Therapy Through PLAY and Relationships

08/10/2025

"The findings suggest that supporting maternal bonding and mental health may help improve children’s sleep and overall family well-being."

A large Finnish study has found that mothers who struggle to bond with their infants are more likely to have children with sleep problems that persist into toddlerhood.

17/09/2025

Brain, sleep and learning

17/09/2025

Researchers discovered that reciprocity experience also enhanced empathy, with rats showing stronger emotional contagion toward partners.

Importantly, oxytocin signaling in the orbitofrontal cortex was crucial: rats lacking oxytocin were more likely to free-ride and less likely to reciprocate.

These results highlight oxytocin as an internal mechanism for stabilizing cooperation beyond external punishment.

The findings suggest a biological basis for fairness, empathy, and social trust.

Researchers developed a fully automated cooperation task showing that rats engage in true reciprocity, not just mutual benefit.

07/09/2025

27/08/2025

Psychosocial and parent-child relationship therapies are what Play Therapy is all about; refreshing to see it's starting to be taken seriously by the government with possible Medicare rebates🤞

New bulk-billed health checks for three-year-olds would refer them for additional support – including psychosocial therapy.

26/08/2025

Join a free webinar to learn about:
🔹 risks, myths and misconceptions about childhood sexual abuse
🔹 how to identify grooming behaviours
🔹 practical body safety strategies to use at home.

Join Body Safety Australia for a free webinar supporting parents and carers of preschool aged children.

16/08/2025

15/08/2025

"We've done some research and we know that anxiety actually predicts quality of life more than a child's level of autism," What we tend to see is children with anxiety and autism dropping off from what they could achieve as they get older as the demands of school grow.

"If you have anxiety, you have less brain space to deal with the academic demands growing or the social demands growing."

Researchers believe the repercussions may extend into adulthood, with anxiety preventing some people from reaching their full potential.

"They are often under-employed and take low-skilled jobs with fewer hours … because their anxiety impacts what they can manage to deal with in a week,"

Queensland researchers, who say anxiety is preventing many children on the autism spectrum from flourishing at school, are seeking families for a trial to reduce anxiety in pre-schoolers.

01/08/2025

16/07/2025

"Play and depression may be opposite sides of a coin," says Dr. Jaak Pansepp, Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being at Washington State University. He explains how "real play" is essential to a child's development."

"Play and depression may be opposite sides of a coin," says Dr. Jaak Pansepp, Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being at Washington State University. He ex...

12/07/2025

The Children First Aid information sessions will provide parents and carers with simple first aid and resuscitation skills. All sessions are suitable for parents and guardians and run monthly at the Glen Eira Townhall 👌

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12/07/2025

"Using CBCL scores, the researchers developed a predictive model that identified maltreated children with 90.6% accuracy and 96.6% specificity.The study also uncovered critical timing patterns. For instance, abuse or neglect at the age of five was particularly linked to withdrawal and thought problems, while maltreatment between ages five and seven was more associated with somatic complaints—physical symptoms like headaches or stomach-aches without medical cause.
Notably, the type of abuse also mattered; physical abuse was more connected to behavioral problems and somatic complaints, while emotional abuse was linked to anxiety, depression, and obsessive thoughts"

Childhood maltreatment leaves profound and often unseen scars, affecting mental health, physical well-being, and social development long into adulthood.