Negotiable. Yesterday, you betrayed our children.

Dear Minister Butler,

Yesterday at the National Press Club, you told the nation that too many autistic children are on the NDIS. You called their supports “overservicing.” You spoke about “mild to moderate autism.” And you suggested autism is “not a permanent disability.”

These words were not just wrong they were discriminatory, harmful, and a betrayal of every autistic child and family.

Autism is lifelong. There is no such thing as “mild autism.” These labels are political inventions, designed to justify stripping children from the NDIS. Children do not stop needing therapy because the government needs to save money. To suggest otherwise is not policy, it is cruelty.

You announced Thriving Kids as the alternative, backed by $2 billion and built on behaviour programs like Inklings programs already rejected by the autistic community as unsafe, compliance-based, and damaging. Families are being told to trust an untested scheme, with no detail, no transparency, and no guarantee that their children will have access to therapies, trusted providers, or meaningful supports.

Let’s be clear: this has been done without input from autistic people, parents, or disability-led organisations. Once again, decisions are being made about our lives, without us. That is not co-design, it is exclusion.

Minister, Australia has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). This commits you to:
• Closely consult with and actively involve disabled people in policy decisions (Article 4.3).
• Ensure disabled children enjoy all human rights equally (Article 7).
• Protect children from medical or scientific experimentation without free consent (Article 15).
• Guarantee respect for physical and mental integrity (Article 17).
• Ensure health interventions are based on free and informed consent (Article 25).

You have ignored these obligations. Thriving Kids is being built behind closed doors, without consent, without transparency, and without autistic leadership. That is a direct breach of international law and a direct assault on the rights of children.

Here is what your cuts mean in reality:
• Children will lose speech therapy, OT, and psychology.
• Families will lose choice and control, forced back into broken state systems that already fail.
• Mothers will be driven from the workforce into poverty, forced to homeschool and care without support.
• Autistic children will regress, mask, burn out, and suffer long-term harm all to balance a budget.

Minister Butler, you are dismantling the NDIS. You are punishing children and parents for your government’s failure to properly fund mainstream services. And you are doing it with language that demeans and dismisses us.

Autism is not temporary. Autism is not mild. Our children are not “overserviced.” They are human beings with dignity, rights, and futures worth investing in.

Hope in Colour Advocacy will not stay silent while you trample those rights. We will fight, we will organise, and we will hold you accountable.

History will not remember you for $46 billion in “savings.” It will remember that under your watch, autistic children were abandoned, silenced, and stripped of the supports they were promised for life.

We call on these leaders and organisations to stand with us and demand answers:
Mark Butler MP
Anthony Albanese
Amanda Rishworth MP
Senator Jordon Steele-John
Dr Monique Ryan
Lauren Kathage MP
Rob Mitchell MP - Federal Labor Member for McEwen
Australian Labor Party
Gerard Rennick People First Party
The Australian Greens
Children and Young People with Disability Australia
Every Australian Counts
Yellow Ladybugs
Regional Autistic Engagement Network
Australian Neurodivergent Parents Association - ANPA
People with Disability Australia
People First Victoria
Aspect - Autism Spectrum Australia
Autism Goals ASD School Advocates
Autism Awareness Australia
Reframing Autism
Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)

ABC Australia
The Guardian
Herald Sun
Women's Agenda
A Current Affair
7NEWS Australia
9 News
Guardian Australia
The Australian
The Age

Sincerely,
Shanntelle Marks
Founder | Hope in Colour Advocacy

26/07/2025

I love this so much!

There is this whole world out there, that I didn't know about before I identified my own neurodivergence.

I was a very strong masker; I did anything to belong, so I never made it a problem having to sit at a desk in class. However, I came home exhausted. My leg was always moving. I was always breaking pens because I was always fidgeting. I now realise my body actually needed moving!

And every night, I had trouble eating & sleeping. My nervous system was so activated, I wet the bed at night and I had nightmares most days. I wonder how things would have been different, if I had learned to listen to my body and gave my body what it needed to feel regulated.

We can be better for our kids! Share Christina Keeble Consulting 's post, so more schools become aware of this. I know it's a systemic issue with financial consequences, but we need to start somewhere to make life better for our neurodivergent kids!

Alternative seating that is available to the whole class, as part of an inclusive and neurodiversity affirming culture is best practice.

Student’s bodies seek out what they need to be regulated, focus and learn.

When we require them to conform to neuro-normative standards or society’s expectations of what an attentive child is “supposed” to look like, we are facilitating the disconnect between the student and listening to their body's needs.

That process reduces interoceptive awareness and leads to the child being dysregulated. The dysregulation is then seen (by adults) as “undesired behaviours”.

Let’s not let that cycle get started!!!

Having alternative seating options in class and supporting students to explore them facilitates them tuning into their bodies, learning about their personal movement and sensory input needs and increases their ability to focus and learn.

How awesome is that?!

No, it doesn’t “look” like society’s expectations of a typical class, but that is a good thing!

When I see a classroom where the students are very quiet and not moving much, it is a red flag for me, especially in primary school. Learning is active, dynamic and should be fun!

