Category: Play Therapy
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Co-Parenting After Separation: Getting It Right for the Children
Introduction The handover is at five, at the Engen on the corner, because neither of you can face the other’s front door yet. Your daughter gets out with her school bag and a packet of clothes, and in the thirty seconds while she walks from one car to the other, she is watching both of…
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Meltdown or Tantrum? How to Tell, and Why It Matters
Introduction Aisle four, Checkers, ten past five. Your seven-year-old is on the floor. Not crying so much as roaring, arms going, shoes off, and a woman by the yoghurts is giving you the look. Someone’s mother once told you that a child like this needs a firm hand. Your own mother has views too. And…
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School Refusal: When Your Child Can’t Face the Gate
Introduction It usually starts with a tummy ache. Sunday night, just after supper. Then again on Monday morning, worse this time, with tears. You keep them home, because what else do you do with a child who says they feel sick? By ten o’clock they’re fine. Bright, even. By Sunday night it’s back. The GP…
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Neurodiversity Therapy in Cape Town: Signs Your Child May Be Neurodiverse
Introduction Parents almost never arrive at this question all at once. It builds. It starts with a comment from a teacher. Then a birthday party that went badly for reasons nobody can quite explain. Then a supermarket meltdown that seemed enormously out of proportion, and a nagging sense that other people’s children do not appear…
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Identity Therapy and Mental Health Support in Cape Town: A Guide for Teens, Parents and Adults
Introduction When counselling somebody in identity therapy, there is a particular sentence I hear a great deal, usually about ten minutes into a first session, usually said apologetically. “I do not really know who I am anymore.” It comes from sixteen-year-olds and it comes from fifty-year-olds. It comes from people who have just left a…
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ADHD as a Superpower: Why Neurodiversity Is a Strength, Not a Limitation
Introduction What if the traits we label as “problems” in ADHD are actually signs of a brain built for a different kind of brilliance? What if new science is showing signs of ADHD as a superpower? For decades, ADHD has been framed almost entirely through a lens of deficit: difficulty focusing, impulsive behaviour, restlessness, disorganisation.…
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The Importance of Self-Compassion in Mental Health
Introduction We are often our own harshest critics. When something goes wrong, the inner voice that speaks up first is rarely kind. It tells us we should have known better, that we are not enough, that we deserve the pain. For many people, this self‐critical pattern runs so deep it feels like the truth rather…
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When Your Child Carries Something They Can’t Yet Say: a Guide to Supporting Adolescent Trauma Survivors
If your teenager has experienced trauma – whether recently or in the past – you may feel desperate to help them, to reach in and take the pain away. But healing rarely looks like the conversations we imagine. This is what I want you to know before the process begins. I work with young people…
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Unlocking Your Child’s Feelings and Potential Through Play Therapy
As a parent, you want the very best for your children. You want them to feel safe. To feel loved. To feel confident and capable of facing life’s challenges. Yet childhood isn’t always easy. Even when we do everything right, children can experience big emotions, changes, or difficulties. But they don’t yet have the words…