The Playful Place

29/08/2025

11/07/2025

Recording for Season 3 has started, honoured and excited to be invited back as a guest, helping to unpack neurodivergence and destabilise the myth of normal. ❤️🌈

05/06/2025

👏

Shirley Boys High School is spending $800,000 to transform its open plan classrooms, built in 2019, into single-cell rooms.

04/06/2025

“I want to throw glitter at you”. Best feedback I’ve had for years, from an AuDHD participant at yesterday’s Ngā Manu Āwhina RTLB Cluster 8 Conference on Neurodivergence, after speaking on Neurodivergence, sensory processing and how we can collectively do better for our neurodivergent learners. Feeling heard, seen and understood is the best outcome we can hope for 🌈.

03/06/2025

❤️ 🥄🥄🥄

02/06/2025

Registrations open tomorrow for the upcoming NATINA Conference in Auckland. Check out this amazing line up of speakers!

24/05/2025

❤️

The main shift moves away from focusing on simple compliance to understanding behaviors, have important meanings about children's bodies and minds.

23/05/2025

Yesterday, The Real Science of Learning Conference was a huge day to be a part of. Heart breaking and heart warming all at the same time. All speakers were passionate advocates for doing right, right now.

In a time when our youth su***de rates continue to be the highest in the world, Neurodivergent people are 9 times more likely to die from su***de, and yet in some spaces we continue to provide inappropriate, pathologised, deficit based care in health and in education, which can be harmful. We can do better, and we must.

We have some exceptional people in Aotearoa, collaborating together, trying to ensure every voice is at the table when decisions are made, starting with whānau, so that the right care is given in the right way, by the right person. The question is… who’s listening?

Sometimes it feels like we have no control. No control over policy, over resourcing decisions, over new ideas coming into our classrooms and clinics. But we do. Feeling like you have no control is not a mistake on their behalf.

⭐️ We have control over which science we read and listen to.
⭐️ We have control over listening to whānau voice and youth voice first.
⭐️ We have control over ensuring people have a felt sense of safety when they are with us - inside, outside and in between.
⭐️ We have control over doing the right thing, right now. The micro decisions to bring in more play, spend more time moving across the day, accessing sunshine and nature across the day as a core sensory approach, connecting with whānau, and showing curiosity towards that which we don’t fully understand yet, and empathy towards people having a hard time.

14/05/2025

Feedback from last weeks Understanding Sensory Needs workshop is coming in… we read it, we take it on board, and we appreciate people taking the time to share their ideas to keep our PD offering rich, relevant and real! We don’t run cookie cutter PD, we create space to figure out what the group needs, where questions can be safely asked and answered, and participant knowledge is being built through developing a critical lens you take away with you. Not gimmicks, not a list of suggested strategies, not superficial simplified explanations. Sometimes you get feedback that you didn’t even know how important it would be to hear, until you hear it…

10/05/2025

2 weeks to go!

09/05/2025

I love this from Tanya Valentin l Neuro-Affirming Family Coach! Thanks Tanya! 🌈

16/04/2025

❤️

The Beyond Behaviorism conference will focus on understanding the controversy and exploring alternatives.