Let go of trying to control or manage behaviour in your class and trust in your ability as a teacher to facilitate your students’ learning.

Fight the urge to think the only attentive kids are ones who are looking at you, sitting still cross legged or feet flat on the floor. Trust in your student’s ability to intuitively know what they need to focus, concentrate and learn. Then allow them the opportunity to act on that. Collaborate with them and problem solve if needed.

In order for this to work, the seating option needs to match the student's sensory/movement needs, it just can't be assigned to them.

It's a great opportunity to support the student to further develop their interoceptive awareness, reinforce tuning into their own bodies and learning what helps them learn.

25/07/2025

The first Meetup for the support group for parents of PDA kids and teens was a great success!

We were with a group of 14 parents and as soon as people walked through the door, you could tell people were eager to connect and share experiences. People started talking at 5.45pm and there was not a moment of silence until everyone had left by 8.30pm 😊

A lovely Malaysian meal was shared. Many connections were made. Recommendations of helpful professionals were shared and numbers were exchanged. I am so happy with this result! I sincerely hope people will be able to receive a lot of support from each other from now.

Being a PDA parent is a lonely journey to walk. Friends and family mean well when they say they understand. When they agree that "yes, parenting is difficult". Some even try to learn more about it (hold on to those people, because that is amazing and special!).

However, no matter how hard people try to understand PDA by reading books, they will never truly understand the constant battle we are fighting every single day.

The stories last night confirmed our experience of:
- The pain and suffering we are feeling each day our kids melt down or when they hurt others or themselves.
- The sacrifices we have to make for our kids to be OK one day (I am talking about quitting jobs and moving houses just to accommodate our kids).
- The level of anxiety and stress we feel about the well-being of our kids and the traumatic effect on their siblings.
- The self-doubt we experience as we navigate challenging parenting choices we are making every minute of every day.
- The gaslighting from (mental) health professionals & teachers and even the NDIS (!) as they dismiss our experiences and put the blame for our child's struggles on us parents.
- And of course the constant worry about our child's future; will they ever be able to amount to anything?

I hope that being connected to other PDA parents will help to feel less isolated and that they feel seen & heard going through the above experiences.

Thanks for coming everyone and see you in September!

PS the food from Lemak Kitchen and Bar Woolloongabba was amazing! It made the evening almost perfect.

24/07/2025

*update*
The ticket has been given away! Make sure you are on my mailing list for our next meetup in September. You can message me with your email address if you are interested to come along next time 🙂

*original post*
Unfortunately, one of the lovely parents in our support group had to cancel her spot for tonight. She has kindly offered for someone else to attend in her place.

If you would like to attend tonight's first meeting (from 6-8pm), please send me a DM. First person who responds, gets the ticket! :)

What is included: a lovely evening with other parents of PDA kids & teens. There will be a Circle Chat, where we share stories and ask each other questions, followed by a social meal.

Thank you to the lovely parent who is willing donate her spot! Hopefully we will see you next time :)

23/07/2025

When a PDA'er competes, he needs to WIN.

Not coming first = a loss of equality.

This post is about the need for equality.

I was speaking to one of my inspiring clients today, about how they remember their child being really upset about coming second in a race. They came second, out of the entire school, which is AMAZING! Right?

WRONG! Not for a PDA kid, or teen, or adult for that matter. They didn't come first, which means that there is someone BETTER than them. That there is someone placed higher than them. Which makes them feel LESS than others. And there you have it; a loss of equality.

The experience of not winning feels so extremely threatening for a PDA'er, they usually have an immediate reaction which shows through a fight / flight / freeze or even shutdown response.

I can name a couple examples with my own child, just over the last month.

- he was racing his friend to school yesterday morning, and he didn't win. His friend is simply faster than him. He immediately walked off with an angry face, shooting lasers from his eyes at his friend, who won fair and square. He stood there with his back to all of us, not talking, just looking very angry. He told me later he lost the race. and that his friend must have cheated. He was really upset about this.
- We went to a birthday party where they did a sack race. All excited, he ran to get started with this race, that he had never attempted before, racing 4 other kids who were all over a year older than him. He wasn't even halfway, when they all crossed the finish line. He threw himself on the ground and cried. Extremely upset, hard to console. He stopped participating in any of the activities.

Not winning is just not an option!

PDA'ers don't just struggle with competitions like in sports, but also with things like playing board games. They often make up their own rules as they go, so they ensure that they will win the game. If they don't win, they will blame others. They can get really upset, and might show this even through wiping the board game off the table.

And once they experienced a loss of equality through not coming first, they often start to avoid the entire thing. They might tell you that they don't want to play that board game anymore. "No, I don't like that game anymore", my son tells me. Or they are not going to race anymore. Or they just don't feel like playing. Or maybe they even want to quit their sport.

Or in a more subtle way, they might distract you away from the activity that is planned through lingering and stalling, focusing on other things rather than getting dressed, they might start acting silly and joking around, they might pretend they are an animal, telling you they feel sick, finding other toys to play with and seeming pre-occupied with that and so on.... Anything that helps to avoid the planned activity, so to avoid the distress they felt previously.

