Donegal Play Therapy

03/04/2026

We tend to measure our parenting by the moments that stand out - the times we lost patience, the big feelings or behaviour we didn’t handle as well as we’d hoped, the days we were too tired, too distracted, too human.

We tend to hold those moments up as evidence of what we are - or aren’t - as parents.

But that’s not how it works.

What shapes a child’s sense of who they are isn’t any single moment. It’s the accumulation of ordinary ones - the ones in which they feel seen, safe, loved.

Neuroscience keeps telling us this quietly and consistently: the repeated experience of a calm, present, loving adult is what builds the architecture of a child’s nervous system over time. It’s not about the dramatic moments, but the ordinary ones.

Every time you showed up calm when they couldn’t. Every time you came back after a hard moment. Every average Tuesday where nothing much happened except that you were there - those moments matter.

They aren’t stored as memories they can retrieve and tell you about, but as a felt sense of the world they live in, who they are to you, and eventually, just who they are. They are stored as the answer to the question their nervous system - their foundation in the world - is always quietly asking: Am I safe? Is there someone here for me?

The body keeps score in both directions. The stress, yes - but also the warmth. The consistency. The thousand small moments of being held, seen, safe, loved, and not left alone with the hard things.

So if you tend to carry the weight of every moment you got wrong - and we all tend to do this - put some of that down.

Because the moments you got right - the ones that felt like nothing at the time - they matter, so much. And even through the messy times, those ‘got right’ moments are still there. Still working. Still building the foundation your child will stand on long after they’ve forgotten the day itself.

You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to keep coming back.

The ordinary moments are doing so much more than you think.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​❤️

26/03/2026

06/03/2026

03/03/2026

The opposite of “demonstrating ‘behaviors’” (i.e., a euphemism for ‘misbehavior’) isn’t “behaving well”.

The opposite of “demonstrating behaviors” is “internalizing distress”.

Another way to say “demonstrating behaviors” could be “externalizing distress”.

If a child is “demonstrating behaviors” and you implement a plan to get them to stop “demonstrating behaviors” that focuses entirely on changing the child, all you are doing is getting them to internalize, rather than externalize, their distress.

(P.S. This post is made to be super short and to-the-point, but if you’re reading it and feeling like, “So what do I do, then?” I’ll throw a bunch of resources in the comments. :))

[Image description:
A black marble background with words overlaid on it that read, “The opposite of ‘demonstrating behaviors’ isn’t ‘behaving well’, it’s internalizing distress.” End description.]

29/10/2025

The Problem with Time Outs, 123 Magic, and Separation Based Discipline Discipline is a constant question on parents’ minds and usually starts with the phrase – “What do I do when my child hits their sibling? What do I do when they don’t listen? What do I do when they don’t go to bed?!” T...

03/10/2025