Beyond The Therapy Box

Beyond The Therapy Box Speech & Language Therapist. | EYP |
Unschooling mum
Let’s see learning differently 🤸🏿‍♀️
Neuroaffirming ideas for communication, literacy & maths.

Real life learning & play count too 😊
⬇️ Ideas and resources
http://bit.ly/44Rvxvn Independent Speech and Language Therapist offering a service to children of all ages, adults with Learning Disabilities and people living with dementia.

23/05/2026

Absolutely

Honestly, I’m so tired of hearing children and parents being blamed.Unless there is a huge cultural shift in education, ...
22/05/2026

Honestly, I’m so tired of hearing children and parents being blamed.

Unless there is a huge cultural shift in education, and in health too, children who think, learn and communicate differently will continue to struggle to thrive in systems that were never built with them in mind.

This is why so many parents are deregistering their children.

Not because they have “given up” on education.

But because they are trying to protect their children from environments where their distress, differences and unmet needs are too often misunderstood.

And now, even the freedom to provide what some children need at home is under increasing scrutiny.

Parents, please don’t be afraid to speak up for your children.

Allied health professionals, we need to do the same.

And teachers, I know so many of you see it as well. Any change will need more brave voices from inside the system too.

Children are not the problem.

The problem is a culture that keeps asking them to concentrate, comply and cope, without asking whether they feel safe, supported, understood and able to learn.

What is one thing you wish the system understood about your child , or children you support who think, learn or communicate differently?

Share it below ⬇️ . Your voice matters in this space …

17/05/2026

👏 But I’d go further.
Children are not wired to sit still for hours and hours … at any age. (Human beings aren’t … )

Play based learning applies throughout childhood.
The play just changes…

When I see people shaming children for struggling with everyday tasks, I often wonder how many adults have stopped to th...
16/05/2026

When I see people shaming children for struggling with everyday tasks, I often wonder how many adults have stopped to think about the huge number of sensory, motor, communication and regulation skills sitting underneath them.

Children are often doing far more than we realise.

What everyday “simple” task do you think adults underestimate most?





Children thrive through understanding not shameParents do too …Have you noticed expectations of children becoming younge...
15/05/2026

Children thrive through understanding not shame

Parents do too …

Have you noticed expectations of children becoming younger and younger?

Have you told them what you think ?Not long to go … ⬇️
15/05/2026

Have you told them what you think ?
Not long to go … ⬇️

13/05/2026

What if your child IS learning… even when it doesn’t look like it?

As conversations continue all around me on SEND, wellbeing and education, I keep reflecting on how narrowly learning is understood.

Somehow we’ve forgotten how children learn .
That they learn through:
• movement
• repetition
• play
• sensory exploration
• deep interests
• connection. through Joy and FUN !

And yet these ways of learning are often overlooked by “experts” and policy makers because they don’t resemble traditional expectations

And we’re surrounded by messages of “school is best”, teachers are the only ones “qualified “ to educate children , if we don’t follow the national curriculum our children won’t thrive …

Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more about this - including research, reflections and some practical ideas around:
• play
• supporting communication
• schemas
• the importance of regulation
• executive function
• neurodivergent learning

in the hope that it will help families feel more confident talking about what will - help their children at school
- or explain why they need to learn a different way outside of school .

I really hope some professionals might read it too …

If we change the way we see learning
we can change children’s lives .

All we have to do is be curious..

Can you spot the learning in this video ?

Those neurons are wiring rapidly with those giggles 🤭

Sometimes we overlook learning because it doesn’t look the way WE expect.But it’s through play, that children are buildi...
12/05/2026

Sometimes we overlook learning because it doesn’t look the way WE expect.
But it’s through play, that children are building:
• language
• problem solving
• communication
• focus
• creativity
• coordination
• understanding of how the world works
• maths concepts
• how sounds work in words and symbols represent sounds
• how marks on paper have meaning

and SO much more

It’s in those moments that their brains are building connections. That their sensory pathways develop, their motor skills refine.

“Learning” can look like:
movement
repetition
deep interests
pouring and scooping water
rolling cars down slides
collecting objects
lining up sticks
banging toys together
dropping toys from the trolley
throwing a teddy in the air 
building the same tower over and over again
For children, play is not separate from learning.

Sometimes adults need to change the way we see learning instead of trying to “get them to engage” in what we think it “should” look like.

Play IS the learning 🤸🏿‍♀️

What kind of play does your child return to again and again?

08/05/2026

One of the biggest shifts for me during home education was realising how much learning happens outside traditional expectations. Whether that’s learning to read, learning maths, even learning to communicate…
It happens ..
Through play.
Through movement.
Through deep interests.
Through repetition.
Through connections.
Through questions
Through conversation
Through daily life

I’d been aware how important this is in the early years … but I hadn’t realised how this can continue well into our “school” years.

This mindset shift is the process of “deschooling” my own mind.

Deschooling wasn’t about “doing no school.”

It was about learning to notice learning differently. It’s about challenging our expectations and questioning beliefs about how children learn …

It’s an ongoing process.
Even now I have to stop and reflect on why I think a child “should” be doing something…
And I know it’s not just me. You see it over and over in online forums. The same questions. The same worries. The same “wobbles” .
That’s why I created my Deschooling Journal 🌱 A space for parents to be curious .. reflect… and see learning differently…

If you’d like a copy just comment “journal” or tag someone you think it might help 🤸🏽‍♀️ 🙃

I don’t think we consider this enough anymore. …What do you think ? Don’t people realize how it possibly affects young i...
13/01/2026

I don’t think we consider this enough anymore. …

What do you think ?

Don’t people realize how it possibly affects young infants when what they CAN do is not appreciated but what they CANNOT do is expected? What a sad and confusing experience it must be to grow up never living up to your parents’ expectations. And how frustrating it must be for parents not to be able to enjoy what their child is actually doing. It seems to me everybody is losing.”
- Magda Ge**er

Address

Hereford

Telephone

+447788147805

Website

https://linktr.ee/LoisPena

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