My strategies to deal with this?

1. I let my kid win a LOT. He loves racing me to the toilet (it is one of my strategies to get him to go to the toilet). I always let him win. Boardgames, I let him win. Racing to the car, I let him win. Using toy cars in a race, he wins almost each time. Each time he wins, his capacity to manage nervous system responses increases.

2. I purposely model losing in other things, and share my experience with him about how that feels for me. And then let him know that it took me a while to be OK with losing something, but that it's actually OK now.

3. I point out all the things that are his super powers. He might not be the best at racing, but he is the best in noticing things other people don't see. And in understanding how things work, things other people don't even think about. Or finding creative ways to use toys in a different way, than how it was meant to be played with.

4. Every now and then, when I know he has a lot of capacity, I might win something (a small win) and talk him through how that feels in his body and what it means to not always come first.

5. I talk about my experience of not being the best when I was little. I tried water skiing, and just couldn't do it. Fell in the water a lot. I always came last in gymnastics and just talk about how that felt for me.

6. I find videos of his favourite characters and hero's where they lose something, or aren't good at something. Like when I took him to play minigolf for the first time. We watched an episode of Blippi, and watched Blippi failing many times before he got the ball in. I then sometimes reference this video later, when he might be having a hard time learning a new skill that he is not yet good at.

Do you recognise your child in this experience? What examples can you share? Any other strategies that you use with your child to help them manage their distress around not winning everything all the time?

21/07/2025

I can't wait to meet everyone!

I have picked up the access card and checked out the venue. Woolloongabba Substation is ready for the first meeting of our Support Group for Parents of PDA kids & teens. Will you be there? There are a couple spots left. Message me if you want to come along ❤️

19/07/2025

"Ben, can you please put your shoe down gently, so it doesn't hit the tv?"

"No".

Pause

*Throws shoe*

We've had a pretty big morning today. First a swimming lesson (which is one of the most demanding activities you can think of), then a play at home and then we hit the playground and a walk in the forest.

That's where it spiralled into an outburst where he hit his sister and then that led to his sister also experiencing a big meltdown.

This seems to be our life at the moment. You never know when it is going to hit, but it will hit at some point. Once the nervous system responses have built up enough, there will be a meltdown.

So when we got home, I noticed Ben throwing his shoe when he took one off. I was worried about the television, so what did I do? I asked Ben if he could put his shoe down gently. But I should have known, he was not going to be able to. His nervous system was overloaded already, he was showing me when he threw the first shoe, in the first place. So he said No. And he threw his other shoe.

So what do you do when you have a PDA child in this situation? You do a cost-benefit calculation...

Setting a boundary or not?

The worry is that if I ignore the "disobedience", then he might learn that it is OK to not listen and throw shoes around. He might do it again next time. Or worse. Right?

But setting a boundary will be perceived as another loss of equality & autonomy, which is a threatening experience for our PDA kids. No matter how you tell them. This will lead to more nervous system activation and potentially even bigger outbursts & internal panic.

So I ask myself: is this boundary worth it for Ben to feel more unsafe in his body? It's not even about the "behaviour" or the aggression or the big outbursts for me... It is about that poor kid feeling unsafe in his body, anytime he perceives that loss of autonomy. It is an awful feeling I can tell you. I have been there. I sometimes still am there. And it's a terrifying experience.

So when do we set boundaries? When there is a risk of harm or safety issue. That is worth the Nervous System activation. Everything else, we try to turn possible demands into invitations. So he can decide himself if he has the capacity to do something or not.

A tool you can use for this is declarative language. The example at the top was actually an example of the opposite... Imperative language. This way of asking is still a demand with an expectation. Which was totally unhelpful! With declarative language you invite them to think about a concept, and let go of the expectation or the outcome.

Instead I could have said:
- I worry about the television getting hit by your shoes.
- I wonder if those shoes could find a safer way to the ground?
- I can see your body is getting tense, I wonder if it would help if we throw a ball around?

Each time we communicate with our kids, declarative language is the best option, as it significantly lowers the demands. However, you need to be willing to actually give that autonomy to them as much as you can. And with a 2 and a 4 year old, this hard! They constantly want to do things that aren't "right", touch things they shouldn't touch, go places they shouldn't go....

So we often slip up trying to find that balance between wanting to help the kids learn about what is acceptable and what isn't, where are certain boundaries and discover where & when they can have that autonomy.

But we try the best we can. We keep talking about what we can improve. And that, parents, is good enough.

Declarative language is helpful for all kids, but especially for Neurodivergent children. It just takes so much pressure away.

If you are interested in declarative language, there is a handbook that is very helpful! You can find it in all major bookstores.

08/06/2025

One activity my son really enjoys is playing with slime. Here he is making his own sensory tray with stuff from our backyard and a couple of animals. This kinda thing gives him full autonomy and it really calms him down. So great for some PDA kids! Just make sure to keep your energy calm too.. what I mean by that is: don't fuss over it becoming messy or them not making it pretty enough, or them putting the wrong things in there. If you are worried about mess, maybe make a space outside where they can get messy and go crazy ☺️