The Thatch Counselling, Psychotherapy & EAL

06/08/2025

There are some wonderful equine camps on nearby in Meath for children and adolescents. They’re really good for learning life skills and reducing anxiety.

Give Cara Capall Therapy a buzz!

23/06/2025

Here’s a poster competition for World Mental Health Day 2025.

https://barbarabrennan.wixsite.com/postercampaign2025?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLGi5FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHghU0lrZMWuYnOo8Gw5tHDQ97AmO2nQQvvD0twUr-83D5NzIRReURMEEDz6U_aem_NdJJOk2MZPfbRz5BekhMkg

This campaign was born from a deep, personal place - a genuine desire to get people talking more openly about mental health. I’ve seen the power of simple, honest conversations to break through shame and silence. And I believe, with all my heart, that if we can normalise talking about mental healt...

04/06/2025

A great post by Pete Wharmby, Autistic Author on the autism spectrum 🎶 And no, not everyone is on it…



Https://www.facebook.com/share/1DXUNPNFNX/?mibextid=wwXIfr

06/04/2025

The ponies decided to help out with the field hygiene today. Ponies eat, sleep and 💩 in the same place so it’s important to clean up!

09/03/2025

Rejection sensitivity for neurodivergent people explained.. 😔 🎈💥

RSD is the worst!

15/02/2025

These two little foster ponies arrived yesterday and will be getting lots of time to settle in. What a sweet Valentine’s Day surprise!

12/02/2025

12/02/2025

A really important topic from Bronagh Starrs

Childhood diagnosis is on the increase in relation to emotional regulation, attention issues, academic motivation and behavioural issues. Referrals for speech & language have skyrocketed and the amount of children starting school with toileting issues, a lack of capacity to play or use their imagination, and whose interpersonal skills are seriously lacking, is deeply concerning.
Screens render children passive: they disconnect from their bodies, their impulses, their imagination, their capacity to think for themselves, their curiosity, their impetus to speak, their interest in others, their capacity to make friends, to play, to listen, and to pay attention to anything that doesn’t hold their interest as vividly as a screen. Schools see this impact in increasingly concerning ways. More than a quarter of three and four year olds own their own tablets/smartphones. Many of these kids show up to school emotionally and physically dysregulated, cognitively distracted, grossly under-stimulated, socially stunted and very uncomfortable. Recommendations are that children under 2 years of age should have zero screen time in order for them to engage fully with all of their senses in the world so that their brain comes fully online and so that they have optimal developmental conditions socially, emotionally, cognitively and physically. For 2-5 year olds 30 minutes of screen time per day is recommended.
If you want your child to flourish, this is an important pathway. However, tech companies and algorithms shape our relationship to time, attention, thinking and even parenting. Parents themselves are addicted to their screens and consequently find these recommendations a struggle and even unrealistic. So the typical parental approach is ‘collapse’ - "sure everyone else is doing it and sure there’s nothing much I can do about it". The evidence is clear - overuse of screens equals developmental compromise…and I’m not even talking about adolescents here - the impacts for them are even more concerning. Wake up and put the screens away. Until that happens, we will continue to diagnose kids with the predictable side effects of childhood screen addiction and we will continue to see them struggle.

05/02/2025

There are some wonderful, informative books available now about neurodiversity, written by neurodivergent people.

This is one, about the female lived experience of autism from Catherine Asta. Worth a read.

The ‘well now everything makes sense’ line we hear once we’ve discovered that we are autistic later in life, is like one of those toxic positive quotes you’d…

31/01/2025

Here’s an article on equine assisted therapy with many helpful resources.

A collective of professionals from across Ireland are coming together to share their life-changing work in equine-assisted services, writes Helen Sharp.