Therapeutic Arts Studio

30/05/2026

This week's creativity.
Schools, Community, workshops and being interviewed.
Therapeutic Arts Studio

26/05/2026

🤗🖌️🎨

SEE YOU TOMORROW…

Our Community Cafe Corner is on again tomorrow with special guest therapeuticartsstudio 🖼️

10am - 12pm ~ All welcome

19/05/2026

28/04/2026

Narrative approaches suggest that we make sense of the world through the stories we tell about ourselves and our experiences. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) also considers how children interpret events and how these interpretations influence feelings and behaviours.

In play therapy, children often communicate these stories symbolically.
For example:

• a child may position themselves as powerful vulnerable or invisible
• repeated themes may reflect beliefs about themselves or others
• play scenarios may show how they expect situations to unfold

Within cognitive behavioural play therapy, these stories and patterns can be gently explored through play, supporting children to experience alternative outcomes and responses.

Over time this can support children to develop more flexible and balanced ways of understanding themselves and their world.

22/04/2026

Community art group this week, the focus was on memory art, using prompt cards to engage memories.
Therapeutic Arts Counselling Studio
Community Bank Balnarring & District

07/04/2026

Children learn about the world, and about themselves, through relationship.

Mirror neurons are part of the brain that help us understand and connect with others. They fire not only when we act, but when we see someone else act. This is how children begin to read emotions, develop empathy and feel understood.

From the earliest moments of life, children rely on attuned adults to reflect their experiences back to them. A look, a tone of voice, a shared moment of joy or calm. These interactions shape how a child understands safety, connection and themselves.

When a child has experienced stress or disruption in relationships, these systems can become less integrated. The world can feel unpredictable or unsafe, and connection can feel harder.

Play therapy supports this from the ground up.

Through consistent, attuned and responsive relationships, the therapist becomes a regulating and reflecting presence. Facial expressions, tone, rhythm and shared play experiences all provide opportunities for the child’s brain to experience connection in a safe way.

Over time, this helps to:

• strengthen the child’s capacity for connection and empathy
• support emotional understanding through lived, relational experience
• build trust in others and in themselves
• develop a sense of safety within relationships
• integrate social and emotional processing

As Daniel J. Siegel highlights, “The brain is a social organ, and our relationships shape the way it develops.”

Play therapy uses this knowledge to support healing, growth and connection, not through words alone, but through relationship and play.

07/04/2026

Children experience the world through their bodies first.

Somatosensory experiences are how children make sense of touch, movement, pressure and physical sensation. These experiences play a vital role in how a child develops regulation, body awareness and a sense of safety.

For some children, especially those who have experienced stress or trauma, the body can feel overwhelming or unpredictable. Sensations may feel too much, too little or difficult to interpret. This can show up in behaviour, but it begins in the nervous system.

Play therapy works with the body, not just the mind.

Through carefully attuned somatosensory play, children are supported to explore and organise their sensory experiences in a safe and relational space. This is not random play. It is meaningful, responsive and guided by the child’s needs.

In play therapy, somatosensory activities might include:

• sand, water or messy play to explore texture and sensation
• squeezing, pushing or resistance play to support proprioceptive input
• rhythmic activities such as tapping, rolling or bouncing
• use of soft materials, blankets or weighted items for deep pressure
• movement based play that supports balance and coordination

These experiences help to:

• support nervous system regulation
• build body awareness and interoception
• create a sense of safety within the body
• process sensory and emotional experiences
• develop the foundation for learning, relating and self regulation

Play therapy offers children the space to reconnect with their bodies in ways that feel safe, supported and meaningful.

07/04/2026

A child’s brain develops from the bottom up. Before thinking, reasoning and problem solving can happen, the nervous system needs to feel safe.

The bottom up, whole brain approach recognises that behaviour is not just about choices. It is about the state of the body and nervous system first.

When a child is dysregulated, their lower brain is in charge. This is where survival responses live. Fight, flight, freeze or fawn. In these moments, the thinking brain is much less accessible. So reasoning, consequences or logic often do not work.

Play therapy works with this, not against it.
Instead of expecting children to “think their way” out of distress, play therapy supports regulation from the bottom up. Through sensory experiences, rhythm, movement and relational safety, the nervous system begins to settle. Only then can higher level thinking and reflection start to come online.

In play therapy, the child is not pushed to explain or analyse. They are given space to express, experience and process through play, which is their natural language.

This approach helps to:

• support nervous system regulation before cognitive demand
• build felt safety through consistent, attuned relationships
• integrate emotional and sensory experiences
• strengthen connections between the lower and higher parts of the brain
• enable children to access thinking, learning and relating more effectively

As Bruce D. Perry reminds us, “Regulate, relate, reason.”

Play therapy honours this sequence. It meets the child where they are and supports development in the way the brain is designed to grow.

10/03/2026

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Therapeutic Arts Counselling Studio

Over the next week or two, I’m going to share a series of posts from the education side of my experience.

Before PDA Parenting and before advocacy became such a big part of my life, I worked in both primary and secondary schools as a teaching assistant.

I supported a range of students — sometimes 1:1, sometimes as a key worker for specific pupils.

It gave me a window into things I hadn’t fully understood before.

I saw some incredible practice from staff who really knew how to connect with young people. But I also saw practices that deeply challenged my thinking — things that didn’t sit right, but being fairly low down in the structure meant I wasn’t always in a position to change them.

What stayed with me most were the students themselves.

Every child I worked with taught me something.

How to adapt my approach depending on what they needed.

How to listen and observe until I found something that connected us.

How important it was to notice what they were good at and build their self-worth around that.

And how powerful it was to simply show up consistently, even when they pushed adults away or were in distress.

Through all of that, one theme kept coming back.

These students were never the problem.

From what I saw firsthand, the system often was.

So over the next couple of weeks I want to share some real examples of what worked and what didn’t — and keep the child’s voice at the centre of these stories.

Drop an emoji or a comment if you’d like these posts to appear in your feed 👇❤️

24/02/2026

I’ve just finished reading ‘School Isn’t for Everyone’ and it quietly put into words what so many of us discover the hard way.

Learning isn’t something we force. It’s something that happens.

The book describes unschooling as reigniting internal motivation — that a child’s ability to learn is as natural as breathing. Our role isn’t to control it, but to create the conditions where it can return if it’s been dimmed.

There’s a great metaphor about nesting that I loved — about softening the environment instead of making it uncomfortable.

And it struck me how often families of anxious or PDA children are told the opposite:
❌ “Make home less comfortable.”
❌ “Take away their screens.”
❌ “They need to do school work.”

But what if recovery looks more like safety? More like repair?

The diagrams showing learning through LEGO, through Bluey, through play, open your mind beyond worksheets and timetables. They gently move you away from rigid beliefs about what education “should” look like.

For children who’ve fallen out of school, this feels like a repair manual.

For families starting home education, it’s grounding.

For staff building alternative provision, it’s a reminder that joy isn’t extra — it’s essential.

Unschooling isn’t doing nothing.

It’s doing less of what harms and more of what heals.

And for any parent worrying their child “won’t learn at home,” this book offers steady reassurance: learning is a process. Especially when trust has been broken.

If you’re struggling with school right now, this might reshape how you see what’s going wrong.

Maybe your child was never the problem?!? 💯👏🏻❤️